Sorry, super long chunk of text and may not be fully coherent. Looking to see if anyone has good opinions on how to handle this situation at home, or can help with a different perspective. No trolls please.
TLDR: SIL treats my mum like a maid, eyes my dad’s money and influences my brother the same way. SIL went after my bro who is much younger after knowing he’s from a well-to-do family, and lives beyond her means. Extremely controlling/manipulative and immature, not a positive influence on my brother who also is not mature. Im torn over what to do.
– SIL chased my brother when she was in her late 20s and he barely an adult. Bro has low self-confidence so it wasn’t surprising he went with her (easy, no need to chase). Parents both separately raised concerns. This girl did not make a good impression from the start because the very first time she met my mum was when she was laying on my bro’s bed, and the first time she met my dad was coming down my bro’s room. But bro was defensive of his choice/her, and my parents did not want to make things ugly. SIL pressured my bro to get a house n marry her, her parents also rushed the wedding for idk what reason when the house isn’t even gonna be ready soon. They’re now married and in mid 30s/late 20s.
– Bro is the only married son, loves kids but SIL does not want kids, despite agreeing to have 1 before getting married! My poor dad still thinks he’s getting a grandkid.
– SIL is extremely immature and controlling. For e.g. insisted on tagging along for bro’s company trips and throwing a tantrum on the spot when he talks to females for work (even aunties). How do you work if u cannot talk to ANY female? Asks my brother to use the company car to help her run personal errands during working hours. Asks my brother to drive to CBD to fetch her home during peak hours. Gets unhappy when my bro needs to OT, telling him he does not get paid OT and so should not OT so much. You may wonder why my brother hasn’t been fired from his job. That’s because he works for a related family business, or else im sure this girl would have gotten him fired.
– During their wedding she refused to let our family take a photo together without her family. She glared at my brother on stage when he told her to let my family take a photo first before her family/a combined one, and proceeded to call her family up. Why cant my family just take a photo? Bear in mind the wedding was fully paid for by my dad, and we also kindly gave her family more tables than for our family.
– She wears branded clothes, buys many pairs of expensive shoes which she sometimes has to resort to hiding at our house because she just has too many, fresh manicure every 2-3 weeks, expensive toiletries etc. I earn 3X her salary, but im sure her expenses are higher than mine and in no way sustainable, unless she thinks marrying into my family is her financial freedom plan because her family is not well to do and will not be able to support her. Instead of properly saving up, they had to rely on my dad to help pay for their house and wedding which she wanted. Her parents even had a “minimum” sum to marry their daughter, which my dad paid for. And even though my dad paid for everything and gave them more tables, there was this last spare table that my brother wanted split amongst both families because there a few scattered guests left on the guest list for both sides, but her father insisted on not sharing tables (which was fine if he didn’t want to share to avoid awkwardness and was ok to let us have the table, but no he wanted the table for his side even though they already had more tables than us). Maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
– My dad made it a point not to spoil us growing up. Before her, my bro was completely fine with public transport. With her, whenever they go out, they cannot take public transport and have to use one of my parents’ cars, yet they don’t top up the cash card or petrol, so transport is completely free and cheaper than public transport for them. So conveniently passing their transport costs to my dad as well. They cannot afford a car on their own, yet she cannot seem to be able to do without a car and wants to be driven around in a luxury car. She also insisted on going for a very expensive honeymoon which costs 3x of their combined monthly income. Till today, my brother still gets mum to buy certain daily necessities for him, while his wife is spending money like free.
– They are clearly living a lifestyle beyond their means and still taking advantage of family resources even at their age. I do not see them striving to get a better job to finance the lifestyle they want. I don’t know if it’s that they’re just not financially aware, or if they are banking on my dad financing them their whole life, and my brother’s inheritance as retirement plan. Either way it’s a worry. My dad has shared with us very early on about the assets he has, to show us what we can achieve if we too work hard and start investing early, but I think it had the unintended effect of making my bro extremely attractive to my SIL, and the opposite effect of making my bro and his wife think they don’t have to because they can rely on his money.
– She controls even what my brother eats, down to telling him when he can eat meat and when he cannot, presumably because she wants him to watch his health, but she herself eats unhealthy suppers and gets my brother to buy/prepare it for her.
