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[quote=Anonymous]I have a SIL and never blame her for anything related to my brother. I have three sisters and we all appreciate and love our SIL, who is always kind, but often they are flaky about showing up and that’s okay.

On the flip side, my husband has two sisters and I feel very much blamed for everything bad and given hardly any credit for anything good.  Examples include showing up to events and being nice - after many years of reliably showing up and being friendly, I was still criticized and treated poorly, so I have pulled back substantially and focused more on things that bring me and my husband joy.  Another example is providing nice thoughtful gifts or giving my kids hand me downs to their cousins - after years of doing these things while being given the cold shoulder, I decided to mostly stop. My husband can handle the gifts and I give hand me downs to my lovely and appreciative long term cleaning lady for her grandkids.  But the most important pull back for me has been no longer attending small and intimate gatherings with just his immediate family, which was hard to stop doing bc I didn’t want to disappoint his parents (who are lovely but allowed the shunning of me for 20 years and just pretended it didn’t happen).  However, I’m a million times happier not having to hang out with my bullies every couple months to appease my in laws.

Bottom line, OP, is that I completely agree this phenomena exists where the wife is blamed for things unfairly, and much of it is rooted in either sexism (wife held responsible for all things social) or tribalism (blood relatives favored over in laws and outsiders not welcomed).  It sucked for me and I put up with it for 20 yrs until I reached my limit and laid some new boundaries, and wow, has my quality of life improved![/quote]

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