ghstbird Posted August 6, 2012 Posted August 6, 2012 I'm struggling in my relationship with my boyfriend's older sister. When I first met my boyfriend, I really valued the relationships that he had with his friends and family and tried to befriend them. I saw that he really respected his older sister, so I tried to reach out to her. However, I never got good vibes from his older sister. She never really talked to me and when she did, she always seemed unfriendly and uninterested. Honestly, I felt like there were a few times where she was pretty rude to me. For example, my boyfriend had handed me a hangable flower arrangement after a wedding that we all went to and I put it on my dress as a joke. She stared at it and very flatly said, "I'm sure that's where that goes," never smiling or making eye contact. I still tried to initiate a relationship with her despite all this and would ask my boyfriend to invite her to things that we were going to, passing along information to sales, and getting her an imported purse (she did pay me back for this). Of course when I dropped the purse off she was nice, and it was weird because she had never talked to me like that before. All of a sudden after that, she started liking my things on Facebook (we were connected online). But I couldn't reciprocate the way that she was doing it, because it was just way too often and I still wasn't comfortable around her yet after the ways that she talked to me initially. Plus she was pretty boastful on Facebook and it just felt weird to support someone like that who wasn't actually my friend. Then, in another conversation, after a dance recital for a dance class that she discovered because of me, she implied that I was cheap. Long story, I was playing around with a promotion that would give you a free coupon for a burger if you defriended people on Facebook...of course I chose complete strangers and I was just experimenting with it out of boredom. In the same conversation, after I revealed the price of some t-shirts I bought, someone else remarked on how it sounded expensive (a comment that I'm not offended by), she burst out with, "I only paid $15 for my t-shirts!" (a comment that I'm offended by). Not that they were the same t-shirts at all... Throughout all of this, I was maintaining a personal blog regarding my life just to compose my thoughts and relieve stress, and she was reading it multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. I only know about this because I had a tracker on my blog. Once I wrote about how I was offered an entry-level position in fashion buying and was debating whether or not to take it, and this spawned what I can only imagine was a fit of jealousy where she went through my entire blog. I never felt comfortable confronting her for this because I didn't want to embarrass her. Mind you, this woman was almost 30 when I met her and now is almost 35. She is also 8 years older than me and 4 years older than my boyfriend. After her comments and her reading my blog so often, I really got tired of constantly wondering about what she was really thinking. I didn't want to play petty games or fake a friendship when I honestly didn't trust or like her. She's also quite a vain person which I tried to overlook before, but now it really grates me. She's always posting seductive pictures of herself, talking up her achievements, etc. In the last few months she's tried to reach out by buying me flan after my boyfriend and her went to lunch and giving me a bubblegum car freshener. However, I still didn't feel like I could trust her so I didn't proactively thank her, and only said thanks when my boyfriend asked me if I liked it. She was still reading my blog at this time--she had continued this behavior for almost 3 years. Then she started encouraging my boyfriend to spend absurds amounts of money in one month. She asked him to go on a trip to China in the middle of a non-holiday season, which would have cost him $1000, knowing that he would be going back to school at that time and would be taking on even more student loans in addition to his remaining undergraduate loans. Even after my boyfriend told her that he couldn't afford the trip to China since he is taking on more debt, she still emailed him and tried to get him to go on a trip to Vegas ($200 for flight and lodging), and to split a $450 vacuum cleaner for their mom between her, him, and their uncle. At a later family dinner, she called herself "the most frugal person she knows" after their mom was pestering her about her renting an electric keyboard for $75 a month. On a relevant note, their family is quite poor. Her and my boyfriend support their mom, and my boyfriend is currently on disability due to a work injury. Last week, my boyfriend decided to have a conversation with her regarding the way that she treated me earlier in our relationship. My boyfriend did relay the content of the conversation to me. He didn't bring up the blog thing--I told him not to because I thought it would be too embarrassing for her. And of course she thought that she had reached out to me, reciprocated, etc. She mentioned that at one point she was working two jobs and was probably too busy. Sigh. Not getting the point that this has nothing to do with the time that she spent, only her attitude. She then proceeded to say that I was acting out the "eye-for-an-eye" philosophy for not responding to her flan and air freshener, and even if she had not reciprocated before, I wasn't right to not thank her proactively. She wanted to know specifically if I had told my boyfriend thanks myself, or if I only said thanks after he asked me. In the same conversation she said that she's protective of my boyfriend, as she's his older sister, and with his ex-girlfriend she was able to trust her after she saw that her ex liked my boyfriend for who he was and accepted his faults. My boyfriend was a bit offended and asked her, "Do you think (my name) doesn't feel that way about me?" She responded with, "Well, I haven't gotten to know her yet." Of course when my boyfriend relayed this specific bit to me, I was furious. 