'My boyfriend's odd relationship with SIL is causing major issues.' + 2 UPDATES

"My (30F) BF (29M) has an odd relationship with soon to be SIL. It’s causing major issues. How do we solve this?"

TL;DR - My wonderful BF has an odd soon to be sister in law that, I feel, acts inappropriately towards him and it makes me uncomfortable. We’re trying to figure out how to deal with this in the least dramatic way possible so this doesn’t go on forever.

My BF and I have been together almost 1.5 years. This is the best relationship I’ve ever been in. He’s a great person and we have no issues, except for his brother’s fiancée. When I first met her, I really wanted for us to be great friends, but that hasn’t been the case.

Literally the first time I met her, she was wearing a romper, came out of the bathroom, specifically went to my BF to zip her up (butt to neck). I thought it was odd but we’d just met so I didn’t trip on it. Before I’d met her, he described her as his “relationship advisor” and that he told her about me and how excited he was about our relationship.

But each time I’ve seen her (almost weekly in the 1.5 years), she’s made me uncomfortable. She’ll pull him away to talk one on one. She touches him regularly, has little inside jokes so I just sit there like an idiot, makes silly voices to him, makes weird double entendres jokes to him.

Sometimes she’ll be super nice to me and sometimes she just straight ignores me. I never know which version I’ll get, so I always act super friendly, but it’s exhausting. One of the last times I saw her, she was being friendly, but did take the opportunity to say “You know, before you and XX started dating, we talked every day about all kinds of things. We were best friends. Now we don’t talk as much anymore.”

In the beginning, he seemed oblivious to how inappropriate she acts towards him. I’ve pointed it out several times and gotten to the point where I told him if he doesn’t shut down her weird touching, I’m either walking away or leaving because I’m uncomfortable. Issues with her have literally been our only relationship drama the entire time.

We have never fought about anything else. Since making him aware, a lot of times when she starts touching him randomly or trying to pull him away, he’ll resist, go somewhere else, whatever the case may be. But we seem to have an argument after each time we see each other.

Yesterday, she and the brother received an invite from a mutual friend to see some live music. She was mostly fine, friendly etc but she chose the seat beside him (so I had to sit a couple friends away from him) and was wiping his face, touching his face where he missed a spot shaving, weird stuff like that. At one point I just walked away and chatted with mutual friends.

After we left, I expressed to my BF that I feel I can’t talk to him about my concerns with her because he gets so frustrated and says she’s always been that way, they’ve known each other for 5 years, she’ll be his “sister” soon, whatever.

He’s doing his best to keep her in check but she does seem to come out of nowhere with her touching, and her snide comments to me that maybe only another woman could understand the rudeness behind. It turned into a loud fight, the likes of which we’ve never had. He’s super apologetic today (he made a hurtful comment in the heat of the moment and I’m sure I did too out of pure frustration with this situation.)

Though I don’t like her, knowing that we’ll both (hopefully) be part of the family soon, I know we need to sort out these issues. How do we go about doing this? I’ve thought about going out for drinks with her and explaining my situation so she can’t play dumb to how she makes me uncomfortable.

He thinks he should talk to her solo, but that feels like I can’t handle my own issues and would create more weirdness between the two of us. I absolutely love and want to marry him and really want this to resolve so our relationship can continue to flourish.

My last relationship before this one was awful, cheated on, abuse. I’m incredibly grateful to have the good man I have now. It took me a lot of work to get to where I am emotionally, to be able to trust, control my anger in arguments etc just because the last one was so awful and changed my personality. I don’t want to see bits of the old me anymore, but I see little bits when we argue about her and I hate that.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

grumpy__g said:

I am a sister and a SIL. This is not ok. And he doesn’t shut her down. He just avoids her. Don’t talk to her. Embarrass her in front if her partner. Don’t you have a friend who could help with that? As a friend I would ask „Hey OP, is that over there your fiancé (BIL)?“ And then act surprised when you say it’s him (fiancé). „Oh really. With all the touching I thought it’s her.“

What do the family members (BiL and parents) say about it? Have you ever talked to BIL? Don’t marry till this is resolved.

OP responded:

Thank you for your response! Sometimes I get so annoyed with myself like why am I making this an issue? But none of his close friends’ wives or GFs act this way towards him. And I also can’t imagine he’d feel great if I was acting this way towards another guy. I haven’t talked to the BIL about this. He can be nice, but is very work and himself focused.

