My (33F) fiancé feels my sister (35f) has constantly disrespected her whenever we are around and wants me to cut her off. I feel torn, I need some help.

33 comments

1. Why are you here asking us about what you should have done when all this started?

2. That is awfully disrespectful. Your fiancé shouldn’t have to put up with that and you should not enable your sister. Unfortunately, it sounds like you may have been assigned the role of steadying the boat: https://www.reddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL/comments/77pxpo/dont_rock_the_boat/

3. Heyyyyy

   Hey hey hey

   Back up a minute.

   Your sister is letting her kids go off with a known pedophile? Why is that being brushed over here? Why is he not in jail and why is she letting them just CHILL with him after he got caught trying to fuck children?

   Your issues speaking up for your fiancé are another thing and I’ll post another comment about that but good lord. If you’re going to talk to your sister, talk to her about THAT before her kids get raped. JFC. Do none of you have a sense of danger????

4. Why do you say your fiancé ‘feels’ disrespected when you openly admit you’ve witnessed her be blatantly disrespected?

   You are framing this all wrong and focusing on the wrong issues. You’re making the issue here your fiancé’s feelings instead of your sisters blatant disrespect and attitude.

   There are two roads here, and eventually you will need to make a choice. Toxic weird ass sister who’s okay with her kids getting molested (?????) and openly disrespects your woman to your face, or your woman. Seems like an easy choice to me, but you can’t be passive forever. You’re 33. You need to stand up for what’s right.

5. I can see why this is hard for your fiancé. Some people are very good at getting disrespectful little jabs in, and it’s super annoying when others around you can’t see it.

   I think at the very least, the first thing you should do is confront your sister about her behaviour and make it clear that you won’t put up with it in future.

6. I think your fiancé is being silly. I hate reddit’s obsession with “disrespect”. Some nitwit can’t “disrespect” anyone without their permission. People can be rude, and it seems that your sister is, but who cares? Be politely low contact and move on emotionally.

7. Ok, so your sister sounds kind of awful to be around, but why is this so dramatic and all-or-nothing? How often do you and your fiancée see your sister, for this to be the *main* fight in your relationship? Can’t you just quietly tone it down to only seeing her a few times a year for events that are focused on the kids? Surely everyone can muddle through that compromise?

   You sound very passive here. My guess it that you fell into the trap of trying “not to take sides” and “deescalating the situation.” Not calling your sister out on rude comments when you hear them; maybe saying things that are dismissive of your fiancée’s feelings, like, “I didn’t hear my sister say that” or “she might not have meant it that way” or “yeah, she’s just like that, but we’re still going to go visit her next weekend right”. How that looks in reality is that you’re defending your sister and operating on a different team than your fiancée. Have you openly *agreed* with your fiancée that your sister is rude and awful to her and not pleasant to be around? If you make clear that you’re on your fiancée’s side and that you are also angry that your sister treats her that way, then it should be less of a fight and more of a team effort — figuring out how you two as a team will find a happy balance of staying in the kids’ lives while keeping your sister more distant.

8. While I’m sure you love your niece an nephew, you are going to make a vow to your fiancé , not them.
   There should be no scenario where letting your wife be disrespected is the lesser of two evils.

9. You do know it doesn’t have to be as black and white as those two options. How about you speak to your sister and tell her to stop. Put in the boundary. If she crossed it then you go to the next step. Also you need to make sure those children are safe and contact police or parole officer and cps

10. “My fiancé feels disrespected.”

    You are framing this situation the wrong way. The problem isn’t how your fiancé feels. The problem is that your sister is blatantly disrespecting your fiancé (and you by association), she is *allowing her children to be around a known pedophile,* and **YOU** are so conflict-averse that you can’t stand up to her.

    Even if your fiancé wasn’t in the picture, you would still have a big problem: You have spent your whole life being steamrolled by your nutjob sister and you have learned to cope by accommodating her endlessly. That’s a you-problem. You need counseling to help you learn your own boundaries and assert them.

11. This was the dynamic when my husband first met my sister. She was blatantly disrespectful to him on more than one occasion. You missed the boat here. While it’s never too late, the time to intervene was the first or second time she was rude to your fiancé.

    My sister and I had a lot of fights and trust me – I am VERY non confrontational. But the way she treated and spoke to someone important to me was not okay. There were times I had to tell her to get a hotel when she came to visit because she would be allowed in our home if she couldn’t be polite.

    Now they aren’t the best of friends but they like things about each other and can enjoy each others company most times. My relationship with my sister is much better because she wasn’t just rude to him. She was also very rude to me. But it wasn’t u til it was toward someone else I decided to stand up to her. Now we have a mutual respect we didn’t have before.

