How can you respond to bullying sister-in-law?
Ask Carolyn
Dear Carolyn: My husband’s friend informed us that 16 of my husband’s female relatives and friends, led by my sister-in-law, have an active group chat devoted to how awful I am. I don’t share any of their family’s hobbies, religion or physical characteristics. Apparently, they’ve been trading cruel memes about these perceived faults for the past year and a half. My face was Photoshopped onto the Grinch’s body.
My husband and I are their age, but they are all wealthy, well-educated, married homeowners with children. We are childless renters in graduate school. She has significantly more social capital than my husband.
My husband has stood up for me with his family and friends. He agrees his sister’s behavior – and the behavior of the others in this group – is unkind.
It feels like I’m being bullied, but nothing has been said to me. How should I respond to this, if at all? I know this has been a stressful year. Should I try to not be offended and view this as something that has morphed into their escape from pandemic parenting? Am I being overly sensitive?
R.: Oh my no. If anything, you are underly sensitive and overly kind. But I’m loath to discourage such a beautiful impulse: You’ve found a way to put a sympathetic spin on 18 months of group cruelty, and, wow, that just highlights how awful they are, and how wrong they are about you.
Please know you’re free to have nothing to do with these people ever again. That would be tough on your husband, yes, but nowhere near as tough as his bullying sister has been on you. It’s not even close. Plus, he owes you that sacrifice. A kindness you can offer in return is your blessing for him to remain connected to them – in ways that minimize the emotional cost to you. But there’s another thing you can do that would give you enormous badass capital: Calmly, without flinching, say to your sister-in-law: “I hear I’m the subject of a group chat. If true, then I hope you’ll have the courtesy to tell me what I’ve done to deserve that.”
I am not as generous as you are, so I would pay real money to watch her squirm. The payoff for you, though, would be the knowledge that you had the strength to do what she’s too craven to: express your concerns to a person’s face. I’m sorry you’re in this position.
Dear Carolyn: At a family gathering – actually, a farewell party for my dying sister – an older first cousin who had always been cold to me asked, “Do you know why I’ve always hated you? Because you were born.” How would you respond? I haven’t contacted her since, but hope she’s reading this.
M.: I know exactly how I’d respond: I’d sit there with my jaw in my lap, not forming a comeback, because that’s how I always respond to egregious things in the moment. Then I’d spend the next week or three thinking of everything I wish I had been able to say.
I hope then, as I hope for you, that I’d wake up one day to the end of this process as I embraced her remark as the perfect gift. Because it would liberate me from any pretense of having a relationship with or duty to this person. Ever. Ahh.
There’s this, too: If your mistake was being born, then it wasn’t anything you did. Which is probably the three-dayslate retort I would most wish I’d come to in the moment: “Oh, good – so it wasn’t anything I actually did. Whereas you just chose to be a monster out loud.”
More important than losing this cousin, however, is that you lost a sister. My sincerest condolences.