I’m still the scarlet woman after 16 years.

[Bilbosnaggins]

I met dh 16 years ago when I was 30. He was 25 and had a girlfriend of 4/5 months at the time.

I met him on a Friday night at a gig, we chatted for a few hours. We swapped numbers. The next day, we arranged to meet again on the Monday. He finished things with the girlfriend the day after we met at the gig, telling her that he’d met someone else the night before and that he wanted to finish their relationship, which they did.

I had no clue about any of this, until we met up on the Monday and now dh told me that he had been briefly been seeing someone else, but that he’d ended things with her the day after we met. For what it’s worth, I’d also been dating someone for a couple of months, I broke that off too.

His sister did not take it well and 16 years and two children later, she still won’t be in the same room as me. She will literally up and leave her parents house when I walk in. Dh has had it out with her a few times over the years, but she just says he’s a cheater and he’s a bad as me. PIL have told her to grow up and stop being so ridiculous many, many times. As has her now husband, who is lovely and who we have a good relationship with.

She’d met dh previous girlfriend once, briefly, when they bumped into her. His parents had never met her, they were just seeing each other, it was 5 months when Dh was 25, not serious at all.

According to MIL, it was all very childish afterwards, with declarations of “you’ll always be a part of my kids lives!” on social media (her children were toddlers at the time and had never met Dh girlfriend). MIL tried her best to shut it all down at the time, telling her she was being ridiculous.

Dh hasn’t really had a relationship with her since as she was so awful about me. They’ve only really said hello at a couple of family funerals. We also lived 300 miles away from dh family until a few years ago when we moved to the area they are from.

Long story short, it’s my lovely father in law’s 80th birthday next week and all he wanted was to go away for a few days to a holiday cottage with all his family.

SIL will not go if I, the homewrecking scumbag is going.

I have offered not to go. I love my parents in law dearly, and dh can take the children. PIL won’t hear of me not being there. But SIL won’t listen.

I know she has issues of her own as just be before I met dh, her husband cheated on her with her friend and left her with two small children. I get it, I really do. Dh has tried to reason with her that seeing someone for a few months and breaking it off as soon as you’ve met someone else is in no way comparable to your husband having an affair and leaving you.

I just can’t believe something so stupid has ruined their family relationship for the last 16 years!

She is something else.

Just be careful in your stance over your ILs funeral that her stomping her feet doesn’t leave your surviving IL, your DH and your children without your support. If they want you there for them then you should be there.

Whilst you don’t want to impede on her feelings at your IL’s funeral, she shouldn’t be impeding on the feelings and wishes of multiple people.

I’d go but I’m afraid i would not be able to carry on being as polite as you and would have to tell her a few home truths. I don’t agree with cheating but maybe her husband had good reason to leave her, still carrying this on after 16 years. She seems nuts and all over someone she met once. I think she needs therapy. Hopefully she will stay away.

OP you mentioned your fil life limiting condition. Maybe it's worth giving some advance thought to how you want your own ending to.look with your FIL, and also how the funeral can work for everyone. You will need a plan which doesn't put too much pressure on her and acknowledges her difficulties and where if she isn't coping she has avenues, and where the rest of you can still support each other and have room to grieve.
Sorry to ask the most basic question but has anyone ever sat down with her and said- it seems as if social occasions can be tricky, what sort of things help? Does she need a bolt hole? Breathing? Acknowledgement of anxiety?
I still don't follow how her parents would describe or comprehend her actions. Have they been saying ' she's an idiot' all her life?

She sounds unhinged. Someone needs to read her the riot act, but I presume she feels like a billy big bollocks as a head teacher and therefore won’t listen.

Maybe accidentally send her a link to this thread?! It can’t get much worse 🤣

They think she’s a dick. They just let her get on with it.

And to be honest, we’ve had enough funerals with my side of the family. It’s okay. It’s just an afternoon. I know that sounds awful to some, but a funeral is just something the living have to get though (we tend to have direct cremations and then bury/scatter the ashes and that’s the “real” funeral, no big church services, wakes or anything).

