When this woman feels upset with her sister, she asks Reddit:
I hate that I'm throwing this shit on the internet for reassurance, but my whole family is angry at me and I kind of feel like I unnecessarily flipped out. I'm very close with my mom and sister, they visit and have dinner with us all the time.
Our family is real touchy feely, it's never made us uncomfortable and it's just thought of as being friendly. My husband absolutely does not feel that way. For a few different reasons, he hates to be touched. It took half way into our relationship before he really was comfortable with me touching him. He's incredibly sweet and loving, it's just things like that put him on edge.
My sister is incapable of understanding this. Every time she comes over she comes up behind him and scares the shit out of him or grabs him in big unexpected hugs. Every conversation has a hand on his arm or something. This isn't abnormal for her, but he obviously hates it.
Now he doesn't like to say anything, and tells me it doesn't bother him. But he visibly just about jumps out of his skin every time. It makes him not want to conversate or be around us. She just kind of overwhelmes him into standing in the back of the room in silence. I've brought it up to my sister several times how much he dislikes that. She laughs about how 'shy' he is, says he'll get over it. We've been married 4 years.
Its reached the point where he just sits in our bedroom through the evenings my family are here. Yesterday I sent my sister a text that said she had to realize how uncomfortable she makes my husband every time she visits, and if she couldn't keep her hands to herself, I didn't want her over anymore. She immediately called me all worked up saying she didn't mean to and how she was just trying to be nice and make him feel like family.
She got upset and hung up on me, and then my mom rings me about how immature we're both being and how we're making a big deal over basic social friendliness. She even called me dirty minded for saying she was too much.
They're so put out about it that I've just stopped responding to them. My husband feels terrible and thinks this stupid argument is all his fault, and everyone feels like shit. Should I have just left it alone? I still think I should have said something, but it feels like I just made everything worse. AITA?
naynay38 writes:
NTA.From your description, your sister has no concept of personal space. What if the roles were reversed? Your husbands brother kept invading your personal space, putting his hands on you? Would your family be okay with that?
Your husband has given visual signs that he dislikes it. You have bought it up with your sister, and she’s just laughed it off. She has no respect for boundaries you are putting in place in your house.
Your husband shouldn’t feel terrible, and you have acted in a much more mature way than your family. If they genuinely wanted to spend time with you, they’d change their behaviours. Because the requests you’ve made aren’t unreasonable at all.
signaldisrespect9 writes:
NTA but your mother & sister sure are. They are constantly disrespecting his boundaries because 'we're family' and 'get over it'. They had at least 4 years of learning and respecting his boundaries. They just don't care. 'He'll eventually get over it'... No, he doesn't have to be uncomfortable, much less in his house (not to mention that if a man would touch a woman thisway we might think of other ways to describe it like s harrassment).
mediocredisaster0 writes:
Absolutely NTA. My family is very physically affectionate. My son is claustrophobicly so. My oldest daughter is on with hugs for a little while but it gets to be too much fast. We have explained to him that while he loves hugs his sister doesn’t and it doesn’t make her feel loved when he won’t respect her personal space.
He’s almost 5 and still learning. Your sister is a grown woman and should understand that keeping her hands off people that don’t like it is a way to show them you love them.