confused&stressed Posted March 16, 2007 Posted March 16, 2007 I need some serious help here, both my boyfriend and I are at our wits' end! We have been together for 5 years and for all 5 years, I have not had a good relationship with his sister and brother. His parents are nice to me and they never say anything to my boyfriend about me, but his brother and sister have continually tried to meddle in our relationship. The background story is that we started dating my senior year in college but the timing wasn't right for me--I had just broken up with someone else and wasn't over him so he broke up with me. The timing was bad and besides that, I was in no position to be in another relationship so I was not the best girlfriend. The break up was completely justified and we were apart for over a year. Then, we reconnected at a mutual friend's birthday party and from there, decided to try dating again. So now it's 5 years later, and his brother and sister STILL don't like me. I can understand that they didn't like me at first because they thought it might be history repeating but year after year went by and we grew up and together as a couple. We're both 27 as opposed to 21. Recently, we've been having a rough time and went through a breakup because of all the stress of the situation. But we decided to try to work things out and have been working on our relationship quietly. We both want to work things out. My boyfriend recently left for a long trip (a month) and I left him a comment on an online forum we frequent. Then yesterday, I got an email from his brother telling me to stay away from my boyfriend and let him go, because of the comment on the forum! The email also went on to say that I was a selfish and horrible person who didn't love my boyfriend the way they did and that they have always been able to see right through me and don't like me. Needless to say, I was REALLY shocked and shaken by this email. They'd never directly said anything to me before, but I think they weren't aware that my boyfriend and I were trying to reconcile so they accused me of not being able to move on. They've always been pretty cold towards me and I've never felt welcome during family occasions. I tried to ask them questions and get to know them, hoping we could find some common ground to bond over but my questions were met with terse responses. I admit that because no one ever talked to me, I went to fewer and fewer family events as the years passed. Whenever I'd have to go to his house, his sister would nit-pick at what I was wearing or what I was doing and indirectly insult me. Example: I was wearing a pink shirt and she said, "I hate girly girls that wear pink." It was always a lot of snide commentary like that. If I would confront them, then they'd complain about how I couldn't take a joke or was being too sensitive. They're a really tight-knit family and I do take up a lot of his time because when we're together, we mostly keep to ourselves and do our own thing. The other family members and their respective others all hang out together all the time and I'm wondering if the resentment could be because they feel like I'm forcibly taking him away. What should we do? I can't live with this kind of animosity and all my attempts to be nice and get to know them are met with the attitude that, "they can see right through everything I say and do," as the email stated! But my boyfriend and I really love each other and are saddened by the state of the relationship with his family. I want to make things better, but it seems like they've already made up their mind about me. He doesn't want me to respond to the email, because he thinks no matter what I say they're just going to spin it the way they want to. The problem is, we have to wait a whole month before we address the issue when he comes home. I didn't want him calling them because I feel it would only add more fuel to the fire, like I was tattling. The good thing is that he is very supportive of me. He has also confronted them in the past but I guess it didn't really make much of a difference in their opinion of me. So, when he comes home, how are we going to deal with this situation?!?!?
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