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Hi there,
I have recently married my wonderful boyfriend of 7 years. We have our ups and down, but we love each other and are happy together. I am from Denmark and he is from the UK
We have been travelling a lot since we met - and have lived abroad. Therefore, I have not gotten to know his family as closely as you would expect after 7 years. Now, we have moved back to the UK, and live in the same town as his parents and two sisters. We chose to live there exactly to be close to family, as I know no one else in the country.
I always felt I had a great relationship with his family. I get along well with his mother and older sister, we can have a laugh and a chat, although we are certainly very different, and they will probably never be my closest confidants. My husband also has a younger sister, who is nearly the exact same age as me. naturally, I expected that we could become friends, if not exactly BFFs. And it seemed for the longest time that we could - we don't have that much in common, but we did get along, go shopping etc together.
As we had just returned from a long trip, we were staying with his parents while buying a house. This worked OK. Then his sister had a terrible incident, where she had the house of her door kicked down in the middle of the night. She has two small children, so naturally she and her husband were terrified. The robbers threatened her husband. After that, they did not want to stay in their house, and so moved in with the parents as well. With all of us, the house was naturally very full, but we moved out of the bedroom we were in to let them have a room to themselves. I felt that hey, we are all family, so we should be able to talk about any issues that may occur etc.
My husband does not get along well with his sister, and he got more and more annoyed with her while we lived there. He feels she exploits his mother as she always leaves the children with her, and lets the mum clean up after them and her husband etc. I tend to stay out of this, as I feel it must be up to his mother to draw the line herself - she is a grown woman. However, my husband does not let things lie, and he and his sister both have tempers that can fly -so a lot of screaming matches occurred. Not with me ever, but between the two of them. She was always civil to me, even friendly, and so I tended to defend her to my husband. Then one day, he told me she had said to him that I was so annoying and messy for always leaving my contact lens case around the house, and that she did not like me. Thanks I thought, but decided to leave it as she must still be stressed from the robbery etc. She also accused us of eating her food from the fridge - often things we do not even like to eat. Once, she told my husband that we were not welcome in his parents house anymore, and we should stop stalling and buy a house already - trust me, we did not want to stay there any longer than we had to. And yet, she is the one with an empty house. I thought perhaps she should have offered we go and stay there while she decided what to do about it - but apparently, she believed that my husband would wreck her house (her own brother!). We have now bought a house four months ago, and moved out straight away. The place is still a building site though, so we come round the parents house to shower etc.
That is the background - now for the question. About three months ago, she started ignoring me completely. To be fair, I had not exactly been keen to speak to her after her telling my husband she does not like me. But now, not a word in several months - I thought OK then, leave me be, I can live with that. But the other day, my husband asked his mother what was up with his sister ignoring me. She told him that I had written on my facebook profile what their family are all evil clowns. I thought back, and realised that I had in fact written a quote from a Pink song several months back ('this used to be a fun house, now its full of evil clowns'). I do tend to use lyrics as my status updates a lot - dependent on what song I might have heard that day and so on. I did not mean this to refer to their family - if anything, my husband and I were arguing at the time, trying to adjust to a normal life routine again after all our travelling, so the lyrics reminded me of that more than anything. And I would never be passive aggressive enough to air my in-law problems on facebook.
I spoke to my mother-in-law, and told her this was nothing but a song lyric. I don't know if she believed me, she has been listening to her own daughter for months ranting about how I dare to bad mouth their family etc... I am more hurt than anything else - it is one thing for this sister, who apparently did not like me anyway according to herself, to treat me like this and jump to conclusions. What hurts me is that none of his family - his mother or his other sister - who have all been involved in this, none of them had enough respect for me to ask me about it - they just went on like nothing had happened. They treat me fine still, but now it feels fake to me, because I can't help but think what they may be saying behind my back.
The question is therefore: do I go along with how their whole family seems to prefer things, and just pretend nothing has happened? Or should I confront them about it? I don't feel like confronting the youngest sister - I feel that after all this (her comments about me to my husband, and her passive aggressive reaction to a facebook update) I do not want a relationship with her anyway. In fact, my natural reaction to all this is to pull away from his family and keep them at arms length. But this ends up making me quite lonely, as I do not have any friends or family in this country.
Hope you can give me some advice - I feel quite exhausted about it all at the moment.