    Don’t cut family off but also don’t ignore issues like this. They are not going to magically go away or get better. That takes work. It’s going to be uncomfortable but it will do a lot for everyone involved if you can stand up for yourself and your new family.

12. The problem seems to be that your sister doesn’t approve of your fiance. The way she behaved makes it seem like she was disgusted by your fiance? The fact that she’s constantly rude for no reason solidifies that she doesn’t like her. If I had to guess, it’s because she’s a woman.

    You should have said something to your sister long ago. If you’re not willing to tell your sister that she needs to respect your fiance, how long do you think your fiance will be putting up with the disrespect?

    Either tell your sister to fucking stop treating her that way or cut her off. Either way, I’m going to assume cutting her off will be the end result if you want your relationship to work out.

13. Dude, clearly she has been disrespecting your fiancé. You have *witnessed* it for Pete sake!

    Look if you can’t speak up for your fiancé and protect her from *your own family* you have no business being in a relationship.

14. Talk about it to your sister and set boundaries. My parents have the same issue and not being firm about it has negative consequences. In our case, my dad’s sister is being disrespectful about many things regarding my mother and my parents’ relationship. And since my dad never liked confrontation, he’s always let this kind of things slide, which made the issue worse. On the other hand, my uncle (dad’s little brother) has been way more firm with my aunt (yes, the same one) when she talked bad about his partner: after threatening to leave if she didn’t stop bad-mouthing, she stopped and knew her limits.

    In the end, even if our situation may not be the same, my point may still be applicable: put some boundaries to what your sister can do or say because if you don’t, it might worsen the situation. And since you are the one related to her, you have to do it (don’t be like my dad who always avoided his responsibilities and told my mom that it was her job to get along with his family)

15. This is entirely your fault for not calling out your sister’s disrespect from the beginning, so it’s just been building up for years. *You* need to confront *your* sister and tell her to stop. And everytime she does it, you get up and leave. You might need to lose your relationship with her and her family, but it’s either that or your own family.

16. Have a backbone man, before you lose the fiancé to someone who’s willing to stick up for her and not hold on to family members who support pedophiles and do nasty things, god

17. Talk to your sister and stick up for your gf. You might not need to cut sister out

18. OP you are spineless. Stand up to your sister and grow the fuck up.

19. You need to literally speak up and start setting some boundaries in with your sister. Stop being passive and shut this down.

20. >She wouldn’t shake her hand when she first met, just looked her up and down and went back to talking to my mom.

    This isn’t just someone “feeling” disrespected. This is ***deeply*** disrespectful behaviour. I’ve shaken the hands of people I openly dislike. Meeting her brother’s gf and that’s how she behaves…? Just completely offensive to me. It would take me a **very** long time to forgive something like that… and that’s just the first time!

    Your fiancée is being a very **very** reasonable, rational person. You are arguing with her and treating her as if she’s not a reasonable, rational person. Why is that? Why are you implying that she just “feels” this way, when she’s simply describing reality and you’re gaslighting her into thinking she’s imagining it?

    I mean, at the very least you should acknowledge what’s bothering you and why you don’t want to confront your sister. Validate your fiancée’s feelings. Treat her with respect. Start there, and then work **with** her to come up with an approach/solution/management. I am willing to bet a lot of money that simply providing your wife with validation and being completely honest in explaining why you’re worried will eliminate 95% of your arguments/fights (assuming this all hasn’t gone too far).

21. So you have to understand something here: It is your sister that is driving this problem. You and your SO are reacting to it.

    So your choice now is this: Who do you want in your life? Your sister or your SO? You can talk to your sister but don’t give her a wedge point to work with. “You have continuously disrespected my fiance, so I’m going to skip on seeing you for a while. When you learn how to behave in adult company we’ll revisit this.”

22. You’re not “non-confrontational”, you’re a coward. I sure wouldn’t want to marry a coward and your fiancé shouldn’t either. Good thing she’s standing up for herself now because clearly you won’t.

    This is your wake up call. If you don’t something about this now, whether giving your sister an earful or cutting her off, not only will you lose your fiancé, you’ll have deserved it as well.

23. > I’ve always felt my sister was the favored child ahead of me and she got a lot more from my parents then from me.

    Right. I empathise a lot with your fiance, but I also empathise with you because it’s clear that “sister just does what she wants” is the standard for your family, and it’s hard to fight 30+ years of programming.

    So let’s break this down into easy steps:

    * VALIDATE your fiance. Don’t say “I can see you feel like you’ve been disrespected by my sister”, acknowledge it. “My sister was behaving disrespectfully towards you.”