Honestly I get vibes from her like she feels she picked the wrong brother and regrets it. I’m not trying to shame her or cause more of a scene that I already seem to do when I walk away in a huff (she’s noticed it). But yeah, I agree that he needs to shut her down more than he’s been doing or this will continue.

Detcord36 said:

Ewwww, where the F is his brother in all this? Is he a clueless idiot or is he ok with all of this? She's creepy and crossing lines constantly. If he can't shut this down, then he's made his choice.

OP responded:

He also seems completely oblivious to it! Furthering the idea that that’s how she’s always acted. He’s around for some of the weirdness but not every time. They are engaged, he’s bought her a new car, new house, but to me their relationship seems not great. Sometimes I think she feels she picked the wrong brother but is in too deep now.

My BF was single for a while before we got together and the fiancée is very pretty, so I’m sure in some weird way he enjoyed the attention. But yeah, he has to want it to stop, not just weakly avoiding her or saying something because I want him to. It’s just frustrating having to defend my stance about how weird and uncomfortable this is when I’m fairly certain no other woman would put up with this BS.

Later, she shared this update on the situation:

Well, seems like I’ve caused a family feud. My BF texted the SIL last night not a mean but a stern message saying he’s been uncomfortable with the way she acts for a bit and the touching and possessiveness needs to stop. He wants to have a good family relationship with her but the way she acts is inappropriate. She responded saying she had no idea what he was talking about.

But she apologized to us both saying she loves and adores us as family and nothing more or less. Seconds later his brother called. His brother screamed at my BF saying he handled the situation wrong. He should have come to him instead of attacking his fiancée. Said that I wrote the text and it’s all me and my insecurities. Called my BF f’$#g stupid and a bunch of other names.

Saying we’re not hanging out anymore, no more family dinner, no going to their wedding. SIL was in the background sobbing, telling him to stop yelling at my BF. A few mins later he called back apologizing for yelling at him. My BF agreed that he handled it wrong (?!!). The brother asked how we can squash this and explained they’re both touchy with everyone because they’ve both been bartenders.

Obviously I’ve never seen her be that touchy with anyone else but whatever. They’re at a golf tournament together today so I’m sure it’ll come out this is all me and my issues. This whole thing is just looney toons.

Five days later, she posted this second update:

This is an update from my last post. TL;DR on the last post - my BF’s (maybe) soon to be sister in law has always exhibited inappropriate behavior towards him (super touchy, possessive, raunchy jokes, tries to shut me out). My BF sent her a text saying it made him uncomfortable, requesting she reel it in, and hoping they can continue to have a good relationship.

His brother (30M) got involved, screamed at my BF, said hurtful things, very dramatic. That was it for a week. Now for the updated craziness. Friday Evening I went to a female family gathering. Future SIL was there. She avoided me the entire time. I want nothing more than to get past this and move on, but was sort of following her lead and left her alone. She texted asking if we could talk. I said sure.

She said my BF told his brother I wrote the text (he never said that). She clearly didn’t believe me and kept trying to find ways to prove that I wrote it. That I said no more family gatherings and we don’t want to go to their wedding because I hate her. That I’ll hate any future child they have because it came out of her.

I was absolutely shocked because I never said any of this, and I know my BF never said any of these things either. So his brother is making up these cruel lies for some unknown reason?? She said how awful their family is and all she wanted was to make me feel included and now I’ve stabbed her in the back. She demanded an apology. I refused and told her to have a good night and left.

Sunday, we go to the parents house for dinner. All of us were there. Things were fairly standoffish. At one point I was inside with future SIL and the dad, making small talk. Their mom grabs me and future SIL to speak in a back room. She’s a few drinks in, gets all teary eyed that her boys are in turmoil. Basically saying I’m the root of all the issues so I need to get over it because she’s not having her family torn apart.

My BF loves both of us equally (hah!) and I need to deal with that because they’ve known each other (5 years) far longer than we’ve been together (1.5years). I can’t come in and try to dissolve all female relationships in his life. She left and future SIL and I were talking calmly and I was expressing there clearly was miscommunication between the boys that seems to be ramping this up. She agreed.

