Why do SILs hate the women their brothers marry?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My SIL and MIL had a dynamic where they decided everything and made all the plans and dh just showed up. It worked for a while with me but then our plans just became too hectic with kids and both our schedules. We can't just show up when other people need us all the time. We like it when our schedules get taken into account.

And then my SIL was really really upset anytime I tried to change anything about holidays. She was upset I rotated holidays between her family and mine. She was upset when I brought a dish that wasn't traditionally on her mom's Christmas table. She refuses to come when I host because she wants her mom to host instead (but then my parents aren't invited).

I'm not pushy, but she is. We still get along great and I just ignore things she says that I don't agree with. If we lived closer, we'd get along great. I'm a bit sad she never married and didn't have kids.

Omg yes. My DH's family has some of this too! Like there were SO SHOCKED when my DH didn't decide to spend holidays apart from me after we got married (like we'd done while we were dating). It was a huge adjustment for them and there were lots of snide comments about it for a few years. It's been 13 years and I am still annoyed how they basically openly stated they wished we wouldn't see my family.

The only upside was it taught me how NOT to be as an inlaw when my kids get married. My parents have always been super chill about it all, and I will strive to be that way too.

[Anonymous]

My SIL has designs on the money my parents are planning on leaving to us.

She cleaned out all the decent furniture in my parent's house when my husband and I were living abroad. I came home to find that the woman had taken my childhood bedroom furniture from my childhood home and installed it in her child's room without even discussing it with me!

She has never worked and goes running to my parents whenever she wants something expensive -- like private school, summer camp, private college -- that is not feasible given my brother's salary.

Yeah, my parents are also to blame for acting like doormats but I can't see what possible benefit I could derive from being friendly to someone like that.

[Anonymous]

My SIL and I are close … we text a lot, plan holidays together. So not all.

[Anonymous]

To the few posters on here complaining that their SIL's never got to get to know their family, that they're distant, and so on - there are some reasons for that.

My SIL would probably say that about me. However, much of it is my husband (her brother). First, my ILs raised the kids to compete with one another, and I think that didn't really lay the appropriate groundwork for a close adult relationship between DH and SIL. Second, SIL was unpleasant when I started dating DH (doing things like inviting his ex-gf over, who she was friends with, while I was at the house or posting stuff online). She was still a teenager, so she was probably just really immature, but her parents never bothered to run interference on anything. I think overall, she's a good person, but it took her many years to grow up and DH put a lot of distance between himself and her. Their lives also went in radically different directions during the decade or so when they had minimal contact. As a result, they were never close to start out with and now they've grown into people who would literally never be friends if they met each other in any other setting. SIL also feels a need to make small comments to DH and me about the different directions of our lives, and we find it really awkward and uncomfortable. Lastly, my husband finds certain behavior from my MIL and FIL inappropriate. They make very harsh comments about everyone, including SIL's own husband. SIL is used to their judgement, so she writes it all off in a "oh that's just mom and dad" sort of way. The truth is that my DH knows that if my ILs are bashing SIL, they'd be bashing us, too, if we ever gave them any material, so he almost never engages.

It's much tougher to look critically at the unfavorable dynamics in your family of origin than to just create a narrative that your SIL put a wedge in between you and your brother.

[Anonymous]

My mom is very like able but my dads sister has always been mean and bossy to her.

My mom and her sister don’t like their brothers wife.

It’s definitely common, I think.

[Anonymous]

I don't hate the woman my brother married, but she isn't particularly nice to me. We were never going to be BFFs, which is totally fine. We are very different people and have different views and values. She's not a very nice person, in general, but we had a friendly-ish relationship for 10 years until she, inexplicably, decided she was done playing by the unstated "do not engage on taboo topics" rules. No idea what triggered it, but I took the nasty comments in stride for about a year, until I finally decided I was done. Now they're divorcing, so I probably won't see her for years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People with normal SILs don’t write about it. Well, except I will here: my SILs are awesome to me. They really do love me like I’m their actual sister.

People who are mean to their sibling’s wives are probably also mean to other people. I doubt they save it for their SILs.

+1 I love my sis in law. She's changed my brother's life in an incredibly positive way.

+2

[Anonymous]

You probably did something that offended her. You probably treat her like crap and she's off writing about you in some other forum. Admit it.