    * You don’t have to confront your sister with all guns blazing. Agree with your fiance that you’ll both take some space from her for the short term. You don’t have to announce to your sister or your parents “we’re taking space from Sister”, just do it. Make some excuses. “Sorry, we can’t make it on Sunday.” “Sorry, we can’t stay long.” Look up the grey rock technique if you aren’t familiar with it.

    * Use this space and time to take some inventory of the dynamic between your “side” (which includes you, your fiance, the two of you as a couple), and your sister’s “side” (which involves her, probably your parents, etc). How do they treat you? Is there uneven treatment or expectations? How does it make you feel? Look up some books on managing difficult family relationships. Talk with a therapist. Figure out what you (and your fiance) want the baseline of family interactions to look like. Maybe this involves a direct talk with your sister, maybe this involves readjusting boundaries in a different way.

24. Put your sister In Her place.

    You not saying anything doesn’t help the situation.

    So either tell her off and defend your wife or cut her off and back your wife.

25. > I admit I have never said anything to my sister (I’m not the most confrontational person) but examples:

    Well you’re to blame for a large part of this then

26. This is one of the main reasons I left my husband. He constantly let his family treat me poorly and it was always my fault. He’s alone now.

    She’s conditioned to tolerate abuse because of her past and you are enabling the person doing it.

    Sorry this triggered me but I hope she leaves you. She deserves better.

27. Break up with so she can find a wife who is not insane

28. It’s time you told your sister and the rest of your family that your sister needs to be nice or you might have to limit or cut off contact with her, which might also affect family functions.

    Also, consider making a plan with your fiancée, at the first sign of disrespect, you and she will leave the family activity immediately without drama. Just say as you are leaving “that the disrespectful behavior is not something we will put up with anymore.” Use emotional intelligence to deal with rude sister and support your partner.

29. Imo, being non-confrontational is situations like this is pure cowardice. You’re a spineless coward.

30. OP, i mean this in the most sincere and nicest way i can… dont get married. You are beyond clueless and spineless + your sister is completely fucked in the head allowing her kids chill with a pedo

    I am going to safely assume your family is fucked up and your fiance is better off not marrying you

31. If you can’t stand up for your fiancée and do the right thing, let her go. She needs to be with someone who puts her first and won’t tolerate her being disrespected. That clearly is not you. And, if anything happens to your niece and nephew because you turned a blind eye, you are just as guilty as your sister. Both of you are complicit. This is appalling.

32. All the other stuff is just normal family members not really liking each other, and doesn’t really warrant a cut off, rather just seeing them less, however your sister allows her kids to be with a Pedo! Like she openly must want them to be molested, they May already be getting molested by this man, how come you havnt said or done anything about it?! Do you not care about these kids at all?

33. I feel like folks are glossing over the baseline issue here. Seriously, things are not black and white. If OP has feels his sister is the “golden child”, he has probably been conditioned his *entire life* not to react to her words or call her behavior out. This is the reason he hasn’t said anything. Over and over again, he was likely told he was misreading a situation with his sister and his viewpoint did not matter. This is why he is still saying “his fiancée ’feels’ disrespected” instead of she *is* being disrespected. People who don’t like confrontation are usually folks who learned early on that sharing their feelings leads nowhere. No validation. No acknowledgment of trampled feelings.

    OP, look I know it’s not easy to overcome ingrained behaviors, and this is a big one. Maybe a therapist can help in this situation. Here’s some hard truths…

    – Your sister is NEVER going to change her behaviors. Why? It’s been ingrained into her that she can doing anything without consequences. Her behaviors are not okay.

    – Your sister isn’t making your fiancée feel like shit on a shoe— your sister is *treating her like shit on a shoe.* Ask yourself, after everything your fiancée has been through, does she deserve to be treated this way by anyone? If you wouldn’t allow the behavior from a stranger, don’t allow it to come from family.

    – Setting boundaries doesn’t equal confrontation out the gate. You can quietly set it. Make plans with your parents when your sister isn’t there. When invited to a get-together ask if sister is attending, and then say you have other plans. You don’t have to cut off your parents, just make separate plans with them. This will only delay the issue, since a connection will eventually be made. In the meantime you work with a therapist for this exact revelation.

    OP, I took way too long to go NC with my narcissistic sister. I stayed in the toxicity, because I thought family was important and I felt (like you) I was misreading the situations. After going NC, it was like a boulder was lifted off my shoulder. It still hurts of course, but that pain is NOTHING compared to the relief of having her drama and gaslighting out of my life.

    Right now, you are in the wrong. It’s understandable, but you can fix it. You’ll be much happier when you fix this pattern.