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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to out my back stabbing SIL?

179 replies

scuzy · 15/12/2011 15:51

long story short ... SIL told me about a forum she visit frequently (not here) and I decided to look it up. found her online as her daughter was her avatar pic and started reading some of her threads. she was online there for years and read loads of threads giving out/mocking/being disrespectful to everyone (MIL, her BILs, my dp, me, my other sil ... basically all her dp's family).

I told them and since then there is bad feeling. was i right?

OP posts:
YuleingFanjo · 15/12/2011 17:07

So you were quite good friends and there were no issues? Why did you think it was a good idea to tell the rest of the family what she had written? Shock

ViviPrudolf · 15/12/2011 17:07

Why not 'like' this thread, OP and fan the flames a bit more?!

(more of a dig at MN that you OP)

sitandnatter · 15/12/2011 17:08

Fanjo we are building it back slowly we did get on beforehand i just dont feel i can trust her

I suspect the feeling will be mutual.

TheRealTillyMinto · 15/12/2011 17:09

scuzy - how did she get on with your DP & her DM before this?

scuzy · 15/12/2011 17:10

Fanjo i just cant get across the severity of what she was saying. but they were awful .... i didnt get half as bad as sil and dp etc. i obviously wasnt thinking. just really got to me when they were going out of their way for her with bday parties and babysitting and all the time she obviously didnt appreciate any of it!!

OP posts:
scuzy · 15/12/2011 17:11

didnt have much interation with dp before this ... dp doesnt go out much. is DM MIL? if so yes they got on ok i guess.

OP posts:
scuzy · 15/12/2011 17:11

but it was obviously all fake

OP posts:
sitandnatter · 15/12/2011 17:11

just really got to me when they were going out of their way for her with bday parties and babysitting and all the time she obviously didnt appreciate any of it!!

Jealous?

scuzy · 15/12/2011 17:13

sitandnatter not one bit - i was helping also.

OP posts:
Pandemoniaa · 15/12/2011 17:16

You "were helping"?

I'd hate to see what you were like in an unhelpful mood.

scuzy · 15/12/2011 17:17

helping with bdays and babysitting!!!! christ almight!!! talk about wanting to get a dig in for nothing!

OP posts:
ChickensThinkYouCanGetStuffed · 15/12/2011 17:19

So what you're basically saying is that YANBU, and your DP's family don't think YABU. So where's the problem?

scuzy · 15/12/2011 17:20

no i agree now i was U for how i went about it .... but wondered what others thought

OP posts:
TheRealTillyMinto · 15/12/2011 17:22

so she lived with her mum, got on with her ok.

your family are far way..... you think if MIL like your own mum....

you and SIL got on ok....until this....

so she cannot have been that bad..... can you see why another poster thought you were jealous?

IKilledIgglePiggle · 15/12/2011 17:23

My SIL is batshit crazy like you OP, we got on quite well for years but I always knew she had the potential to go loco. She put us up recently after an international move, very nice of her indeed, she insisted, I have have hosted her family many many times including Christmas so we took her up on the offer only for her to behave appallingly, the last straw was her breaking into my i pad and reading my e mails and repeating them to the entire family, very very personal e mails between my husband and myself, including our disscusions about money. The best one was an e mail I wrote when I was furious calling her husband Mr Piggy............oh well, she shouldn't have read them, the whole family is now torn down the middle.

mynewpassion · 15/12/2011 17:28

Maybe for a Christmas present or a New Year's resolution, you and your SIL stop posting on forums or at least stop posting about your family members or friends.

scarletforya · 15/12/2011 17:29

You were u the way you went about it but what the hell was your SIL thinking?
Is she thick or what?

She used her real name, real pictures of her kids and bitched about her MIL and family members on a public forum. I have not one ounce of sympathy for the SIL. It serves her right.

Kladdkaka · 15/12/2011 17:30

I tell people about the forums I use all the time, if I think they may find them interesting/useful. It wouldn't occur to me that they would join and then go trawling through my old posts. It's feels just sort of ... ich. Like rummaging through someone's dirty knickers.

You're creepy.

LovesBloominChristmas · 15/12/2011 17:30

So you will be showing her this thread then .....

whackamole · 15/12/2011 17:34

I don't think you were out of order as such, just very very naive to not realise that people would be upset and that there would be bad feeling.

Surely if you were that bothered you could have said to your SIL that you checked out the forum she mentioned and were really upset about the comments she posted. She then could've tried to defend herself or offer an explanation. As it is you left her no option but to immediately go on the defensive as emotions were undoubtedly running high.

There is a reason mothers tell their children not to tell tales!

MildlyNarkyPuffin · 15/12/2011 17:45

'we are all having xmas dinner together at MIL's house but it will be awkward between her and my dp.'

