Bil new girlfriend

[24karatPalamino]

I’ve name changed for this and will be tweaking some of the details to keep this as unidentifiable as possible - not sure how successful I’ll be, but I’m hoping for some realistic advice.

DBil (40’s) ended his marriage for a woman aged 20. Fortunately DBil and his wife did not have children.

Within a few months, the new girlfriend was pregnant and they have just recently had a baby.

I am mid 40’s, as is my husband, as is my other SIL and her husband. And frankly we are finding Bill’s new relationship quite trying.

I don’t intend to be mean, but she is very demanding of attention and sulks when we don’t all behave as she wants us to.

Example: Christmas is December and we all usually start planning around October. We don’t do anything too big, no restaurant, so no need to plan too early.

Girlfriend, let’s call her Laci, wants to plan now, be the planner, make the arrangements, have us on onboard with her ideas. She’s directing us as to what to bring, what we should wear, what colour scheme would be nice etc She does this via texts mainly. My husband politely told her that we’d stick with the current decorations at his mums house, because they are meaningful and traditional and he received a LONG text message berating him and then she refused to speak with him at a family meet-up .

Another example would be that I lost a lot of weight and she was visibly upset/cross and barely spoke to me, because I should know she’s struggling with post baby weight.

Another example would be that Sil went on holiday for 3 weeks and Laci went to the sun-beds everyday for those 3 weeks, posting her increasing tan on FB, just to proclaim to sil on her return that she was browner than her and “she hasn’t even been away”.

Last example: she takes huge offence when baby isn’t the centre of attention. So if we are all at mil, and not all talking to, hugging or playing with baby or asking how she is and listening to her tales of labour and motherhood, she gets upset.

DH has tried to speak to his brother, but he just seems to be behaving strangely too. I think his main role is her personal photographer, as that’s all he seems to do. He snaps, she poses, then checks the image, then poses again, he snaps…repeat. When DH confronted him about the angry text message she sent him, BiL called my husband jealous.

We’ve decided just to step away. But if she even gets a whiff that we might be visiting mil, or call when we’re there, they show up.

I am starting to really really dislike her and find her and him, increasingly irritating. I have a son in his twenties and he drives me mad at times with his attitude, but I can look past that as he’s my son. But it’s her competitiveness and need for attention that I just find boring and tiring. I’m too old for that.

With her being the mother to his child, she isn’t going to be going anywhere, so how do I start afresh and try to get along, without giving into the strops and sulking?

She sounds like a nightmare. Since she's already not speaking to your husband, surely the answer is that you heartily offend her too and then she ignores you too?

It does sound tedious. I'd step back and gradually reduce contact.

Sounds like an immature woman with main character syndrome. I’d just ignore her and keep visits to in laws secret.

Don't do anything. Don't communicate with her, she is a sister in law. Let your husband communicates with her husband

She’s clearly insecure given she started out as his bit on the side.

Sounds like she’s doing all this because she’s desperate to be a part of the family, something which she must know is difficult given how she came to be part of the family.

If she says anything to you personally I would tell her to wind her neck in.

Otherwise I would let your DH deal with his brother and tell him that she needs to wind her neck in or she runs the risk of being ignored by the family which, given the circumstances, she should think herself lucky that she hasn’t been.

Just step back. You all sound a bit in each other's pockets anyway - no need for anyone to know you are seeing MIL for example, don't engage on the Xmas stuff, so what if she has a tan or not. It'll only be more drama if you stay over involved and care too much. She sounds a nightmare - but not one you have to have.

I agree with @InSpainTheRain

Did you get on well with your BiL's discarded wife? Have you kept in contact with her?
Personally I would be keeping in touch with her and making sure the new gf knows about it because tbh someone behaving in such an entitled and self centered childish way would really annoy me. And I think she deserves to be shown where she is in the scheme of things.

We haven’t, but not for lack of trying. Unfortunately I think it was too hard for her and she wanted a clean break. We weren’t ever super close, but we were always friendly and she was very pleasant. It’s definitely his loss.

I agree with a lot of what you said…and my post, because I’ve crammed so much into one long complaint, does make it sound like we are in one another’s pockets. It’s not quite as bad as I’ve made it sound as far as that is concerned.

We don’t generally tell them when we do things like visit mil, we don’t tell them much at all to be honest. But we have two days off a week, one together and we’ll visit mil in the morning so we have the rest of the day free.
Laci has become very close to mil and will call her and ask if we’re there and then rush over. It’s like we aren’t allowed to visit by ourselves. We tend to leave about 10-15 minutes of their arriving, but it bothers DH that they do this.

The tan example I gave because SIL was really pissed off about it and phoned me later to say wtf, so it stuck in my head.

I guess she’s probably just insecure and uncertain and she is about the same age as my son, so I get there is still an immaturity. I should be the bigger person.