I’m surprised that you think anyone in this community would have any knowledge on not being a bitch.
Aren’t there “secret” outside forums created by SD board users for the primary purpose of discussing and snarking on discussions here and members here?
Seriously you might as well ask nuns for tips on exotic sex.
Good grief. I am sorry Grude that you didn’t understand my pretty obvious tongue in cheek response.
I just wanted to underline it is’all. 
Thank you all for all your responses.
I don’t know how to do all the little cut and paste things, but be sure I have read every response.
It’s given me a lot to think about, and I’ve been doing some thinking on how I contributed to the situation because the one sure thing I learned from my mother is everything is my fault.
My mother does like playing the helpless victim and the poor put upon martyr. This is her game, and I know it.
My sister is a bully, a liar, and a control freak. Somewhere, somehow I thought she would grow up and out of it but she isn’t going to. This is the same little girl who would bite herself until she bled and go tell mommy I did it to her, the same girl who tried to fuck my boyfriends, the same girl who read my diary, stole my makeup and clothes, and called my (now ex) husband behind my back.
I disowned her years ago over her bullshit, the final straw being when she decided to make Thanksgiving Dinner one year (which really meant my mother made dinner at my sister’s house) and called me that morning to tell me that I wasn’t welcome in her home and not to come and then told all the family that I called her and said I didn’t want to come.
She has always been jealous of me, I have no idea why. Both of my parents would tell you she always got more than I did, got away with more than I did, she’s the pretty one, and well I can’t say my parents played favorites, but she had a very different relationship with them than I did. I think my parents were very fair but she never sees it that way.
Like when I bought my first house, it was a $30,000 tiny row house in the city. My parents surprised me and gave me $3000 to put down on it. A few years later when she was buying a big 4 bedroom individual home in the county for $80,000 she was livid that my parents only gave her $4000 instead of $8000. She thought if I got 10% she should too, my parents figured with inflation it was equal amounts.
I was just damn grateful for the $3000 and thought she should shut up and be grateful too.
My fault in all this is that I kept backing up and backing up and accommodating them to keep the peace. I thought it would only be for 2-3 months and anybody can do anything for a short period of time. The more I backed up, instead of appreciating it, they pushed more and more. Unfortunately it is also who I am, I don’t like confrontation and I’d rather be left alone.
To his credit my bil did try sitting down and talking with me about the situation, but the entire time my sister kept running into the room calling me a fucking liar and a fucking bitch, and I said this is why I don’t talk to you and walked out of the room.
She wants her own way, she came here intending to take over, everything from stopping us from recycling because she doesn’t want to, to breaking up my mother and her bf because she doesn’t like him.
My bil and I tried another day to talk things out and right away he started spouting her lies and I said you know what, if you’ve been married to her for 15 years and you still don’t know she’s a liar, then you are just too stupid for me to deal with, and I walked out. He saw how she acted the last time and he still wants to turn it around and blame it on me? - fuck that shit. He told my mother it doesn’t matter what my sister does, he’s her husband and he has to stand by her.
I’m not putting it off by waiting for my mother to get back. She will be back Monday, I’m not going to find anything between now and then anyway. I’m looking, but it’s hard. It’s a very expensive area, and I have to choose between staying in this area and paying a lot, or moving somewhere cheaper and moving him in his senior year of high school. He’s very shy, although a new area with new people may force him out of it. He gets along with my bil, he never liked my sister much to start with, he says she walks around with her nose up in the air and acts like she is better than everyone else. He and I talk about it, he knows he can say whatever he wants to me and all he says is I should ignore her like he does. My son is a lot like me, just leave us alone in our own little space and we will get along fine.
I have a friend who rents out her upstairs, it would mean changing schools for him but I can afford it. She’s having problems with the current tenant so it may be an option soon.
No, we’re not Irish Catholic, although we were raised Catholic. My mother isn’t but my father was. None of us are now. My mother likes to pretend problems don’t exist, everything with her is shut up and keep the peace, don’t rock the boat, be the bigger person. I guess my sister wasn’t paying attention when she said that.
I know she has told them if you don’t like it here then leave. She also told my bil that he is an outsider and he needs to stay out of it.
The making noise isn’t about the noise. It’s because I work from home and I can lose my job if there is noise in background. For my sister to tease her dogs to make them bark or stand in the middle of the house and scream for her husband to come to dinner when she knows I’m working is more than rude. She is fucking with my job and she knows it and she is doing it on purpose. It’s not so much about getting back at her as if you can’t respect that I need quiet for my job, then maybe I don’t need to respect your need for quiet to sleep. They go to bed between 8:30 and 9PM. I stopped working after 9 because they could hear me and it disturbed them. Nine is when my son and I would make a snack together and talk about his day, now I’m shushing him to talk quieter so we don’t wake them up. Most of my friends work nights and that is when we talk, I stopped talking to them because my mother asked me to because it disturbed them. I do all this and my sister still has the nerve to purposely make noise when she knows I am working? It may be childish to purposely make noise to get back at her, but it worked. My bil is a big baby about his sleep, stop screwing with my job and I won’t screw with your sleep.