1) His ex was a deadbeat and was too lazy to go to college out of high school; I can actually support a family. 2) His ex tried to cheat on him while he was passed out at a party and apparently that night he also almost died. 3) My relationship with him before was very unhappy, and maybe his sister picked up on that. However, this was because my boyfriend was flirting with other girls, telling me about the girls that would flirt with him, and putting me down constantly. Of course I didn't accept his faults. Last year, he told his sister that he had treated me this way. But apparently it didn't sink in for her. I am honestly so sick of her. At this point I'm pretty mad and I want absolutely nothing to do with her. I feel like she's petty and unpredictable. Relationships take work and you can't just Facebook-like/comment and car-freshener your way into someone's life. You need to actually have conversations with them where you are happy for them and support them. I know she's his sister but I honestly don't think anyone deserves this much lack of understanding and inconsideration. I really just needed to let this vent somewhere anonymous because I don't feel right telling people I know about this, it would feel too gossipy. To the people who had to deal with a difficult sibling of your s/o, how did you handle it? As I don't have any family besides my parents, I'm pretty terrified by the prospect of her being my only family besides my boyfriend when my parents pass away, since my boyfriend isn't really close to any of his other family. The idea of raising my kids in this kind of an environment makes me really sad.
SJC2008 Posted August 6, 2012 Posted August 6, 2012 I've never had a gf and have never come close to posting something that long!
Author ghstbird Posted August 6, 2012 Author Posted August 6, 2012 Lmao. Maybe the key to this then is to never get a girlfriend/boyfriend.
SJC2008 Posted August 6, 2012 Posted August 6, 2012 Is she a crude person in general or just to you? Could be the cliched personality conflict where two people don't like eachother and don't know why. It seems like you have made an effort to reach out to her so I would just try to see her as least as possible. Point #3 cofused me. Were you having problems with him?
january2011 Posted August 6, 2012 Posted August 6, 2012 (edited) If you post a blog on the internet giving public access, anyone is allowed to read it. Unless you ban them. Unless she's making nasty comments on your blog or about your blog, I don't see how her reading in itself is a hanging offense. Without any other evidence, it seems odd to attribute her reading to a "fit of jealousy." And her giving your gifts and FB likes are also not hanging offences either, in my opinion. At least she's showing an interest in your life. Asking your boyfriend on trips, in itself isn't a hanging offence. In fact, nothing specific jumps out at me as a huge red flag that she's toxic and is to be avoided other than you don't like what you perceive to be her attitude and behaviour towards you and her boyfriend. And as an older sister, she has a right to feel protective over her brother, particularly, if she witnessed the fallout from the breakup of his last relationship. I'd actually be more concerned about the few sentences you made about your boyfriend's early behaviour towards you, even more so than the rest of your entire post. Therefore I agree with SJC2008. All I can really tell from your post is that you don't like her and don't get on her, mainly based on vibes and your perception of those vibes. It's true that perhaps one has to be in the situation itself and dealing with her to be able to "get" the subtle nuances of her behaviour but based on what you've posted, she is not as bad as some in-law family members I've witnessed and experienced. Just because you don't get on and have different views about things, doesn't make her inherently bad. It just means that you're unlikely to be best buddies. But I think that you still need to be as polite as you can during your interactions, regardless of her behaviour. This includes thanking her for gifts directly. But if you really find her and her behaviour "difficult," then just minimise the number and length of your interactions. As to general advice regarding dealing with in-laws, you make sure your relationship with your partner is strong and you build yourself up as a team so that your boyfriend doesn't leave you standing on your own when his family try to come between the two of you. You can build a lot of strength from becoming a constant and regular presence in his life. It shows that you are both serious about this relationship. You need your boyfriend's support and he needs to back you up. Which it seems that he is willing to do based on the conversation you posted. Edited August 6, 2012 by january2011
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