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Problematic in-laws and insulting sister-in-law
I got married this year on March.Mine is a typical modern day Indian arranged marriage, arranged by both the parents.However we met for few times before our wedding.Initially after introduction my sis-in-law was very good to me,we were good friends.But my relationship with her started gradually deteriorating when my would be in-laws started interfering in my life and started blaming me for trivial reasons.Two months prior to my wedding my sis-in-law severely insulted me as she thought I was unfit for her brother and she told me to get lost.Her parents and brother literally coerced me into talking to her and med things with her.I did.Everything became normal again.After marriage when my parents-in-law again started poking their nose in my lifestyle and dictated me how I should keep wearing vermilion powder and bangles to symbolize that I am a married woman and my mother-in-law started nasty mind game with me to show me bad and demean me in front of my father-in-law and my husband. So one day I got furious and told on them that I don't have faith upon all these bangles and vermilion but still I wear them when I don't go outside as people in USA keep looking at me everytime I go outside wearing all those things and I feel awkward. But they kept arguing and dictating me. After this incident, my SIL contacted my husband through whatsapp and told him that I am a mental patient and my mom couldn't educate me and I am an imbecile and all nasty things about me and also said that she was going to boycott me and my husband from her life. She blocked me from whatsapp and facebook and also excommunicated my husband. Then I found an old chat between two of them when she previously insulted me before my wedding. She had written to my husband that their father is so powerful that he can cause damage to my parent's reputation and destroy them but as his son was in love with me he kept his mum. She also had texted,"i have seen her father also avoids her because of her improper behaviour and her mom could not enculture her so she misbehaves and she is mental patient".After this, on the festival of Rakshabandhan she wished my husband and my husband mended things with her. But they again fought as my husband asked her to talk to me. She didn't listen and did not talk to me. After 3months has passed, on my birthday she sent me birthday wishing cake-candle pictures on whatsapp and I responded with a "thanks". She asked how I was so I replied with a "good". But I don't know what has happened to me. I have never felt this way for anybody no matter how hard I fought with anyone I never hated them. But it seems I can't stand her face or topic related to her. My blood literally starts to boil if I hear her name. I can't digest the fact that she not only insulted me but also said nasty thing about my parents and how her father can ruin my parents life. She might have uttered those things angrily but who gave her right to talk about my parents when they are not in the scene. Now my husband and parents-in-law want me to forgive her and mend things with her but I am unable to do so. She infuriate anger, so badly anger and hatred in me. I cry for hours because of this negativity her very name generates in me. What should I do?
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Your forgiving her to the point it no longer bothers you to hear her name, or you want to be close friends, is not the answer. Just by what you wrote, I will share what impression this has made on me.
At first I thought you were talking of an arranged marriage in India until you mention them wanting you to wear bangles and vermillion powder to signal to others that you are married but you get strange looks from people in the USA so I now assume you live in the States. The problem with being told you have to wear this as you leave the house is that, only Indian Men living in the US are the only ones who are going to know you are married. THe majority of citizens of the US, like me, are not going to know what this means. I understand keeping some customs even when not in the country of your birth. But requiring you to do this when it won't mean anything to most people, is a waste of time and a useless custom here. Like most people who are married, wearing a ring on the ring finger of your left hand should work just as well in the U.S.because everyone knows what that means.
