To bother with SIL

[Helpmepleasenow48]

I’ve posted about this before. Basically seven years ago my sister in law changed; or I should say changed towards me. We got on - then she got engaged and everything changed. She stopped talking to me like someone she cared about - I guess is the best way to describe it. We’ve just had a family funeral and for years I’ve been trying to explain to my mum. Well my mum and another relative have now noticed how my SIL is to me and it has now extended to my children - who are her blood relatives. She’s quite mean. How do I learn to rise above this. I’m very lucky in that I get on well with my MIL - but now I’m holding back from that relationship because I felt my closeness to her was the problem. I guess I’m wondering how other MNetters have dealt with extended family who for whatever reason have taken a dislike to them.

I would have asked her outright why she had changed.

It sounds like you've done something that's upset her, might be useful to ask what that was. While she doesn't train and you don't talk nothing will change.

*talk not train

Did you have the first wedding or dgc?
Sil never accepted I gave her dps their first dgc.

What dies DH say? Has he noticed it? Can he not ask why his sister is so cold to his wife and kids?

I have all but asked her - given her opportunities to tell me what I’ve done but I’ve avoided asking directly because I didn’t want to embarrass her tbh. I didn’t want to make a thing of it because j just didn’t want to be part of any problem. I had both DC before she got married but I did wonder because she turned cold (we used to have such fun and a laugh together) a few months after telling DH and I that she was ‘not not trying for a baby’ with her then BF. She told us we didn’t ask about whether she was TTC. A few months later she got engaged to BF and at the engagement party - it was over Christmas and that was when she went funny with me - I joked - was she still ‘not not trying’. I was met with a stare and a ‘we will wait till we get married’. She was 40 at the time - but I never would have asked her!!! If she hadn’t joked a few months before.. anyway she did eventually get pregnant and then had a few m/c but now has 2 DDs - 4 and 2. Surely now she has her family she wouldn’t feel so bad towards me. DH asked her why she didn’t seem as friendly towards me but it was just after she was dealing with second miscarriage before having DD2 so she brushed him off with saying ‘she didn’t have time for small s**t’. She once said I was patronising for talking about how I couldn’t exclusively breastfeed and had to combination feed. Bit those who saw the conversation said ‘you were actually telling her not to listen to midwife/hv and do what she felt best’ ‘you were trying to help her with her confidence’.
My DH is going to have some words with her later this month as what happened these last few days really upset me.

You had the pfb dgc.
There is your answer.

she's an immature, jealous old boot.
I don't know why you keep begging for crumbs from her.
Just ignore her unless you have to pull her up on nasty behaviour towards your dc.

Thing is when I had my DC1 she was single and used to visit us loads. Dotted on our DC1 bought her lovely presents. That’s when we got on really well. I am two years older than her I had DC1 at 37 and my DC2 at 42. She had her DC1 at 41 and DC2 at 44. It was ages after. She’s obviously has issues with getting pregnant and then the pregnancies. I was never allowed to offer her comfort. It’s not as if I’m some super fertile woman. I had PCOS. Anyway I’m going to two social occasions with her this month so if she is again mean to DC2 then she will get pulled up. I didn’t this time because we were at a funeral.

If you're bothered enough to want to sort it out you need to go and see her. Get all this out in the open, it might clear the air and she might tell you why she's been funny with you. No harm in trying.

It sounds like she had difficulty conceiving and difficulty maintaining a pregnancy. Your insensitive comments during that time, plus your interference when she was breastfeeding, has probably all contributed to her dislike of you. She shouldn’t take it out on your DC but are you sure she does? My brother’s kids are horrific and do some dangerous things when at others houses but he and sil never intervene — so I feel I have to. What you term sniping may be here giving them a genuine telling off for something you’ve missed.

Do you see a lot of her? If so, I can imagine why you would want to investigate and resolve this. If not, I’d be inclined to write her off as having an undisclosed problem with me and steadfastly ignoring it.

She doesn’t like you and makes it clear. If you haven’t done or said anything to warrant the cold shoulder you can only assume it’s jealousy on her part for some reason, which is her issue and there’s nothing you can do. You can ask her outright but I doubt you’ll get a satisfactory answer from her. If it is based in jealousy she’s not going to admit that and will either evade the question (as before) or invent some bullshit that implicates you.

Like I say, the need for this process depends on how much time you actually spend with her. I don’t like my bil much but for the sake of the two or three times a year i see him it’s easy to be civil and stay out of his way. It’s not an issue.

Cherries101 That's an incredibly harsh interpretation of the OP which doesn't tally at all with what OP wrote (she's a busy body with out of control kids). She hasn't made a string of insensitive comments, sil was the one who brought up "not not trying" OP simply referenced it a few months later. Likewise OP didn't "interfere" with sil's breastfeeding, she shared her own experiences during a discussion that was happening anyway. I doubt her kids are out of control either.

Um Cherries - what?

Is there a post from the OP I’ve missed? I don’t know what you’ve read but none of what you’ve said resonates with me in this situation. You’re letting your imagination run away with you there I think.

