My (25F) sister’s (32F) brother-in-law (27M) is driving me up the wall with his inappropriate comments but everyone else thinks he’s making harmless jokes and I’m overreacting.

I’ve been staying with my sister since the first lockdown. Her husband was stuck abroad on business and she needed help with childcare. My roommate was a COVID sceptic and I didn’t want to stay with her because I didn’t trust her to be careful, so it was a win-win situation. My lease expired two months into the first lockdown and my sister suggested I just move in permanently until the world went back to normal, which is what I did.

About 5 months ago, my sister’s brother-in-law came (I’ll refer to him as Daniel) to stay here too. Things have been a nightmare ever since.

My sister has been with her husband for 13 years, so I’ve known him and his brother since I was 12. When I was 14, I had an embarrassing crush on Daniel. Both of our families made a big deal about it when they found out and he has used every opportunity since to make fun of me for it. My sister got engaged when I was 17 and he spent the entire engagement party asking me if I was fantasizing about it being him and me up there. On their wedding day, he kept asking me if I knew what the bride and groom did on their wedding night and made a bunch of inappropriate comments about us and wedding nights. Our families used to spend Christmas together so you can imagine he took every single opportunity to take digs at me.

To be completely upfront, we slept together about three Christmases ago. It was more of a “get it out of your system and never talk about it again” situation, and it seemed to work because he stopped making jokes. Until now.

Ever since he moved in, he’s been more insufferable than before. He makes sly comments about that Christmas and he isn’t even subtle about it. He’s so obvious that my sister and her husband pulled me aside to ask if something had happened between us. I lied and said nothing had happened only for him to go and tell his brother everything.

Recently he’s started intentionally sitting right next to me even if there’s plenty of other empty chairs. This happened a few days ago and I got up straight away and moved. My eldest niece noticed and made a comment about it. She said something like “Aunty doesn’t like you Uncle Daniel” and this genius decided to reply with ”Aunty is scared she’ll fall in love with me again” so now I have my nieces thinking it’s true too.

I finally had enough and complained to my sister and she thinks he’s just joking, and he’s always been this way. She told me to just ignore him because they’re harmless and he doesn’t mean anything bad by it. I’m honestly this close to just yelling at him but I don’t want to do that in case my nieces overhear, and it upsets them.

So, what can I do? How do I get him to stop? I’m starting to think my only option is to make stupid comments back, but I don’t want to lower myself to his level and a part of me is worried that would just encourage him.

TL;DR – My sister’s brother-in-law and I have known each other since I was 12. When I was 14 it got out that I had a crush on him, and our families made a huge deal about it. Ever since he’s taken every opportunity to tease me relentlessly over it. We’re currently living together and after 5 months of his teasing, I’ve had enough.

Submitted January 29, 2021 at 12:23PM by ThrowRAunfunnyb https://ift.tt/3crvX14