I don't know how old you are but I assume you are at least out of high school. So here in the U.S. a person is legally considered an adult at 18 years of age. If you are that age or older, then you are an adult in the U.S. where I assume you are living. As an adult, you no longer need allow parents or others to decide what is right for you. You are the only one accountable for your life. They have their own lives to live out to the best of their ability. So it started with the arranged marriage. If you wanted to marry this man and loved him, then thats good. But if only he felt he loved you and you did not have the same feelings back, then in this country, a person has a right to decide for themselves and usually will not marry let alone date someone whom they feel no desire or love for. I have heard about love coming in time. My parents had that kind of love, it is the loving each other like a best friend and that is only one part of a solid foundation to marriage. The other is that both have the same romantic desire for each other and are in love with each other. I know from my mom that they did not kiss, but had sex out of duty to produce children of which I am one. We are not Indian but German and many German men died in the World war 2 and my Mom felt it best to find a German outside of the country who might be richer. She made a bad decision at age 17 and married somone she did not know, only someone she had written to, and there was no romantic connection between them. So when Mom reached her 40s, she was done with no love or romance and divorced my Dad to marry another. So just because it is an ancient custom done in India by many, does not make it the best thing for both people.
Breaking away from family traditions is hard if you are given ultimatums of what you must comply with or risk whatever threats they give. This is all about control. This control is evident in meddling in the lives of others rather than working on improving your own life. It is evident and you see it when you said they stuck their noses where they don't belong. You may not have minded going along with this decision to marry but when you did so, in the minds of members of both families, you were now someone to control, like a puppet on a string, doing whatever anyone asks of you.
You mention the threat of SIL using her parents as a threat to ruin yours. Before she really knew you, making such assumtions can not come just from her mind alone. It is more likely she is only copying what she sees and hears from her own parents. I am sure they talk often behind the backs of others, not just you but especially you since you were to marry their son. You said he fell in love with you. If so, then he likely asked his parents to arrange a marriage to you with your parents. If his parents did not like your family for some reason, maybe feeling your family was below their class, or station in life (something important in India but not as important in the U S ) That would explain why all of them would be sticking their nose in all the time, trying to make trouble. You did say you were told his Dad has kept silent and has not caused trouble for your family but only because his son loved you. If I understand correctly, you heard this from SIL, not from the Father of your husband, or as something his Mom or Dad told your husband. So you can't know if this is really true. But the things said to your face is enough to condemn them of being mean, evil spiteful people.
If this man really loves you, more than the traditions of Indian people, then he should be willing to stick up for you, believe you when you tell him all the things they are saying and doing. Threatening your parents is to make sure you do not complain, tell anyone or do the opposite of what they want. Your choosing not to wear the powder and bangles outside in public, is one way you have stood up to them, so I applaud you on that. However that is not good enough. The only thing his family or the SIL has as a hold over you is threats. It could be empty threats they would never csrry out or maybe they would. But they know they have no other way to control the situation but through threats. By the way, your SIL sounds like a 12 or 13 year old by the way she is acting and the things she says about you. This is the kind of stuff you hear from middle school students here in the U.S. , lots of insulting and being mean and meddling. So if anyone has serious mental issues, its her.
The real problem here is that your husband is going along with all of the insults against you by only asking that you all come to peace with each other. You can try to make peace til the day you die but if the other people are unwilling to make peace, then it won't happen.
Either your husband is too simple minded to see what is really happening or maybe he only loves you enough to make it work for him but not enough to make it work for you. The moment he heard insults before your marriage, he should have told his sister that he will not tolerate that behavior and that if she could not at the very least hold her tongue when it comes to you, that he will not want to see her ever again. The moment she called you a mental patient and imbecile and that your mom was unable to train you properly, the husband to be, should have said that he will not allow that behavior. My guess is that either he is more into following whatever rules and laws and traditions are taught in Indian society, or he is afraid of what terrible things his parents would do to him for defying their wishes.From what you said, she is the one who is reckless and out of control and won't listen to or be disciplined by her mom. A common mental trick people with bad issues do is to take what their own problems in character are and point to someone else and say that is the other persons character fault. It is a way of deflecting attention away from themselves so no one looks close enough to see they are the one with the issues. The festival you mentioned, I looked up as I am not familiar with it. It seems a celebration of the close bond between siblings so she probably did only what was expected of her, to ask your husband to mend his relationship with her so they wouldn't be making a mockery of the meaning of Raksha Bandhan.