Then we hear screaming from the living room, glass breaking, so we go out there and that’s when all the real drama started. The brother kept pointing at me with like a legit murderous look in his eyes, calling me a manipulative B and a psychotic bully, all kinds of things.

It was a screaming match everyone telling each other to eff off and his mom is like “well you started all of this and now you have nothing to say? Defend yourself” His brother is like “she’s playing a game. She manipulated my brother away from the family so she’s sitting there all pleased with herself, the dumb B.”

The mom was trying and failing to moderate this because the brother kept screaming. He was telling her to go F herself, saying any awful thing he could think of about me. He came incredibly close to my face (idk if he wanted to hit me or intimidate me), my BF pushed him away and yelled at him.

The brother kept making these moves like he was going to run at me, future SIL kept holding him back or telling him to take a walk he was furious. Their mom kept saying I need to grow up and deal with my insecurities, kept saying that over and over. At one point I asked her to stop calling me insecure and she said it was the first time I’d defended myself and now she respects me a little bit because I stood up for myself.

This went on for 2 hours and because I don’t deal with issues by screaming and name calling, I was frozen. My BF was saying a lot to try to defend me, that they were his concerns and didn’t come out of thin air, which riled everyone up more. It was absolute chaotic madness that I’ve never been a part of before.

At the end, their mom tried to laugh off the entire thing. I was in total shock because I’ve tried so hard to be kind and respectful to the fam and always had a great relationship especially with their mom, so I was taken aback. My BF spoke to his mom the next day, cancelled all future plans with the fam, saying I was attacked, it was uncalled for, he was furious.

His brother has legit issues and the mom makes excuse after excuse for his absolutely terrifying behavior. I seriously don’t feel comfortable even being near his brother again. He sounds so close to really losing it and I’m actually concerned for my safety at this point. I thank god my BF has the complete opposite personality.

But I have no clue how to move forward from this. As much as I’d never want to see the brother again, I know that’s not possible. I’d be willing to speak to him if he could act more normal and calm but I don’t even know if he’s capable of that. Help.

She then shared more info in the comments:

The very first time I met future SIL (I’d already hung out with parents and brother a couple times), she pulled me aside to give her assessment of the fam. She said the parents hated her from the beginning. They’re a prominent land owning family in our city with name recognition (I was relatively new to the city so I had no clue except connecting the dots based on their last name being the same as a few streets).

SIL was called a gold digger (which after I’ve gotten to know her, I agree with). She said they hated her for her many tattoos, for being a bit overweight, etc. I was shocked to hear all this because the mom especially had welcomed me with such open arms. I took what she said with a grain of salt, but that first day she went to my BF to zip up her dress after getting out of the bathroom and felt sour about that.

Part of me thinks she was surprised the mom sided with her on this as the mom and rest of the fam have made it fairly apparent to everyone that they prefer me to her. And when she realized she had her back, she figured she could say anything and it’d be believed. I had seen the brother have these blow outs with his mom, and they seem to get over it immediately.

I’d just never been the target before. I can’t even put into words well enough to describe the look in the brother’s eyes when he was trying to come at me.

The best I can describe is I was an EMT for 6 years, and one time we picked up a man (later came to find he was a murderer), he looked at me the same, and then we snowed him with psych drugs and strapped him to the gurney with armed police right next to us. I think if the family didn’t have the money and connections they do, brother would be in jail or dead from coming at the wrong person.

In Mother’s Day, birthday cards etc I’d always written essays of gratitude to the mom for welcoming me to the family, teaching me how to cook grandma’s recipes, all the gifts.

Due to various reasons (illness with my family, them living out of state etc) I spent nearly every holiday for the past 18 months with the family, so when the mom dropped off a bday card for me last week that said “we hope to make better memories in the future” and that’s it. it was a kick in the stomach.

On top of everything, my beloved grandmother passed yesterday so I’m dealing with all of those emotions on top of everything else. I certainly will no longer be missing out on quality time with my family to be with these nuts going forward.

My BF is still furious with the family, but he’s not the type to go NC with his parents, regardless of how angry he is. His brother has already threatened to “cut ties” which honestly is fine with me.

My Bf has acknowledged that he wouldn’t blame me for running for the hills after all this but has assured me he supports any decision I make 100% and whatever that means for the relationship with his immediate family. I’m just super overwhelmed with all of this right now and not in the best mental space to make drastic decisions. Whew. It’s been a lot.