Puzzled how lovely DB ended up with awful wife

[howdoesthishappen]

AIBU to (alongside other family members) be completely puzzled and confused as to how my DB has ended up with SIL. He is calm , kind, hard working and she is the most confrontational, antagonistic, highly strung, controlling and controversial person we’ve ever met.

He is a good judge of character with everyone else, always kept himself out of any trouble or conflict yet seems completely happy with her ? It’s like he doesn’t see or hear the things she does and says. Totally under her spell?

Many times we’ve asked him is he ok ? Is everything ok? He knows we are here for him but it’s absolutely baffling. How do these situations happen . Aside from always making sure he knows we are here for him and trying (it’s hard) to maintain contact what do you do ? It’s just a really bad gut feeling about her as well as the way she behaves.

AIBU to be concerned

Being treated well by someone who treats everyone else appallingly makes some people feel special. Until they turn on you! I realised I was in a relationship like this once and escaped but I did find it intoxicating that he was so nice to me when he was not to anyone else. And he was fit as fuck.

DH had this in his family. It got so bad nobody ever wanted to see them. I've rarely met such an antagonistic person as his SIL, it was like she would push, push, push and demand and he just couldn't see how it was putting backs up.

In his case he seemed to like her because she's ambitious and to be fair she likes a laugh. Anyway she chucked him out and it's a relief to all.

Nothing so unknowable as other people's relationships.

The kids probably understand the consequences of not being nice and polite.

It’s bizarre, my lovely sweet uncle married a very difficult woman. Really stuck up and judgmental, and cold as ice. He adores her.
we see them about once a year, if even, which is a shame because we have no relationship with uncle now. She doesn’t let him do stuff on his own without her.

I could have written this as it described my brother and his wife. I assume he thought she was “good on paper”.

Very attractive, very ambitious.

Decades later she had an affair, gaslit him over it
and they are now divorced (thankfully).

Also some people really struggle to be single.

A lot of lovely people aren't sexually attracted to good stuff. Or they like to have someone to use their kindness and niceness on. My mother thought she was healing my father's damage with the power of her love and niceness. Obviously she was just enabling it and feeding his narcissism but they both saw it as a Beauty and the Beast thing. We kids saw it a bit differently, especially since we didn't see any reason why we should play Belle when we hadn't chosen to.

My opinion of lovely people sometimes changes when I see them so wedded, literally or figuratively, to a fucking arsehole. Eventually I start thinking, "If you're so nice, why are you enabling this ogre to be so horrible to other people?"

I saw a tweet once which I thought was quite funny as I know couples like it

Laid back men how do you end up with feisty women?

Someone’s got to tell the waiter I ordered mashed potatoes and is isn’t going to be me.

Opposites attract

You have given one example and that’s she was annoyed she had too much sugar in her tea. Tea is a serious business. Did you ever like her?

My MIL and SiL have spent 30 years coming across as sweet, I’m direct so deemed not sweet. They have both been pretty horrible to me but it’s all very passive aggressive. They have both however spent 25 years, once they got to know me bitching about each other to me behind each others backs. Something has now happened and they are not speaking to each other currently. Inside I’m laughing.

I am wondering if what @GleisZwei has truth in it. They did not like me from day 1 as I wasn’t middle class and I’m not white as mixed race. But they would be too polite to say so.

I can honestly say I have never ever seen or heard her be anything other than lovely to him - this is what is weird. She will be awful in front of him to others it’s like he doesn’t see and hear it

I think this is the root of it. He's totally blinded to how she is to others because she's lovely to him and that's what his mind and feelings register.

I've seen it happen in friendship groups too. A new couple joined our local friendship group a few years ago. The husband was lovely/friendly with everyone but the wife decided she wanted two of the women in the group to be her close friends and actively excluded (and was increasingly unpleasant to) me and another woman in the group. The two chosen ones didn't seem to notice what was going on because they just saw her as lovely and hilarious - as indeed she was to them. A few months later there was a huge falling out and she turned on them. Only then did they see what she was really like. Neither of them can stand her now. I'm still baffled at how they totally missed how nasty she could be when it was directed at others. Maybe when someone is adoring you and flattering you it keeps you in a sort of bubble?

My DB is a similar type: easygoing, up for a laugh. His first wife was foul. I think some people are jealous of anyone who ever knew their partner before they did, including partner's family. Thank god he left her.

I know my in-laws are not keen on me, so I wind them up intentionally and show them that I am uncowed. They get a distilled version of the extreme end of my personality the instant I start to sense hostility.

At home I'm a pussy-cat.

That seems like a very exhausting way to live.

A great example of shocking victim blaming here.

OP, your DB has ended up with a controlling and abusive partner for the same reason thousands of lovely women end up with abusive men. The psychology of manipulation, gaslighting and control is a very complex thing.

I’m sure my in laws think I’m difficult, sensitive and short tempered.

Really, I’m fed up of their constant interference in everything, their double meaning comments and their criticisms of how I chose to raise my children when babies. DH thinks the world shines out of his mum and would never accept a bad word about her so I don’t say anything to him and instead hold my own with his family.

There are two sides to every story and it’s not impossible she’s antagonistic with you guys.

Sometimes people like this are just in a permanent state of feeling under attack. Do you know much about her background, upbringing, family? If she feels threatened by your family she could be attacking before you do, so to speak. Is she from a different (wealth, status, education, culture) background to your family?
Sometimes putting in over the top effort to show you're not a threat to her, you're not judging her, you respect her family etc can have a breakthrough with this sort of behaviour.
But maybe she's just awful !

Is she out of contact with her family? it sounds like someone I know, he is lovely, their 3 DC are lovely she is a nightmare. I suspect Borderline personality disorder with PDA in the situation I’m aware of.

Her family didn’t even attend the wedding they are completely NC , I’m aware of who they are as they used to actually live very close to us when we were growing up (this is how she met DB) but as far as I’m aware for at least as long as she’s been with DB they have not been involved in her life at all.

How on earth do you deal with it? Our DD in a horrible abusive relationship and it’s agony for us.

My BIL is lovely, good looking, hard working etc. His DW is emotionally and financially abusive. She is properly mean and lazy, and acts like he is lucky to be with her. She is not anyone’s idea of good looking. None of us have any idea why he puts up with it.

Low self esteem? A warped view of relationships stemming from childhood? I have no idea. It sounds like your SIL is pretty and nice to him at least, so that makes more sense.

Keep out of it.

Honestly stop enfantalising him, he's an adult.

What's the extreme end of your personality?

Why, oh why?
What's the actual point of that?

Chemistry innit?

Could she just be highly anxious and triggered by your family? The tea example resonates with me - when I'm feeling anxious I struggle to accept things not being the way I like them, and if something else about the situation is very triggering I might come across as rude. Maybe she's suffered severe trauma that your DB knows about so he has more context for her behaviour and doesn't judge her for it.

I never understood what my db saw in his first wife. She pretty much was the opposite of what he’d said he liked and we all found her very difficult. They did split but strangely it was her not him that did the split and he was devastated. He’s with someone much more suited now though and the first wife has also remarried (although I must admit, we siblings were quite amazed someone else was happy to marry her). I think people see their partners through a very different lens than those outside the relationship and we outsiders are just left a bit baffled.