So the end result is that you did not just marry him, but you married his dad, his mom and his sister, all of whom are trying to play the role of your Indian husband. From some of the terrible stories I have heard compared to the rights of women in the U.S. , women in Indian are not people, they are property and as a piece of property, in Indian culture they must do whatever their husband says, because he owns them, whether it is right or wrong. Not all people still stick to cultural ways but many do.
From the little I know from a daughter going to an Ananda community meeting place based in Hinduism and teachins of Jesus, there doesn't seem to be much joy or loving coming from the members of the in-law family. They don't seem to be really following the teachings of the ascended masters to be more like them, which is the natural procession for us all. They most certainly are not behaving as if they really believe in treating others as they wish to be treated. It is not a matter of one being anothers elder but it is the golden rule which is found around the world in many beliefs and religions. In yours it is: This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you.
Mahabharata 5,1517
If I were you, I would be scared to stay in this kind of family for the rest of my life. There is no limit to might do to make your life and that of your parents miserable. You might just talk to your parents and tell them what is happening, the things said. If It was me, I'd be recording conversations on phone, saving texts on line, anything that would prove they indeed are making threats or treating you with no respect. Your parents may not believe otherwise. If you had the backing of your parents to pull out and divorce and be gone from the threat of this family, perhaps things would become happy again. I know you are more concerned with feeling hatred for the SIL. You are in a bad place, asked to forgive and mend things with her. I already know it won't work because of her. You on the underhand sound like a gentle person, willing to make amends but you have already done that only to have her come back and treat you terrible again. Since it has happened over and over, much of what you are feeling is not as much hatred as it is frustration that all the efforts you make end up fruitless, the pressure you get from other family members to make things work out, perhaps some of knowing it is right to forgive. Yes, forgiving is not for the sake of the wrongdoer. They don't have to hear it or accept it, it is something for you, to clear your heart of any concerns, feeling light hearted instead of weighed down by negativity which will only eat away at you. I was married to a man who ended up being verbally abusive. I have forgiven him. However forgiving a person does not mean you allow yourself to continue to be subjecting to terrible treatment. That causes stress which as I found out over the years will affect either your mental health or physical health. For me, i was plagued with all sorts of stress caused conditions and illnesses until the day I took my life in my own hands and made a decision I will never regret. I left him. I realized that I was allowing myself to be treated that way by staying. HE had broken all his marriage vows of how to treat me as a wife so I was not bond by those anymore. Likewise, you are not being treated with love and respect by his family which means they have broken the golden rule. As souls, they may be very young and immature, I don t know but this is a law they shoud be striving to learn. If they can't treat you good and live by the teachings they were brought up on, then they are choosing to not comply, and that means they are making decisions all the time to do the opposite of what they know they ought to do. As it was a poisonous thing for me to remain with a husband who treated me like crap, it is the same for you to be treated like this by his family. If he can't stand up to his family, tell them it will not be accepted or tolerated and if they persist, that they will lose him as their son, then they either choose to change or lose their son. And if will not be the fault of your husband, doing something wrong. He does the right thing if he stands up for you. It is honorable to show them how he treasures you so much it hurts him to see them treat you badly. I know a saying Of Jesus was, if you do it to the least of these, you have done it to me. He meant good things but it goes the same for bad things. They are choosing to treat their own son, and for sis, her own brother, as lower than a worm. In an ideal situation, your husband would have said this long ago and when you were still treated badly, he would have cut off communication with them, moved away, changed phone numbers and left their negativity aside. After enough years, the stress of this will affect you as it did me. I am much healthier, happier and even look better as my own children told me after I left the ex husband. I know he isn't the issue of the problem but if he doesn't stand up for you to the point of making such drastic changes to protect you, then he is part of the problem. This is all I have to say and hopefully it will help you decide what you can do to make things better in your life. I can't tell you what to do, just share my take on whats going on and warnings to your health if this persists over the years.
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