Family can get messy, but truly, sometimes it's enough to be a reality TV show. One woman is learning that lesson the hard way after a series of unfortunate and terrible events led to a rather complicated and awkward situation involving her FIL and her older sister.
Sadly, the story begins at the woman's stillborn daughter's funeral.
"[My FIL] has never been a great dad to my SO, abusive to him when he was a child, walked out on them when my SO was about 13, chose his new wife over his family," she wrote. He's made an effort with my SO over the last few years and [they] have a much better relationship as adults. In September our only child was stillborn, and at the funeral FIL met all of my family for the first time. Since then he's been chatting to my sister."
According to the woman, things got really intense, really quickly.
"They both have mental health problems and she likes to 'fix' people," the woman explained. "Apparently he took this as she was interested, hes been commenting on all of her facebook posts, messages her daily and makes inappropriate comments to her. Things like how beautiful she looks and if they were together he'd spoil her. He'll share memes that are a bit vulgar and tag my sister in them. He got drunk a couple weeks ago and made a big facebook post about her and messaged her telling her how he feels about her."
The only problem? The sister is 100% not interested in any of this.
"She told him this a couple times but he hasn't relented," the woman further explained. "My SO hasn't done anything or talked to him about it and I'm getting close to talking to him myself, I'm just concerned he's going to pull the 'everyone's ganging up on me card' and leave again. He's making my sister really uncomfortable, and it's causing tension between me & SO. He can't seem to take no for an answer and I don't want things to be difficult between them. We'll be getting married soon, as well as all the other family occasions in between and after and I just don't know what to do."
People agreed it was all around icky.
Many people questioned why the sister hasn't just blocked him, but the woman couldn't for the life of her explain why, and readers took it upon themselves to explain why blocking is fully necessary.
"Your sister needs to block FIL on social media, and to tell him to have no more contact with her," one person wrote point-blank. "It might be worth the money to have an attorney write a cease and desist letter to him. She then needs to keep a written log of any further contacts. It might be wise to construct a summary of past contacts, also. If FIL continues his nonsense, she should see about getting a restraining order."
Even though people were empathetic that her SO suffered abuse at his hands, they also believed he needed to step up.
"That his father may take off again because his feelings got hurt is not your problem," consoled one reader. "He's supposedly an adult, I'm sure he demands he be treated as one — well, here's his adult repercussions. If the [expletive] flakes out, too bad. Doesn't sound as though you're losing anything important.
The person continued, "Regardless, it still isn't your problem. However, that SO is willing to standby while your sister is sexually harassed is a problem. He should not be twiddling his thumbs on the sidelines for fear dad may leave again. That he's even hesitated to speak up is indicative of more issues at hand than just your FIL's nastiness."
Some said it really is on one person to say something: her sister.
"I think your sister is a grown woman who if she really doesn't like this, can shut it down," said one reader. "She needs to stop chatting with him, stop trying to fix him and if that doesn't work, block him."
It sounds like this woman has a few hard choices to make even while she's grieving. Here's to hoping they can resolve the issue quickly.
