My [23f] divorced older sister [27f] is having a relationship with my husband's [25m] younger brother [17m]

tl;dr: Title, I'm the only one who thinks it's super messed up and it's driving me crazy.

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First off the age of consent in the UK is 16, as far as the law is concerned, I understand full well that there is nothing illegal about the relationship, but that doesn't make this any less messed up.

The individuals involved in this event are:

• Zane [25] is my husband, we live in Zane's parents house here in the UK. We got married in November 2019 and the past few months have been the happiest period of my life. His family are second generation migrants with roots in Southeast Asia, whereas Alice and I are recent migrants from the same country.

• Alice [27] is my older sister. Previously married to her highschool sweetheart, but divorced when she was 24 just a few weeks short of their wedding anniversary. No children. Prior to the event Alice had been on her overseas final year of her double masters programme, which has since been extended due to the virus. My relationship with Alice has had ups and downs, she was the problem kid of the family when she was younger well into her mid 20s, which in part caused her marriage to fall apart. She has matured a lot since and we get along fine as sisters.

• Aiden [17] is Zane's brother and was a year 13 student of the local boarding school who occasionally came back home at the weekends. We are both the last child in our respective family and we get on really fine, I had always wanted a little brother as a little girl and he seems fine with me considering him as my own.

• Zane's parents [late 40s] are long term friends turned close business partners with mine [mid 50s]. They relocated back to our home country some years ago where my parents live and where their businesses are doing well.

I'll try my best to write on the event chronologically, but I apologise in advance if the timeline is a bit off.

In January, just after our honeymoon period, Zane, Zane's parents and I agreed to invite Alice to live with us to save money on living expenses. We live rent free in this house and family matters a lot to me so this was the least that we could do. Alice has been nothing short of a wonderful roommate since and helps around the house a lot despite her academic workload, and living together enabled us to have a good relationship as sisters that we never really had when we were younger.

In March, students were sent back home due to the virus and most educational institutions including Aiden's school and Alice's uni resumed learning by video conference. Alice opted to stay in the country for what I think are good reasons but are largely irrelevant to the story. The four of us started living together from then on. I never really paid attention to Aiden and Alice on the weekends prior but it surprised me that they acted pretty comfortable around each other like they had been long term friends. Since Aiden was aiming for maths or maths and finance, and they're both geniuses, I just thought that they shared a lot of common interests to bond over. Zane and I started to work from home around the same time and I actually ended up working longer hours that month than before the virus. The four of us were able to work out how we should share the tasks in the house and at that moment I was pretty grateful that Aiden and Alice were pretty keen to take up more responsibilities as Zane chose to take care of our cars' maintenance, garden, and general electrical works.

By mid April my workload had dropped significantly and I was working half my usual hours. I was now able to take care of the house but Aiden and Alice told me that they could go on just fine and I should just take a break instead, especially since both their exams were called off and they were no longer under the pressure to study as hard as before. Nevertheless I insisted that we share and they both chose the kitchen and parts of the general cleaning and I took over my and Zane's laundry and also general cleaning. This dynamic went on for quite a while. In retrospect there were little red flags in this period that I failed to notice. The banter between them sounded a little flirtatious, they took a long time in the kitchen together just to prepare pasta, they took unusually long time to shop for groceries, and probably the major one I feel dumb for failing to notice is Aiden started to make his uni plans around Alice's. I didn't kick up a fuss about them since I thought that would make me sound like an ungrateful b-tch.

Fast forward to August when Aiden's grades were announced. For Aiden, due to the uncertainty surrounding the grading system and the fact that his International Baccalaureate friends had received significantly lower grades than they had expected, it had been a pretty stressful period. However it came as no surprise to me that he got exceptionally high grades that would have gotten him into his dream uni. His results were delivered by email, in the morning Alice and Aiden were together in anxious anticipation in the back garden. I joined them just before they opened the mail but Aiden seemed too anxious to notice me. His first reaction after he had seen his results was to hug Alice very tightly, and then he planted a kiss on her lips. Alice noticed my presence mid kiss and pushed him away and explained like just about everyone caught in flagrante, that it "wasn't what it looked like". I congratulated the confused Aiden on the results of but afterwards I practically ran back to my room. I'm not sure how to describe my feelings back then but I was pretty upset and feeling guilty knowing I was partially responsible for them growing this close.

I think being caught drove them to come clean to Zane and me, at lunch break we sat down together and they confessed that they were in love with each other and at the time they had been official for 3 months. And that they were hiding it from us since they were worried it would make us upset. I had expected Zane to take issue with his brother being in a relationship with a much older woman but he just joked whether he should call Alice 'big sister in law' or 'little sister in law' in our native language. It was too much for me to take in so all I could do was just nod and smile in silence and return to my work.

That night I had problems sleeping and I stayed up way past my bed time. My bedroom has an en suite bathroom and water jug so Zane and I rarely need to go out of the bedroom in the early hours. That night I felt like I needed a cold drink to calm my nerves. Just as I was descending the stair case I saw Aiden, coming out of Alice's room, and I'm sure he saw me as well and ran off to his room. I clocked right away that my sister was having sex with someone who's practically a child.

I immediately called my mum to tell her what my sister had been up to, it was 2am in the UK but due to the timezone difference it was already late morning there. Again expecting that they will find this relationship abnormal as I do. Mum had me on loudspeaker for dad to join in but just like Zane, my parents didn't find anything wrong with it and in fact dad was already excited about getting his daughter marry his friend's son. Next morning Zane and Aiden's parents hear about it as well and Zane showed me his family group chat to me that they shared my parents' excitement.

Zane and I rarely prolong any argument about anything but we had our most intense argument on this topic. Zane thinks Aiden is very smart and mature for his age and he trusts his judgment to make "adult" decisions. I think Aiden is better off with a girl his age and he's still practically a child, the ages being a complete reverse of the usual gender dynamics doesn't make it any less creepy. Zane thinks I underestimate Aiden' intelligence and ended the argument saying he appreciates me looking out for his little brother but at the end of the day if Aiden is happy with it we shouldn't get in the way, but I think it hardly resolves anything.

Afterwards I noticed than Aiden and Alice started to maintain some sort of distance between each other in my presence and they started to avoid me as well. I tried my best to keep acting like nothing weird had ever happened but I'm pretty sure I failed miserably. Aiden apologised to me once but didn't make it clear what it was that he apologised for. Not that I think he needed to, I was beginning to think that maybe I'm actually the one in the wrong.

Alice left for her own flat two weeks after that event, Aiden left home earlier this month for uni as well. What I didn't know beforehand is Aiden refused the offer from his first choice uni for another admittedly great uni close to Alice's, and they seem to plan to live together. I just don't know what to even think of anymore, this is just wrong on so many levels and the fact everyone seems to be fine with it and that this wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for me really mess up with my head.

Please just tell me I'm not the crazy one here.

Submitted September 27, 2020 at 08:44PM by crazysis17272 https://ift.tt/3cJs5GY