Of course it will be awkward. You made it awkward. You could have confronted her in person, told her how horrible she had been and asked her to delete all the comments. Instead you chose to share what she'd written with everyone else, causing them to be upset and angry. What did you gain by spreading the misery?

Can't you see what you've done? You could have had your apology and the stuff deleted without causing permanent damage to the relationship between your DP and her and her own partner and her. And what are the odds that this won't blow up over Christmas, meaning your MIL will find out about it too?

MildlyNarkyPuffin · 15/12/2011 17:53

'they got on ok i guess ... but it was obviously all fake'

You sound like a child.

We 'get on' with all sorts of people that we don't actually like very much because we are adults who accept the need to be pleasant and civil to people that have to be a part of our lives. In private we might call them all sorts.

There are hundreds of threads on here about people who don't like their parents, step parents, ILs, friends' partners etc. They keep things civil so their children can see their grandparents, so their DH's can have a family Christmas etc.

All you've done is hurt people who didn't deserve to be hurt - she said the vile stuff but you're the one who told the people what she'd said.

mynewpassion · 15/12/2011 18:01

'they got on ok i guess ... but it was obviously all fake'

Fake "ok" as fake "normal", perhaps? All fake and pretenses but behind closed doors, just as backstabbing.

NoOnesGoingToEatYourMincePies · 15/12/2011 18:16

It doesn't mean it was all fake just because she said some things on the internet that were unfair or untrue or too personal.

I agree with Puffin, you don't know what you have done yet.

I've been on the receiving end of lies within the family as part of issues my MIL has. She is a manipulative and spiteful woman who never misses a chance to make a hurtful comment or play the victim. She has made some terrible comments about the two of our children who died as babies and behave incredibly badly the evening before our sons funeral, causing a massive amount of upset.

Then, because our relationship was strained because of her behaviour she made it her mission in life to let the rest of the family know just what I am really like. She's used those words, much the same as you have here. She and FIL have done their best to convince DH that he doesn't really know me, even after eleven years together, and tried to split us up. They've told me they wished DH had never met me.

It's not the same as your issue but the end result has been devastating. I no longer see or speak to PILs, DH rarely sees them and they haven't seen our son for a year now. DH and his eldest brother are no longer speaking because BIL took PIL's side and started a harassment campaign against me that involved late night abusive telephone calls and ranting text messages calling me names and accusing me of lying about everything.

DH's other brother hasn't spoken to me in months, deleted me from Facebook to make the point that he is siding with his mother and refuses to see us unless we meet him at PILs house. Meaning our DS hasn't seen his cousins in a year either. They are emigrating soon, so he probably won't ever see them now. DH is prepared to never see either brother again because he thinks they are wrong to treat me badly. SIL is torn and doing her best to keep her relationship with everyone as amicable as possible but whenever we meet up there are strained moments when she almost mentions her parents and then doesn't.

All because MIL couldn't accept that she had been wrong and wanted everyone to take her side and realise what I was really like. I don't think even MIL expected this level of destruction to spread through the family, she's the sort that is casually cruel and then surprised to see people are upset. She disowned DH last year, said they were finished with him for good and then wondered why he took her at her word.

It's not the same situation OP, I'm only telling you this to try and help you see how the entire family can be slowly eroded by someone's desire to show someone as they really are (in their opinion only). You have done more damage to the entire family than you will realise right now. This strain between your DP and SIL is going to spread like poison and although she made the mixture it was you that gave everyone the dose. It will harm your DP's relationship with his brother, it really will. I've seen it with my own DH and his brothers.

And all for nothing. Nobody has gained anything from this and I think there will come a day when your entire family wishes you had stayed off that forum or kept quiet about what you saw there. Including your own DP more than likely.

TandB · 15/12/2011 19:01

I think there are very, very few situations where it is necessary for someone to repeat hurtful comments made by a third party. If the gossip was damaging the target's reputation and they needed a chance to defend themselves would be one justification. Where someone was acting to their detriment and needed the information in order to take some sort of action would be another.

But when people just repeat hurtful gossip because they think the recipient "has a right to know", I generally assume that the person who passes the gossip on is doing so because of some issue with the person doing the gossiping, rather than out of altruistic motives.

You must have known this would damage relations between your SIL and your family. You must have known it would make things awkward. You must have known it would make people angry and upset with her. And you still chose to deal with the issue in the most public, dramatic way possible. You could have spoken to her privately and addressed the issue that way, but instead you chose to blow the whole thing up in her face and upset a lot of other people in the process. What exactly were you hoping to actually achieve?

And Shirleyknot - I just spat my dinner over my keyboard at "the internet will eat itself".....