Replies to 'Getting Along With Your In-Laws'

I have never had to work at a relationship as hard as this in my life, and it seems like the more I try the worse it gets. To make a LONG story short. I have been married to my husband for 5 years, we have 2 children together and I have a son from a previous relationship. My husband is the youngest of 5 and I will say the most successfull as well. We live Very well, while the rest of the family gets by. And the reason I am including this is to explain the differences between myself and my sister in law. My husband's brother which is older has been married 2 times before this last marriage that took place 2 years ago. His past marriages ended due to him cheating on his first wife and left her for his second wife and then basically bankrupting himself is the cause for the 2 wife leaving him. He meet his 3 wife with in about of month of being separated from his 2 wife, and she too was still married and going threw a divorce. He started this 3 marriage with NOTHING and when I say nothing, I  mean nothing. My husband owned the truck he was driving, and was also his employer. He did not own a house, he lived with my husband and myself for awhile, and he had maybe 2 suitcases full of clothes.

So anyways on to the sister in law, we had always gotten along during the first year, we would go shopping, go out, talk on the phone, the normal things that girls do when they are pretty much family. Then when my husband and I announced that we were having our 2nd child together, I started to notice a little bit of jealousy from her, not knowing at the time that they had been to doctors and she had been trying to get pregnant. So we announce that we were pregnant, about 2 weeks later they get engaged, after 2.5 years of living together, and then about 2 weeks later announce that they were pregnant as well, even though my brother in law was told that he had a 1% chance of ever conciving. So know it is time for there wedding and there has been ALOT of tension between myself and my future SIL, my husband has always been one to ignore and I am one to not ignore anything that bothers me, but I did in this case cause everyone that would have been bothered by myself pointing out the problems would be my in laws. At the wedding I am told by the lady cordinating the wedding that my SIL told her that we did not get along and that I was not to be in any of the Family pictures, so I wasn't, I was treated like crap by her family at the reception, I at this time am about 6 months pregnant and no one from her family would allow me to sit at there tables, everyone said that the seat was taken. Now mind you this was a very smaill wedding about 40 people, so the odds of someone not knowing who I was to her was slim. So I left the wedding in tears cause at this time I did not know of any problems, just felt tension. Time goes by, they move to 3 acres that my husband and I sold them (The BIGGEST mistake We have ever made). We live on a lake and have a bunch of land, and they did not have the resources to buy a place so we sold them land to build a house on. Everything is just ok not great. And in april of 2003, one day I turn on my computer and there was an email in my inbox, sent from an annymous sender and it is my SIL bashing me to a friend of her's. and the things that were in this email were lies, not a single thing was true, basically saying that I have a money spending problem, I have a nanny for my kids becasue I can't handle them, talking about my husband business, and lots of other things. Well I immeditely call my husband and was crying, well he wanted to ignore it, because he has the attitude that he doesn't care what people think of him, but I had a hard time doing that cause they were lies and this was my famliy and the day she sent that email she had me over to her house to give me some presents and have dinner.

So anyway a month goes by before I convince my husband to talk to his brother and they talk and his brother says that he will handle it, well she sends me an  email about 2 days later trying to explain why she said those things, Never once appoligizing. We all sit down at my house and talk it out, she promises me that she would never talk about me again, and that she was onlying saying those things because someone lied to her about something I supposedly said.

We try to do things together again, and I just couldn't feel comfortable around her, and I think vice versa. 

So about 5 monthe later, my husband see's her at a local park one day with a another guy that was not her husband and it seemed to look intimate. So my husband comes home and is asking me what he should do? I tell him that we have no proof of anything and that this would only make his brother mad at us. Which I will say, his brother is a very private person and would lie to anyone to make his life look perfect, and tells no one about any of his problems. So I suggest that my husband try to get into her email address and see what is in there, (which i know is wrong, but it was all we could do, and most people that I have talked to said that they would have done it as well) well about a week later he was able to do this, and found in this email account that she was indeed seeing/talking to another guy. So my husband told me that he will continue to look in her email to see where she was going to meet this guy and the next time she did it, make sure he could get the proof and his brother there too. Well it took about 8 months for her to meet this guy again, well in the mean time we are watching her emails and seeing everything written betweent my SIL and the other man, lots of personal things, lots of orders for prescription pain pills being orderes off the internent,  and lots of lies and attacks on myself and my famliy. We are printing off everything that we could, and in the mean time We took a famly trip to Mexico with her, lots of camping trips, dinners at my house, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and having to be nice to her knowing what she was doing behind her husbands back, and remember that she lives on a piece of separated property to my place, so we see each other just about every day and she is able to act like nothing is wrong between us and I hear that she is saying things, and I catch her looking at me, or my kids and rolling her eyse at us. 

So anyways the day is here she is meeting this secret friend of hers at a bar about 30 minutes away from her house,  My husband and I rent a truck and have my parents follow her, we have 2 friends sitting in the bar waiting for her to walk in, so that they coluld take pictures with there camera phones. I am actually having surgery that day, so I  am missing out on all the catching her. But my husband receives a phone call that she has arrived, and that they guy is there holding hands with her, so now my husband calls his brother, her husband and tells him that she is there. His brother says " No that couldn't be her!" , and that he isn't worried about it. Well he called her immediately, cause our friends that were on the inside said that she was on the phone screamimg at him denying that she was where she was being accused of being, well anyways make another long story short. We hold off on telling his brother everything that we know, hopeing that she would do it, and that they would work it out on there own. We just wanted her to get caught and stop. Well she lied threw her teeth to him saying that it was not her and he believed her. Well we wait about a week and I called and told him where all the emails were between her and this guy and that he needed to read them. Well he called me back about 3 hours later, livid at me and my husband, he was mad at her as well, but wanted to jump on us for being in her email.  Well i told him that he needed to talk to his borther, my husband about this. So anyways she hates us now, doesn't want to be around us, and is ruining this famliy and I don't know how to handle this, we all have kids. And my husbands dad lives down the street, he is 84 years old and deserves to not be put in the middle of this. My SIL has turned my husbands sister that is wheel chaired bound against us with lies, and I have a hard time figureing out how to handle this. I know that this is long, but if anyone has any advice please let mw know. She is extremley jealous of me and my husband. Which I can not help that my husband had made something for his live and we live the way we do.