*ruining
My sister in law was a divorcee when we got married. She decided to get married 1.5 years after our wedding. Divorced him out of the blue another 1.5 years later. Now she has been diagnosed with cancer. From dealing with her feeling “alone” after my husband and I got married, to getting her married again, dealing with her divorce, and now this…my entire 4+ years of marriage has been consumed by her and us dealing with her problems. She’s 43. Behaves like a child. My mother in law is very old so without a choice by husband and I have become primary care givers. I am just exhausted – i cant even think of making any big decisions in life ( buying a house, moving, starting a course, kids ) because all our mental energy is just drained dealing with her and her problems.
And all this would be easier if she was a nice person and i liked her – she’s an absolutely terrible human being and I honestly cannot stand her.
I can’t help but constantly thinking about how all this wouldn’t be my problem if i did not get married. Help.
3 comments
It’s kind of weird to me that your marriage would make her feel “alone”– it sounds like she didn’t make an effort to have a life of her own.
Do you mean you’re a caregiver for your SIL or your elderly MIL?
It’s time to set some boundaries.
So what’s the issue exactly? Is your husband not involved in dealing with your SIL or MIL at all because you make no mention of how he plays into all of this aside from you both now taking care of MIL? Based on the little info you’ve provided this doesn’t seem like a “marriage issue” since you don’t seem to have a problem with your husband. It seems like a boundary issue on your part. You’re allowed to set boundaries with your SIL. You don’t have to be involved with or have knowledge of anything she has going on in her life at all for any reason. Nothing you mentioned above about her requires any of your actual attention so let her life fade into the background noise of your own.
Are you sure that it’s not the fact that you and your husband are now MIL’s primary caregivers that is the actual issue? Is your husband pulling his weight in meeting the demands of caring for her? If he’s not, IMO, that would be the more pressing issue that would have me regretting marriage. If your husband is offering you little to no support in taking care of MIL and enabling SIL’s childish behavior that would be a marriage issue and enough to want to throw the whole man away. If that isn’t what’s happening and your husband is meeting you in the middle for everything then the issue is you allowing yourself to be sucked into SIL’s drama for whatever reason. She’s a whole adult. Set boundaries, enforce them and then ignore her. If you and your husband are on the same page there are working as a team when it comes to MIL then things should get better without the added stress and aggravation over time.
Couple things
Generally speaking, this is your husbands problem to fix. He needs to hear out your concerns and then address it with his own family.
Also, once you get married, your spouse is #1 in your life. Not your sister, not even your mom.
Therapy might be able to help with this – it’s going to be difficult for you to address it since you’re so emotionally close to the situation, you will come across as biased.