My husband was furious with me last night and gave me the silent treatment after he got home.
yesterday was our niece’s 5th birthday (his sister’s daughter) and she lives about a 10 hour flight away, and he phoned me on his way home from work, asking if I could have our children call their cousin, which would mean calling SIL. I asked him if we could wait one hour until he was home so he could lead the call, and he was furious and sent me a text saying “who cares about family? what is the point of even trying? I don’t see any future”. He said it would be too late to talk to niece when he got home (it would be close to 8pm) so I said let’s plan a call for tomorrow. He was upset because he saw my wanting him to lead the call as a sign that the problems between SIL and me will never go away, whereas I saw it as a safe compromise - happy to keep up relations with family l, but could he please lead here given the history with SIL. He sees me as unreasonable.
SIL and I have a very difficult history. When H and I got married, SIL was openly very bitter / resentful. She acted more like a jealous ex than a sister. It’s a long story, but she would glare at me across the room, return gifts he and I picked out for her and say she wanted gifts only from him. She somehow got her entire family (including H) to go on holiday without me when we were newlyweds which was a last minute trip they all planned. She used to live in the same city as us, but she planned her wedding on the other side of the world when I was pregnant days away from when baby was due (she knew our due date prior to her engagement) and my husband flew out to be her man of honour, leaving me for just 48 hours, but it was days before the birth, heavily pregnant and caring for two toddlers and I worried baby would come while H was away. It was impossible not to wonder if SIL’s resentment / open hatred of me was part of her planning, but I focussed on trying to be happy for her and hoped relationships would move forward since she was finally married. Nothing I did helped the relationship with SIL. There is much more to the story, but most of it was power plays and her going out of her way to “accidentally” exclude me from family events or to interfere with special family moments. Tons of passive aggressive hostility and SIL pretending to be clueless. Husband also (pretended to be?) clueless until he finally agreed to marriage counselling with me. i went out of my way to try to be kind to SIL, to act normal despite her icy rudeness, to believe it would get better over time.
after more than a decade, things have improved over all. Now that SIL finally had a husband and several children, it’s as though other people are finally allowed to be happy, too. Although on some level I never know what she will do and due to her treatment of me and the many unkind orchestrated surprises she put upon me over the years during family visits, I limit my time seeing her. I keep conversations very surface level. If she weren’t my SIL, I would not visit.
I asked my husband if he can be the one to take the primary role when family visits mean seeing her. . I’m am happy to support, but SIL has made it so clear over the year that she hates me. I told him he can do the calling for children’s birthdays and give the children a chance to say hello to cousins, and I can say hello to our niece and nephew too but I would prefer he be there. Due to their ages, SIL needs to be on the phone so it I told him it’s best if he is there.
I had my children give their cousin an early birthday gift in person back when she came to our city about three weeks ago, so it’s not as though she has gone uncelebrated.
what do you think, mumsnet? Was my request that my husband he the one to call SIL and just let me say a brief hellos to niece but he do the primary taking with SIL unreasonable ?