I have recently married my wonderful boyfriend of 7 years. We have our ups and down, but we love each other and are happy together. I am from Denmark and he is from the UK
We have been travelling a lot since we met - and have lived abroad. Therefore, I have not gotten to know his family as closely as you would expect after 7 years. Now, we have moved back to the UK, and live in the same town as his parents and two sisters. We chose to live there exactly to be close to family, as I know no one else in the country.
I always felt I had a great relationship with his family. I get along well with his mother and older sister, we can have a laugh and a chat, although we are certainly very different, and they will probably never be my closest confidants. My husband also has a younger sister, who is nearly the exact same age as me. naturally, I expected that we could become friends, if not exactly BFFs. And it seemed for the longest time that we could - we don't have that much in common, but we did get along, go shopping etc together.
As we had just returned from a long trip, we were staying with his parents while buying a house. This worked OK. Then his sister had a terrible incident, where she had the house of her door kicked down in the middle of the night. She has two small children, so naturally she and her husband were terrified. The robbers threatened her husband. After that, they did not want to stay in their house, and so moved in with the parents as well. With all of us, the house was naturally very full, but we moved out of the bedroom we were in to let them have a room to themselves. I felt that hey, we are all family, so we should be able to talk about any issues that may occur etc.
My husband does not get along well with his sister, and he got more and more annoyed with her while we lived there. He feels she exploits his mother as she always leaves the children with her, and lets the mum clean up after them and her husband etc. I tend to stay out of this, as I feel it must be up to his mother to draw the line herself - she is a grown woman. However, my husband does not let things lie, and he and his sister both have tempers that can fly -so a lot of screaming matches occurred. Not with me ever, but between the two of them. She was always civil to me, even friendly, and so I tended to defend her to my husband. Then one day, he told me she had said to him that I was so annoying and messy for always leaving my contact lens case around the house, and that she did not like me. Thanks I thought, but decided to leave it as she must still be stressed from the robbery etc. She also accused us of eating her food from the fridge - often things we do not even like to eat. Once, she told my husband that we were not welcome in his parents house anymore, and we should stop stalling and buy a house already - trust me, we did not want to stay there any longer than we had to. And yet, she is the one with an empty house. I thought perhaps she should have offered we go and stay there while she decided what to do about it - but apparently, she believed that my husband would wreck her house (her own brother!). We have now bought a house four months ago, and moved out straight away. The place is still a building site though, so we come round the parents house to shower etc.
That is the background - now for the question. About three months ago, she started ignoring me completely. To be fair, I had not exactly been keen to speak to her after her telling my husband she does not like me. But now, not a word in several months - I thought OK then, leave me be, I can live with that. But the other day, my husband asked his mother what was up with his sister ignoring me. She told him that I had written on my facebook profile what their family are all evil clowns. I thought back, and realised that I had in fact written a quote from a Pink song several months back ('this used to be a fun house, now its full of evil clowns'). I do tend to use lyrics as my status updates a lot - dependent on what song I might have heard that day and so on. I did not mean this to refer to their family - if anything, my husband and I were arguing at the time, trying to adjust to a normal life routine again after all our travelling, so the lyrics reminded me of that more than anything. And I would never be passive aggressive enough to air my in-law problems on facebook.
I spoke to my mother-in-law, and told her this was nothing but a song lyric. I don't know if she believed me, she has been listening to her own daughter for months ranting about how I dare to bad mouth their family etc... I am more hurt than anything else - it is one thing for this sister, who apparently did not like me anyway according to herself, to treat me like this and jump to conclusions. What hurts me is that none of his family - his mother or his other sister - who have all been involved in this, none of them had enough respect for me to ask me about it - they just went on like nothing had happened. They treat me fine still, but now it feels fake to me, because I can't help but think what they may be saying behind my back.
The question is therefore: do I go along with how their whole family seems to prefer things, and just pretend nothing has happened? Or should I confront them about it? I don't feel like confronting the youngest sister - I feel that after all this (her comments about me to my husband, and her passive aggressive reaction to a facebook update) I do not want a relationship with her anyway. In fact, my natural reaction to all this is to pull away from his family and keep them at arms length. But this ends up making me quite lonely, as I do not have any friends or family in this country.
Hope you can give me some advice - I feel quite exhausted about it all at the moment.