– On top of these things, my biggest beef is how my SIL treats my mum, and how she influenced my bro to treat her. SIL treats my house like a 5* hotel and my mum like a maid (we hv no maid cause we don’t like strangers at home). She stays over every weekend full board, barely interacts with anyone, hogs the toilet creating a major inconvenience to my life, makes my mum wash her clothes/towels, uses a fresh big towel everyday, sometimes my mum even has to give up the car so SIL can get chauffeured around (imagine MIL taking public transport while SIL gets chauffeured in her car! I try to convince my mum to grab instead but she’s frugal that way). SIL does not contribute to my mum/family in any way. Yes, my mum washes our clothes too, but at least we help her out with other chores and occasionally treat her or buy her stuff. Basically this woman treats my mum like her own mum when it comes to chores, but does not treat my mum like her own mum when it comes to being a good daughter. My mum even makes sure the toilet is clean before she comes over every weekend, and I just feel sad this is all for such an unappreciative DIL who does not deserve any of her kindness.
– My brother used to be a very sweet boy, sweet to my mum. But with SIL he’s changed. For context, my parents don’t have a good r/s cause of a huge mistake my dad made, so understandably the kids have always been closer to mum. But ever since she came into the picture, my bro started being partial to my dad to gain access to his resources (car, money for house, wedding, reno etc). It has become so obvious to the extent that he can do nothing for mother’s day, but specially get my dad a gift with a sweet note for father’s day. Don’t ask me how I know, but we know it was her idea for the father’s day gift. I could tell my mum was hurt, but she could only silently bear with it. She says that even if my SIL is a bad influence, my brother is at fault as well for not being able to stand up to her. So what, do we just let it be? I also find it extremely fake that they’re nice to my dad because of his money, and I find it hard to accept my sweet brother is now such a person ever since she came into his life.
So u can see why I don’t trust and really dislike this woman. With her behaviour it’s hard to not think she went after my brother for the wrong reasons since day 1 and has been a very bad influence on him in all ways. Sure, my brother has his own faults, but that does not remove the fact that my SIL is not a good influence. I wont be surprised that if needed, she will manipulate things within my family through my brother to get what she wants, and I would hate for that to happen.
I know my mum is concerned about things, but chooses to bear with it and continues to treat my SIL very nicely because she knows his son is just so blinded, and will blindly side his wife over her. I honestly don’t know what he sees in her and why he cannot stand up to her, cause it’s not like she has either inner or external beauty. I just find it extremely frustrating and sad that my mum has to be the one giving in/silently bearing with things, after sacrificing so much her whole life for her kids.
I don’t know what I can do. I am frustrated because I want to stand up for my mum. And even though my r/s with my dad isn’t completely warm, he is still my dad and I don’t want to see him being taken advantage of by my SIL. Honestly I’d rather he donates all his money to charity if it means she wont get a cent of it. Although my dad initially had reservations about her, I can feel him trying to build a r/s with her because of my bro. because my bro is playing the nicest/closest son to him now, while the rest of my siblings and I are ok but not completely warmed up to him cause of past trauma, so perhaps he feels that need to maintain the r/s with my bro in case he’s the only one who will tend to him in future. Im pretty sure the rest of my siblings and I wont leave dad alone in future, but we just don’t see the need to be disingenuously nice/close to him. However Idk if dad knows they’re nice only because they need his money. Plus while mum is aware of the things my SIL has done, dad isn’t aware cause my bro asked my mum not to tell.
But I know that taking any action would create a lot of tension at home which I don’t know I can deal with. Things have just began to be peaceful at home, at least on the surface, after a decade of drama and turmoil. At the same time, having to live in the same space as someone like my SIL is killing me, and I honestly loathe the weekends because of her. Part of me wants to just move out so I can turn a blind eye and deaf ear. However I know mum does not want me to move. Since my parents don’t have a good r/s, I also cannot get my dad to step in and tell my brother off on mum’s behalf even though I know my bro is more likely to listen to my dad because of his money. Plus, since my bro is playing nicest son now, a small part of me is afraid my dad may actually side SIL/bro if I were to bring all my concerns up, and that would surely take away all the progress I have made with my dad to try to maintain a peaceful r/s with him for the sake of my mental health. If I were to tell my bro/SIL off directly, that would also make things very awkward at home, and possibly forever. I couldn’t care less about my SIL, but I still care about my brother.