[Anonymous]

I loved my sister-in-law, included her in everything, but she rejected my entire family, then started pulling away from my brother, and recently asked him for a divorce. She's a psychiatrist. We thought he married the one normal psychiatrist in the universe, we all should have known better. All psychiatrists are nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My SIL has designs on the money my parents are planning on leaving to us.

She cleaned out all the decent furniture in my parent's house when my husband and I were living abroad. I came home to find that the woman had taken my childhood bedroom furniture from my childhood home and installed it in her child's room without even discussing it with me!

She has never worked and goes running to my parents whenever she wants something expensive -- like private school, summer camp, private college -- that is not feasible given my brother's salary.

Yeah, my parents are also to blame for acting like doormats but I can't see what possible benefit I could derive from being friendly to someone like that.

I don't think this is shocking. Your parents were probably glad to get it out of the house if you were old enough to be married and living abroad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My SIL has designs on the money my parents are planning on leaving to us.

She cleaned out all the decent furniture in my parent's house when my husband and I were living abroad. I came home to find that the woman had taken my childhood bedroom furniture from my childhood home and installed it in her child's room without even discussing it with me!

She has never worked and goes running to my parents whenever she wants something expensive -- like private school, summer camp, private college -- that is not feasible given my brother's salary.

Yeah, my parents are also to blame for acting like doormats but I can't see what possible benefit I could derive from being friendly to someone like that.

I don't think this is shocking. Your parents were probably glad to get it out of the house if you were old enough to be married and living abroad.

They could have at least asked her first. And I say this as someone whose niece has all of my old bedroom furniture. But my parents did ask me first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My SIL has designs on the money my parents are planning on leaving to us.

She cleaned out all the decent furniture in my parent's house when my husband and I were living abroad. I came home to find that the woman had taken my childhood bedroom furniture from my childhood home and installed it in her child's room without even discussing it with me!

She has never worked and goes running to my parents whenever she wants something expensive -- like private school, summer camp, private college -- that is not feasible given my brother's salary.

Yeah, my parents are also to blame for acting like doormats but I can't see what possible benefit I could derive from being friendly to someone like that.

I don't think this is shocking. Your parents were probably glad to get it out of the house if you were old enough to be married and living abroad.

They could have at least asked her first. And I say this as someone whose niece has all of my old bedroom furniture. But my parents did ask me first.

But SIL didn’t exactly go steal it from under parent’s noses while they slept. Parents must have offered and agreed in some capacity.

Also interesting that PP blames SIL and not her own brother. Not to mention, the stuff is going to your parents grandchildren.

If your furniture was so important to you, why isn’t it in YOUR house?

[Anonymous]

It's not in my house because I was never offered the furniture nor did I ask
If my parents were going into a home then it would be appropriate to start dismantling their house and rifling through their possessions perhaps but this seems ghoulish. I don't ever presume that other people possessions in their own home are up for grabs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My SIL has designs on the money my parents are planning on leaving to us.

She cleaned out all the decent furniture in my parent's house when my husband and I were living abroad. I came home to find that the woman had taken my childhood bedroom furniture from my childhood home and installed it in her child's room without even discussing it with me!

She has never worked and goes running to my parents whenever she wants something expensive -- like private school, summer camp, private college -- that is not feasible given my brother's salary.

Yeah, my parents are also to blame for acting like doormats but I can't see what possible benefit I could derive from being friendly to someone like that.

I don't think this is shocking. Your parents were probably glad to get it out of the house if you were old enough to be married and living abroad.

They could have at least asked her first. And I say this as someone whose niece has all of my old bedroom furniture. But my parents did ask me first.

Maybe your stuff was particularly special in some way but it honestly never occurred to me that my childhood furniture was "mine" in any real way - I moved out and bought a new bed and dresser and that was pretty much that. The view that it's wrong not to clear a gift of furniture from the parents with someone who didn't buy it, use in in the last decade, or keep it in their house is pretty strange to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not in my house because I was never offered the furniture nor did I ask
If my parents were going into a home then it would be appropriate to start dismantling their house and rifling through their possessions perhaps but this seems ghoulish. I don't ever presume that other people possessions in their own home are up for grabs.

So you recognize that it's not yours but you're bothered that it wasn't treated as yours? Curiouser and curiouser.