It’s not about who will get the house, there is a trust and everything is to be sold and divided. I know if my sister is here anything of value will ‘disappear’. I know she and her husband have snooped. One day my mother called me from her travels and asked me if I had been in her room. My sister had called her and said when she went down to do laundry she noticed my mother’s door open and the light was on and things looked like they had been disturbed. I told my mother I have lived here for 15 years and I hadn’t snooped yet, why would I start now? But my bil had been down there most of the day. Besides if I was snooping I’d make sure to put everything back, turn off the light, shut the door, call my mother and tell on myself. This is the kind of shit my sister pulls, like I said earlier the same little girl who would bite herself and blame it on me.
Actually I am already feeling better. I’m starting to get my sense of humor back and am laughing a lot of it off. I’m also doing what I want to do and if I want to talk on the phone at 3am I’m doing it, if I want to use the kitchen when she needs to make dinner too bad, if I want to take a bath at 5pm when he gets home from work and he has to wait or go downstairs too bad. I’m not going out of my way to annoy them but I sure as hell am claiming my space back and doing what I want to do when I want to do it and if they don’t like it my new answer to everything is
‘when your husband can put on his big boy pants and buy you a house then you won’t have to deal with ‘whatever’ anymore’.
I always tell people it’s easier to hold your ground than to regain it, I never should have given in on anything from the start.
Whew
doncha all just love these long rambling posts?
But thank you all for your responses!
This is the only place where I can spill my guts, regret doing it, and then feel better.
Ask your son how he would feel about moving out if it means he has to change schools. Then you’ll know whether or not that’s a real issue.
We have talked about it.
He doesn’t want to move at all.
He doesn’t even care if they move, he just wants my sister to shut up.
He’ll come in my room every now and then and say “permission to speak freely”
I’ll say yeah and he’ll let lose “aunt sis is getting on my damn sorry sorry nerves, why does she have to act that way, all she does is sit around playing angry birds and bitch sorry sorry, it makes me so damn sorry sorry mad, I wish she would shut up sorry sorry I know I shouldn’t talk about her this way but she acts like a bitch sorry sorry”.
Are you sure he’ll have to change schools if you move? I mean, have you actually talked to the school and found out what the rules are? In the area I’m in, once you’re attending a school, you can pretty much stay attending that school even if you move out of the district. Transportation is your problem, not the schools, which could be a burden.
I agree with what most everybody else has said. The only way to deal with this is to remove yourself from the situation. Your sister seems completely unreasonable, and neither your mother nor brother-in-law are able (or willing) to control her. Whatever you do, or she says, don’t think of leaving as letting your sister win, but rather winning yourself, by getting out of there.
It doesn’t sound like your mother would ever do this, but there are legal ways to evict somebody. If it came down to it, you could have the sheriff remove her. In some places that can be very fast, and in others can take months of legal notices. It will also depend on exactly how the house is owned, as to whether or not this is an option.
I have a very tense relationship with my mil. It had gotten to the point where whenever her name was brought up, I would go off.
I was discussing this with my therapist and she made a suggestion that has really worked for me. You see, I am very professional at work and I can get along with just about anyone and, if I can’t, I still handle it calmly and professionally. I am able to dodge tricky subjects with customers and collegues. And, no matter how bad the situation is, I handle it all with aplomb.
So, I starting handling my dealings with my mil as if she were a co-worker or customer. She has wants and needs that I try to satisfy. I deal with it professionally and calmly. It has worked wonders.
Not sure I could keep it up if I were living with her but it has helped.
Aside: is he already in his senior year or would that be the next school year? Most school districts will allow you to stay at a given school for the remainder of a school year even if you move out of area. Since he is 17, he could drive himself to school (if you have a car and don’t need it during the day) or you could drive him.
ETA: Scooped by echoreply! (The fact that I ‘echoed’ his ‘reply’ amuses me.)
When I talk about leaving the area I am talking about leaving the state, or going either to the west end of the state of maybe Eastern Shore. I haven’t checked into what rent is like over there yet. I work from home so as long as I have a reliable phone and internet connection I can live anywhere.
MD is expensive. I will be lucky if I find anything under $1200. I’m thinking WV, or one of the Carolinas. If I stay close enough he can go to the same school, I’d never tell them I moved so they wouldn’t know. But if I go out of state, he will have to switch schools, unless I go without him, which isn’t going to happen.
He is a senior this year.
I like the idea of treating it like business. Remove the emotion because ultimately what is the emotion for? When I was in the corporate world I was always assigned to work with the difficult people because I could handle them. I liked the challenge.