Hi there, I have a question for you. About ten years ago my BIL cheated on his then fiancée. He involved me and my family in these adventures. Several times my husband and I either picked up or took home several girls. I had a very hard time with this and asked many times not to be involved. It got to the point, after voicing my disgust with him that I spoke to my MIL about this and she just blew me off. I went to a couple of priest and discussed with them what to do. After a few weeks of pondering this and talking with my husband, I went to the preacher who was counseling the couple, thinking that would be a good place for them to address this issue. Well, as you imagine that did not go over very well. My BIL denied everything, my MIlL told the fiancée that I was lying and my husband agreed with them that I was just being vindictive and mean spirited. Fast forward 8 years. I do not talk to my SIL, we do not attend family functions together, we stay away from each other at all costs. My husband and her husband are twins and they own a business together. They come from an affluent family, but my husband decided to take different path a long time ago. We live in a modest home and live pay check to pay check. My BIL and SIL act like they are better than us and frequently make comments to this fact. My SIL once told my husband that since he did not go to college, he did not the right to correct her grammar… Anyway, recently we were asked to attend a family vacation. At first we declined, but after thinking about it we decided to join them. I started inquiring about the vacation and got really strange reactions. My husband came home that night pissed off… He told me to quit bothering people with my questions about the vacation and he just went off on me…finally he told me that my SIL had told him that if we went on the vacation she and her family would not go. She also implied that the “fam” wants to spend time with her family and not ours. My husband told her that we would stay home. I was more hurt by his actions than hers. What do you do? What is the best way to handle this? I know I can not turn back the clock. Suggestions???
I have no suggestions, I’m sorry.
I just wonder why you continue to be part of this family, why you choose to stay married to a man who will make YOU the scapegoat for his family’s screw-ups. No-one deserves that.
Don’t go.
Quit bothering everybody with the questions. At least, when you get really strange reactions. If you get strange reactions to seemingly innocuous questions, you are the one that is out of the loop, and they aren’t seeing fit to include you. There is a not good reason for this.
Ignore everybody else.
Get with your husband. He is your husband. Don’t be ‘more hurt by his actions than by hers.’ You seem pissed at him for his not wanting to go to a place where you can be uncomfortable and/or embarrassed. He didn’t do it to be mean to you, while she did.
Advice is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I can’t offer good advice on your family. Family drama just plain hurts… so best wishes there.
Still, I look at the event planned & its a vacation. To me, a vacation is time off from work to relax, recharge batteries, heal up from the past year, and if possible, to reconnect with some of the fun activities that you would normally enjoy, but have missed out on do to work or geography.
Assuming you get 2 weeks off a year (and thats it), are you going to have fun if you go? Will there be stress free moments? Will you be able to enjoy yourselves? Will it be the exotic getaway of your dreams or will it be you playing Indiana Jones, holding cobras at bay with a torch?
Look, I’m just a guy in the internet & maybe I’m not the right guy to listen to… but it doesn’t sound to me like either you or your husband will have any fun. I’d vote for staying home & letting them go on their vacation. Perhaps it will be to an exotic island… far far away.
You and your husband could have quiet relaxing dinners at home & rent a movie for after.
Say, have you seen ‘The Impossible’ yet with Naomi Watts? I hear its quite good…
Did you read the OP? The reason the family hates her in the first place is because her husband lied and threw her under the bus:
Everyone involved sounds like an asshole and I don’t know why you’d want to spend time with any of them, OP.
Why would you want to be part of a family that blames you and lies about you to cover up their own horrible behavior? What is it that you’re getting out of being around any of them?
Maybe he has some good side that we’re missing, but what you’ve described here makes it sound like your husband puts his family ahead of you and doesn’t treat you with respect. That is NOT okay in my opinion.
If my fiance lied to his family about me to make me look bad and protect someone else in the family, I would not stay with him. That’s unacceptable. You should be able to trust that your husband has your best interests at heart…and I also wonder how much cheating he has done, if he thinks his brother’s behavior is okay. Perhaps the brothers have an agreement to help each other hide their cheating?
that shit is fucked up and it ain’t never gonna stop
you need to get a divorce
new join date, provocative first post. jus’ saying
I find this pattern to be eyebrow arching as well.
Or at least your very own vacation. ALLLLL by yourself, with no asshole family members…
(My eyebrow’s arching too, but I’m hoping the story’s all true, just to feel like someone else’s family is less functional than mine)
And no paragraph breaks.
You have a husband problem. DTMFA.
Or a reality problem. Maybe the BIL wasn’t cheating at all, and everyone in the world except her sees that.
She may be a troll, but if not she was apparently involved in covering up the cheating:
Seems like a lack of paragraph breaks is deadly to the reading comprehension of Dopers.
That quote by itself is open to interpretation.
This post reminds me of a situation with a friend of mine. She had this ongoing sob story about how mean her boss was… but the longer this went on, the more it became obvious to my wife and I that that our friend was the problem and her boss’s only fault was that he hadn’t fired her yet. However, she was unable/unwilling to see it. (For example, it is not unreasonable for a boss to expect your 30-minute lunch break to be an actual 30 minutes instead of 45-ish. And it’s not unreasonable to complain when a receptionist spends the afternoon on the phone with her sick mother while on company time.)
I hate to criticize the OP based on incomplete information, but it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
Heres the deal:
Your husband is hurt alot worse by this stuff than you. He isnt dealing with it perfectly, but divorce seems way over the top.
The real question is - What do YOU want?
If you want to be back in the fold with the family and part of everything, I would approach the brother and say, “I am sorry for meddling in your affairs (no pun intended.) I should have never commented to anyone about your life. I was wrong.” I would also talk to the mom and be contrite.
Otherwise, just make your own life the way you want it and avoid the family at all costs.
You can’t marry into the Escobar family and preach to them about the war on drugs. This family has different values than you, play by their rules, or get your own game.
Yep, if the OP hasn’t returned within a couple-three hours to clarify points in the wall of text then I’ll assume it’s a drive-by or just something that someone needed to vent about but no interest in actual feedback.
One of the strangest parts of this is that the OP and her husband helped the BIL by taking home or picking up several of the women he was involved with. If she didn’t want to be involved in that, she should have put her foot down and not been involved even if her husband continued to do so.
The worse part is that the OP stayed with her husband and continued to interact with his family after he threw her under the bus. OP, it sounds like you need to get a backbone and stay away from that family.