ABOUT SarahB

Dear Sarah

I am so glad I get to seek out meaningful words of advice somewhere. I am a stepmom for a year now. I know my husband for three years now. I have learned a lot about my role from books and websites. I rode the roller coaster ride of stepmotherhood and found ways of dealing with jealousies, distance, change, and fitting in. The good part is all the hard work pays in some way when the ice slowly melts and I slowly get into this family I married – husband and his 10 year old daughter.

My problem here is slightly different though, and it may or maynot fall in the perview of stepmotherhood – its not about the ex (she smiles back when I smile at her and thats an achievement – because my stepdaughter feels great when this happens), its not about my step daughter – who’s demeanour has softened over the months. Its about my husband’s unwavering obsession with his brother and sister in law. Husband and his brother have a really good relationship between them. H received a lot of support from his brother when his marriage was falling apart and through his divorce and custody battle and all. His sister in law provided with support too. H got divorced, and during his divorce he started seeing this woman who later got engaged with him but she started having issues with H’s involvement with his daughter which eventually ended in a rather bitter breakup and he was back to being a single father again. Apparently the woman couldnt stand that she was given second priority to the daughter and she started “competing” for first place, and that didnt go very well. Through all these turmoils his brother and sister in law helped. Sister in law especially because that woman called on her for advice relentlessly looking for support of her point of view and all she got from the sister in law was discouragement towards continuing the relationship and unwavering support of my H’s stand. All this history has a relevance. This unadulterated support placed the sister in law in special favor with my H and he basically placed her on a pedestal, most willing to give her unadulterated support if she ever needed.

Enter me into his life, we met, we were both divorced at the time. He explained his situation and emphasized on the fact that his daughter is and will always be his first priority and the tough learnings from his broken engagement. I was always told up front that I should only go ahead if all this was okay with me. In our relationship the thing we talked most about was his daughter and how her space is sacrosanct – a very important thing to know. It was like that was more important than anything we felt about each other and so much so, that if his daughter and I didnt get along, then it didnt matter what we felt for each other, it wasnt going to happen.

For me, who doesnt have any background into steprelationships I felt it was a bit over the top, but we decided we will go ahead with this anyway. When it was time to meet the daughter, it was delightful, she was delightful, and uncannily, she and I hit it off nicely. I hadnt expected she and I would get along so well (I like kids in general but this was a very easy situation). Our families were pleased, we were deteremined to make it a success. We both worked hard to come together and build our lives.

What I saw after that was the part that stumped me totally. The sister in law hated me to say the least. She made me feel like I was stepping on her toes, that I was taking glory and limelight and attention away from her, that I was in her way to feeling wanted and important – by MY husband. She was very sour with me right from the beginning and still is. She loves being favoured by my husband and he does favour her a lot. She sticks close to him whenever the two families are together, always making lots of affectionate and over friendly talk and holding eye contact – she primarily monopolizes him when she is around and he seems to take to this attention very nicely. He loves it.
She once kept her two children with me when she was in town and went away for lunch with my husband – a fact that neither of them told me, but I figured out from pieces that I put together.

I am not against him being friendly with her or about being supportive of her, he is a nice guy he would do that for anyone in his relation. What irks me is that she feels territorial about him and dislikes me for being his wife. She applauds when he disagrees with me on anything, however small (its a victory for her – I almost flipped over the first time she did that – took me very little time to figure out what she was upto) – which is plain nasty. I have no issues about her wanting to feel important – I didnt do anything to take her importance away from her – I would willingly give her importance where it is due. But where I am trying to work my way and ease into my new life with new relatives, new stepdaughter, and new country (I moved countries to be with my husband) – I cannot understand and cannnot stand is her negative interest in me. She is always trying to walk alongside my husband sometimes even close to him, she tries to coordinate holidays with us. We were planning a trip on christmas just husband me and stepdaughter, and she tried to manipulate it by saying that we will ignore the child because we will be so engrossed with each other, that we shouldnt make the trip at all, rather plan a trip with them so that her kids and my stepchild will have company. I was appauled with such an intrusive suggestion. She had no precedence to make any such comment about ignoring my stepdaughter, it was completely baseless. We went ahead with that trip though, but no without making us promise that the two families will plan for a spring break trip to a breach resort together.

Her clinginess to my husband – she makes a bee line straight for him whenever she is around is for everyone to see – I wonder if her husband hasnt noticed this or has noticed it and ignores it on purpose. She is always all over him at times, and he responds to this attention. What breaks my heart is he makes covert plans with her and they go out behind my back. She always keeps asking me details about how husband and I spend time together and compares it with her situation all the time. She is very well off, very well moneyed and well qualified and much better settled than we are. She knows my husband for 15 years. I know him for 3. She cannot get enough of rubbing it in about how qualified they are and look down literally on me given the slightest pretext. She would do anything to exclude me in a situation. They are both very competitive, even in the word games we play with kids, they are worse than their children when it comes to gloating over childish wins and taking it horribly badly when she loses.

Her talking tone with me is normally irritated and there is always anger in her voice and eyes when she talks to me, like I was the unnecessary part of the equation. On new years eve – I had an attack of food poisoning and couldn’t make it to a new year party we were all invited to – I told H to go with his brother and sister in law anyway, said I would be fine, but he refused to leave me, he stayed back. When they came home to see how I was doing – I was verbally slapped by her in the way she angrily asked “Are you still feeling unwell?” as if she expected that I would be ok soon in the evening for the party because that prevented H from going there too.

When H got me flowers the time he received me at the airport, she got upset that I got flowers. I wonder where all this jealousy is coming from, what right has this woman to feel upset about my husband getting me flowers. WHO IS SHE??

She keeps giving me unsolicited advice about my husband in front of everyone, he likes this, he doesn’t like being asked twice about a drink, this is how he likes to load the dishwasher and this and that and the other. It pisses me off to be patronized by her about my own husband. Especially when I haven’t asked her help. I have never once asked her advice about my husband.

I am so new to all this – this assault from her knocks me off balance and is something I struggle with – primarily because she has my H’s favour.

The bad part is, they were staying in another state, they are now moving to our state into our vicinity no less – because the opportunities and life is better here. They – she and her husband both have got jobs here, they have been planning this move for 4 years now – the brothers want to be close. Whats happening is, the brother wanted to rent at a place that was an hour away from us, but my H and sister in law bent his will to rent at 10mins from us.

It is his complete support and favour that is formidable enough to deter me from saying anything against her. I will immediately lose credibility with him if I showed him I was upset and that will ruin my family life that we have built with so much self investment.

When he proposed that we visit them at their house in the other state one last time before they move, I stepped in and told him I wasnt keen but he could go ahead and visit them himself if he liked. He got angry and in his anger he scrapped off the whole trip and now nobody’s going there. I have earned myself his wrath for preventing this trip, it was important for him and I regret saying anything. But what am I to do – both his brother and sister in law snub me, look down on me and are so full of themselves, plus this weird chemistry between H and her, I had to at least extricate myself.

I am most concerned, disturbed and distracted with all this happening. Over and above the considerable challenges that I face – those of getting along in a new step family, getting along in a new country, new job, it is overwhelming to have this to deal with. Its formidable enough that my H is totally devoted to his brother, its even more disturbing that they both – H and sister in law seem in many ways “attracted” to each other if I can allow myself to use that term. They just gravitate to each other; there is something in the body language that is not right. I am going insane. Anything you have to say about this will be helpful. I am afraid it has the potential to ruin a hard earned family (stepfamily) life that we both have worked towards.