Look what that person said above about insensitive comment - I don't feel it was at all. Pic and Bacon my children are really well behaved. My five year old was grabbing my MIL and asking for a cuddle and SIL told her off. Seen by two people who thought it unfair and reported it back to me because my DC was in floods of tears at being told off by their aunt! Who then told my DC off for something they didn't do later on. Iff it is based in jealousy she’s not going to admit that and will either evade the question (as before) or invent some bullshit that implicates you. That resonates because when my DH asked her if she had a problem with me she said she couldn't deal with the 'Small sh*t' and DH took it to mean that she was dealing with a miscarriage and wanted to end the conversation. He didn't push her because she was grieiving.
Also my SIL runs a small business and over Christmas I offered to go and help her/or help look after her children because FIL had died and she and DH were having to go backwards and forwards to see thier mum -m this was just before my DC broke up for the Christmas holiday. She lives 1.5 hours to 2 hours drive away. We see her about three/four times a year. But we will be seeing her more because it was my FIL who died and we have agreed that MIL will come and stay with us once every month for a few days and then stay with them and we will give her lifts. She lives three hours from both of us. I spoke to MIL about it a few months ago and she admits her daughter can be quite abrasive and that I should't take it personally. But I used to get on really well with her. My DH doesn't have a large family. It seems such a shame... I am thinking of something to say - just so she doesn't get nasty with my DC, maybe if I bring it up in the right way it might just soften her towards me.
I'm not an intererfering overbearing person at all. I do have strong views on politics (but my job sort of means that and I've always been like that and we go ton) but I never force myself on anyone at all. My DC are lively strong willed children but they are well behaved.

You need to decide if you're going to take the bull by the horns or accept how she is and live with it. If you decide to confront her then do it and make it clear that you are the one who disciplines your children and she is not to speak to them like that, then tell her that everyone has noticed there is an issue and that you would like to know what it is. If you don't want to do that then you will have to accept that she doesn't like you and live with it.

If she wasn’t DH’s sister I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Which breaks my heart. I think I just have to accept it and direct my emotional energy towards my children and my DH and my family. That is going to be hard

Thing is when I had my DC1 she was single and used to visit us loads. Dotted on our DC1 bought her lovely presents. That’s when we got on really well. I am two years older than her I had DC1 at 37 and my DC2 at 42. She had her DC1 at 41 and DC2 at 44.

It sounds like she was relaxed about you having DC when she was 35 and presumably still optimistic about meeting someone and having her own DC but started to resent you after she had found a partner, been "not not trying" for a few months and had become afraid that it wouldn't happen as easily for her as it did for you.

It is very unfair on you as you didn't cause her difficulties. However you sound quite dismissive of the trauma she went through, having multiple miscarriages when TTC in her forties must have been really devastating for her. Yes she had children in the end but at the time she had no way of knowing that it would work out that way. You don't have to look far on here to find threads from women struggling with miscarriages and fertility issues saying how it can be really hard to maintain close relationships with friends and family while fighting jealousy over how they may have conceived easily.

It does sound like you may have made things worse with the joking about TTC and commenting on her breastfeeding. Even if you didn't realise it at the time, those are really sensitive topics and she probably felt very vulnerable and insecure. And your DH was also not helpful, when someone is struggling and grieving a miscarriage is really NOT the time to have it out over other relationships.

You also mentioned that your FIL dies recently and that she was at a funeral when she snapped at your DC. If that was her father's funeral or another funeral soon after his it's hardly surprising she would be emotional and not at her best. And you don't at any point in your posts acknowledge or express sympathy for her having lost her father.

It doesn't excuse her being unkind to your DCs but I think it might be helpful if you could accept that at least some of her feelings are understandable and due a really traumatic period that you (unknowingly and not deliberately) weren't very sensitive to. I see that you have tried to offer practical support and maybe you have given more emotional support than comes across in your posts but something to think about maybe.

That’s the thing - when SIL had the miscarriages my MIL called to tell DH. We were told about them but told to mention them and to act as if nothing had happened. We weren’t allowed to talk about them; I’ve had my own fertility journey though not as brutal and many of my friends in their 40s have had m/c. I’ve been there for them to talk to. Ditto the fertility stuff - not allowed to mention it or offer support. SIL told MIL to tell us but to warm us that she didn’t want help. My way of helping has been to offer help - practical. Because I’m not allowed to offer her anything else! The b/f comment was made when I was also breastfeeding and struggling with it! I wasn’t telling anyone how to do anything I was scrabbling around for potential reasons.

not to mention them!

Hmmm. I can see that would be difficult. She was obviously struggling and maybe not choosing the best coping methods. And I agree it's really sad if you previously had a good relationship with her and she's turned her back on it.

But I think it might be helpful for you to think of it as her struggling to cope rather than just disliking you for no reason at all. And to maybe try to avoid a big emotional confrontation when both she and your DH are mourning the recent death of their father.

And to be clear, you sound like a generally kind and thoughtful SIL and she sounds like she's managing make a traumatic period of her life worse by hanging on to ill feelings based on very little, destroying her relationships. In the end that kind of reaction will hurt her more than it hurts you.

I don't think it's necessarily very helpful for posters to be reassuring the OP that she can't possibly have done or said anything wrong. Clearly something happened that upset her SIL, some people are giving pointers that the things she said around the time of miscarriages and breastfeeding might be linked. OP won't be able to fix anything if she isn't at least open to having upset SIL.

I'm not reassured at all! I posted on here for guidance as to what I do. However, been pointed out to me by my sister and mother that she has said some things I could have got rattled about (but didn't) It might be the case I've taken more responsibility for this and taken it too personally. I do do that I even blamed myself for my parents divorced (which happened when I was 6 FGS) My mum has found out that SIL is having some problems with things, so I'm going to leave it and be there for her.