I can’t live my life thinking about future funerals. That’s for dh and his sister to deal with.

Fair enough on the funeral front. . It's just a little surprising that the mother you said worked as a special needs teacher describes her high achieving headteacher daughter as a dick.

Me friend is staying for the weekend and I’ve filled her in and she’s read some of this thread.

The riot act was read 14 years ago when she behaved appallingly at our wedding - this friend was there and remembers her behaviour well!

Nothing works, eveyone gave up and just lets her get on with it. I asked dh what happened, she stormed off, her husband came back after following her and said she was leaving, MIL just said, “right so that’s minus one adult to book for the castle today” and eveyone just carried on.

But she is a bit of a dickhead. They just don’t pander to it. They get on with their lives. What else can they do but ignore it after trying with her? She’s a 48 year old woman.

So nothing to do with you @Bilbosnaggins and if anything else gets arranged you can just go, she might not turn up, or if she does will storm off. Don’t give her any head space, just make your own decisions with everyone else …

It will be interesting as both your and her children grow older and have questions about the family dynamics. What an example she sets! It will be a source of embarrassment to her children. I would be surprised if she is only ever unhinged around her brother and parents.

I can’t get over how bizarre it is that she decided what the situation was years ago, decided that was cheating, and made up her own moral standard which gave her the right to judge. How would she like to be judged? For example, if you were all in the Roman Catholic Church, the technical adulterer would be your SIL with her second marriage funnily enough!

I think at this point the only thing she may listen to is the woman your husband was casually dating when you met, bluntly confirming there was no overlap or cheating. But even then, she probably doesn't want to hear it and would double down.

It's so sad she has deprived herself of you and your husband's company by behaving so ridiculously. But she may be too emotionally immature to ever see this.

Could you even imagine? Dh can’t even remember her full name, or if she said she was from Australia or New Zealand, which is one of the reasons this is all so bizzare! Such a huge love story that was broken up there, wasn’t it!

Clearly untrue - if you believed nobody gave any fucks, you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to facilitate her presence.

I mean that no one starts crying or arguing if she storms off. They just ignore it. They don’t care what she does anymore.

There’s no upset, no one mentions it. Which is why I don’t get why she does it, she gets zero reaction.

I didn’t want her missing out on this trip with her father. She stormed off after three days anyway - but that’s on her. She’s got no one else to blame.

Maybe she is a dick. People are sometimes.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"
Sigmund Freud

I think you’ll find she still blames you. 😂

Probably.

But I know I won’t be to blame and that’s all that matters to me.

Likewise for her, it seems! In a way, she has nothing to lose by continuing to behave as she does - she still gets to be disruptive and then come back to cause some more turbulence whilst you keep out of her way as and when she demands. The real test for her will be if your husband ever gets seriously ill, or if she is ever obliged to work closely with him to help care for their parents if they ever need their children’s care and support, rather than just being supporters and sounding boards for their children. Will she be able to maintain her act then, when she genuinely risks losing her immediate family forever?

You sound lovely OP. Your sil sounds idiotic. She clearly has her own issues. Why not arrange to go for last few days of holiday so he could have first half of holiday with his DD and last half with you?

Oh dh and I already do everything for PIL when they need help.

They have both needed a lot of care at times over the last couple of years, they have both had periods of illness and mobility issues.

Dh has been there when he’s not working and weekends and I am at home, so I helped them in the day and take them to appointments. They were one of the main reasons we moved back to dh home town, so we could help as they got older, as we had both helped my father when he was alive.

Hell would freeze over before SIL got up off her arse to help their parents out.

She says she can’t as she works. Well, so does dh and he still manages to help them when needed, he would go there straight from work, make them dinner, clean, help them to bed etc. that was for weeks on end at one point when they were both ill last year, she never helped out once.

SIL still expects them to ferry her around everywhere and look after her children at the drop of a hat. She’s very selfish.

(I don’t mind helping PIL at all when they need it, they have been so good to me).