Throwaway because I have a sports focused main account that really doesn’t need this post history!
To be clear, my SIL Mandy is married to my husband’s brother, Mark. She is not my sister and mark is not my brother.
Mark is my best friend. We met at university, during our first week of classes, and became inseparable. In our last year of university I went to Mark’s family home for a long weekend and met his brother, my husband. I married him less than six months later, the summer after graduation. Mark met Mandy the same winter, at work. So we’ve been around each other for over a decade now.
Mandy never really warmed up to me, and I guess I didn’t to her either. She threw a fit when Mark asked me to be “best woman” for his wedding. She threatened to leave him over me being godmother to their daughter. So I knew she didn’t really like me but for years we settled into a rhythm. Friendly, but not friends.
Until last summer, when she approached my husband and said mark and I were having an affair. We were NOT, to be clear. But she pulled out some download of our conversations she got from his phone. Texts, Instagram messages, etc. She even had pictures of Mark coming over to my house, and me visiting his workplace to have lunch with him that she got from a private investigator. Nothing she found proved we were having an affair because we weren’t. Mark works for my husband, and I drop by some days to see if my husband is free for lunch. If he’s not, I go to mark’s floor and ask him, since he’s less likely to be busy. He comes by my house because we’re friends. I text him because we’re friends. My husband didn’t even read the messages Mandy printed out before asking her to leave. But it all blew up because obviously he told me and Mark about what she did, and it got round the whole family because we went NC with Mandy immediately.
It’s been like that ever since. Separate holidays, no attendance to kids birthday parties. It’s been tough on the extended family, I know that. But my in laws wedding anniversary is coming up in a couple of months and MIL is asking for everyone to get together for a trip to celebrate. She contacted me directly, which she never does, to ask me if I would be willing to put the grudge aside so the whole family could be together. I said no, and MIL accepted it, but I feel really bad about it.
The fact is, maybe I’m being petty. Because Mandy believed what Mandy believed. I don’t think she was pretending to believe there was an affair. So she had a suspicion, she played it out, she was wrong, maybe that should be water under the bridge. But I can’t get over that she read my private messages, and that she hired some stranger to stalk me. Some guy had my address, was following me around with my kid in the car? That is just so gross to me. She went through conversations where I was talking to my friend about private things, things I would not have wanted shared with her because she is not my friend. Even my husband had the decency not to read the messages because it’s my private business. But Mandy now knows about my family drama, who I’ve lent money to, about my other BIL’s pregnancy scare? All because she was so blinded by hatred of me she deluded herself into imagining an affair? It just makes me kind of sick to think about. And it’s so disrespectful to my marriage, and to my husband whom I love and everyone in our lives could see that. I just really really don’t want to be around her. But I’m thinking maybe that is ruining my in laws event, and maybe I’m just being selfish.
I feel like because this is such a touchy topic no one wants to be the one to tell me if I’m overreacting or dragging it. So I figured Reddit would definitely be honest haha.