My BIL [32M] insulted me [24F] at a wedding. I don’t want a relationship with him at all, and my wife [31F] is caught in the middle.

Hello, r/relationships! I’ve gotten great advice here in the past, so I’m coming to you again with a new issue. Using a throwaway of course. Sorry, this is kind of long.

My wife is one of six children. I get along with all of her siblings and their SOs well, except for one. My brother in law Eric is just a really rude person. Combative, always needs to be right, very opinionated, but also plays the victim and the “woe is me” card often. Everyone in the family seems to have accepted that this is just how he is, how he’s always been, and is never going to change. However, no one really wants to be around him. I myself avoid him at all costs.

I think it’s relevant to say that I come from a pretty toxic family dynamic. I’ve cut my dad out of my life completely after some disrespectful things he did. The way I grew up and the things I’ve experienced have made me very intolerant to BS and being mistreated. I don’t have people in my life who make me unhappy.

Back when my wife and I first started dating, four years ago, she brought me home for thanksgiving to meet her family. I was intimidated and nervous, but excited. Dinner was going well until her brother got drunk and, at the table, pointed at me and said, “you will never be a Doe (their family name)”. I don’t remember the context, but it came out of nowhere. I remember being mortified and not understanding why he would say something like that to me. Everyone kind of shrugged it off and their mom (my now MIL) admonished him and we all moved on with the evening. I never forgot that moment, though, and kept him at arms length since.

Over the years, Eric has acted pretty awful and immature. Wearing a politically controversial item of clothing at our engagement party (the first time our families met each other). Yelling at his brothers on our wedding day (they were all groomsmen) and carrying around this attitude the entire day, making everything about him. Insulting my family by making racist comments at our wedding. At my bachelorette party, his wife (who I invited) got drunk and cried about how mean he is to her and how he calls her stupid, useless, worthless, etc. Needless to say, our relationship has totally deteriorated and I want nothing to do with him. Which brings me to last night...

We were at my wife’s cousins wedding. Eric and his wife and baby were there. I said a polite hello, but didn’t say another word to him the entire time. When my wife was in a conversation with him, I went to talk to other people. I was being polite and not engaging, because I genuinely have no interest in interacting with him. Everything was fine until dinner. We are all sitting at the same table (me and my wife, Eric, their other siblings, and Mom) and Eric is across from me. At one point, he locks eyes with me and says, “Did you send in your papers?”

I reacted with, “excuse me?” He replied “Your social security papers, to change your name.” (We got married three months ago) I said, “Oh.. no, not yet... we’re traveling soon and I didn’t want to have to get a new passport.”

Before I can finish saying, “passport” he says, “well then I guess you’re really not a Doe.”

I didn’t want to cause a scene at dinner, but I couldn’t hold back the “Are you f***** serious?” that came out of my mouth. I turned to my wife and asked if she was going to say something to her brother. She gave a halfhearted attempt at telling him not to make those kinds of jokes. Eric then launched into calling me a liar, saying the initial incident never happened, and that I made it up. I turned to my wife and asked her if she remembered it happening. Her response was, “I’m not sure.” I left the table and went down to the hotel lobby to get away from him and compose myself.

My wife came after me, as did my sister in law and mother in law. I couldn’t hold back the tears (I was a little tipsy) and kept asking why he hated me so much. I also told my wife that I didn’t feel like she stuck up for me, and she kept making excuses for her brother, saying “that’s just how he is” and “just ignore him”. We went back to the wedding to toast and dance a bit, and she tried to get him to apologize. He kept calling me a liar and the attempt basically went nowhere. We left shortly after. On the way home, I told her that I don’t ever want to be in a room with him again, and that I didn’t feel like she had my back. She said it wasn’t fair of me to make her choose between home and him (I’m not) and that she did defend me by trying to get him to apologize (he didn’t). I feel really disappointed by the way she reacted to the situation and things between us are tense now.

Am I in the wrong for not wanting a relationship with him? I know it’s not realistic to NEVER see him again, as we all get together for family vacations and holidays. I just hate interacting with him and can’t bring myself to excuse his behavior. But at the same time, he is my wife’s older brother, and she loves him. I would never try to keep her from her family. I wish I could make her understand how it feels when he treats me like garbage. Reddit, what do I do??

TL;DR my brother in law is a terrible person and i want nothing to do with him. It’s creating a wedge between me and my wife and I feel like she doesn’t have my back. How do I resolve this?

Submitted September 30, 2018 at 04:09AM by throwyourbrotheraway https://ift.tt/2DEMejv