Family members who facilitate an affair

[MsBuffyAnneSummers]

Like many women, I'm stuck in a marriage with a husband who had an affair about 6 years ago.

I'm not a forgiving person and I have not forgiven him. I just learned to accept my new reality and live with it the best I can.

I made peace that even divorcing, I would still have to have a relationship with him so I made a choice to try again.

My issue is with his sister. During the affair she provided her brother with alibis when he was with the OW, while I was sitting at home with a baby and primary aged child. She lied to my face repeatedly and schemed behind my back on how they were going to cover up the affair so my FIL (who was my absolute rock when it all came out) wouldn't find out.

She is infertile and I believe she thought that a divorce would give her better access to my kids where she could play mum to her hearts content.

Since, it came out, I blocked her and have not spoken to her since. My husband takes the kids to my FIL's where his sister sees them once maybe every 6-8 weeks.

I refuse to be in the same room as her and I hate her with a fiery passion. 17 years I was a part of her family and she betrayed me completely but I'm not obligated to have a relationship with her.

She's desperate to have a closer relationship with my children. I've said no, am I out of order?

OP can stay with the husband if she likes. But she knows nothing about the SIL’s intentions here.

For all we know the husband may have told the SIL that he was in an unhappy marriage, and although I don’t condone affairs people can be led to believe that they happen for all manner of reasons.

For all we know the SIL may have believed she was helping him to leave an abusive/unhappy relationship and that this was an exit affair. We have no idea.

What we do know however is that the SIL is infertile and that the OP has seen fit to spitefully mention the fact as a reason why the SIL might want to condone her husband’s affair in order to “play mum to her heart’s content.”

Affair aside, if someone posted here that a family wanted to sped time with her children because she was infertile and wanted to play mummy she would be ripped apart on the basis it was clearly a spiteful thing to say. The fact the SIL had any kind of input regarding the DH’s affair doesn’t change that fact.

Let’s be honest here, the husband is going to have lied, he lied to the OP, he will have lied to the OW, and he will have lied to the SIL. If OP wants to stay with him then that’s her choice. But if you stay in a marriage then you have to make it work. It’s not ok just to stay for the kids and to use her bitterness towards the SIL as a means to restrict their relationships. The children had no part in this, and it’s not for OP to bring them into the adult relationships she is a part of.

This. It’s not the same. I’d cut her off too. Tough shit, if she wants to know why she can look in the mirror.