horrible step-nephew
i don't know if anyone else out there has to deal with a crappy step-nephew, but i don't know what to do about mine. my brother remarried a few years back and his new wife has a son who for the longest time was the bane of my existence. i couldn't get away from him because they lived right next door and my nieces (who are far from perfect but much loved by me) were always around and he came over too. he used to piss all over the bathroom (long past the age that anyone would expect this from a kid), appropriated my things, and often broke them. not necessarily expensive things, but certainly stuff that didn't belong to him and sometimes things that were of great sentimental value and were irreplaceable. through all this his mother not once asked him to apologize, and certainly never did so herself -just acted like it was of no consequence. it brewed a lot of resentment on my part, despite my best efforts to take a deep breath and let it go. to top it all off, my SIL then did something out of spite that backfired on my elderly parents and ended up costing them thousands of dollars. in the best thing that ever happened in years, my bro and his wife and all the kids left town (ran away from the mess they'd made). unfortunately i have to have dinner with them tonight... and the last time i saw my SIL she screamed at the top of her lungs in front of god and the entire neighbourhood that i was a f*cking b*tch. i really don't know how to act in front of someone who treated me so badly. any advice? i could quite happily live the rest of life and never see her or her asshole-ic son again, but i can't hurt my parents by skipping out on dinner
Go along and act like they
Go along and act like they are the village idiots. Works for me!
Just keep your possessions with you at all time.
If this harridan creates a scene, stand up, smile an ap[ology at your parents and say "Time for me to leave. Have a lovely evening." Pay for your dinner and exit. No one has to stay to be target practice for an off-the-wall sister IL or step-relative.
thanks for the great
thanks for the great suggestions! the phone call especially is a great non-confrontational way out
hopefully i can keep my interactions with my SIL and her brat down to a single dinner a year... surely i can survive that...
wish i'd known about this site when they were next door, it would have been a great place to vent... i've always felt guilty for not liking the brat
GO! I absolutely HATED my
GO!
I absolutely HATED my sil. She was a druggie, pill popping, alcoholic. And I would avoid being around her even tho I adored my baby brother.
I wish he had left her, I wish I HAD spent time with him despite her being there, I wish and I wish and I wish, None of it brings him back!
He was out searching for HER because she had been out ALL NIGHT! He found her at a known drug house and was 3 miles from home when the front tire of his truck blew out, he lost control, flipped twice, was tossed from the truck and died on impact. SHE walked away! Literally.
He was one month shy of his 31st birthday. He was my best friend, my little brother. If I hadn't let HER influence my decisions, I'd have spent A LOT more time with him. Now I can't, it breaks my heart everyday.
So I say..go, pretend sil isn't even there. Once our time is gone we cannot get it back. Trust me the "what ifs" and "if only's" suck a lot more than the times you have to tolerate sil and her bratty kids!