Should I bite back or keep quiet?
My sister-in-law drives me mad. She’s always giving me unwanted advice about my children’s education, what to eat and how to live, and is very argumentative. She is also forever making snide digs about me not working – my husband owns a business and I am a full-time mother, an arrangement we are both very happy with. My husband and I live comfortably, whereas she is up to her neck in debt and hates her job. I really want to shout at her but I bite my tongue for the sake of others. Should I tell her how I feel or carry on keeping quiet?
I hear the frustration in your voice and yet I’m conscious that you are also aware of what is going on here. Your sister-in-law envies you – your life, your lifestyle – and, as we know, envy is a highly corrosive and destructive emotion. By giving you unwanted advice and picking fights, her unconscious is trying to triumph over you to compensate for a reality where you seem to her to be winning at everything.
In essence, your sister-in-law is an unhappy woman (happy people don’t need to be envious). This is why shouting at her is almost pointless, not least because it runs the risk potentially of providing her with another line of attack, which is that you shout. Apart from a brief moment of feeling as though you have asserted yourself and given as good as you got, you will, in effect, have lowered yourself to her sad, aggressive level.
You’re worth more than that, so be kind to yourself. In the first instance, think of your letter to me as letting off steam. Believe me, I do hear you: your sister-in-law comes across as a nightmare. But getting your irritation off your chest in private will help you to grow a thicker skin around her in person. Another idea is to take up an energetic form of sport because it’s a fantastic way of getting all that pent-up rage out of your system without attacking your embittered sister-in-law to her face.
Of course, a sister-in-law who is argumentative is another matter. If she is rude to you in your own home I believe you have the right to explain firmly yet politely that you will not tolerate such ill-mannered behavior. Irrespective of whether she is your husband’s sister or your brother’s wife, you may have a case for co-opting one of the men into joining you in conveying this message, explaining that her arguments are unacceptable.
But without patronizing her, your sister-in-law is someone who requires your compassion. The next time you’re on the receiving end of one of her barbs, try to hold on to this difference between the two of you. Even though her attacks come across as personal, it isn’t you she is attacking, but the idea of you and what you represent in her life. This process of distancing yourself from her attacks will help them feel less maddening.
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