Future Sister in Law Overstepping

Hello,

Recently we hosted my fiance's mother and sister in our home for a few nights before his mother was to fly back to her home country (she came here for the superior medical services).

He only has the two close family members and speaks to them on the phone daily. They relied on each other heavily in their corrupt home country just to survive, but my fiance and his sister have lived here fairly consistently for around a decade.

The mother, only having been here for a few months, was a delight and a near perfect house guest whereas his sister was constantly overstepping, explictly expressing her doubt with me, and cleaning and rearranging my home.

I am not a particularly neat person, but I made sure to dedicate days before their arrival to clean the house so that it would be more than just presentable for our two guests. My fiance helped as well, but two days before they arrived he had a scheduled outpatient surgery, so the last legs of the cleaning and his post-op care were on my shoulders alone.

When they arrived I had to rush to complete one of the rooms while he visited with his family (the mother only speaks Russian, a language I cannot speak nor understand). They insisted that they didn't expect perfection, and the sister kept coming into the unfinished room to ask me questions my fiance could easily handle, lingering a while to watch me work. Once I had finished the final dusting and vacuuming, I moved the luggage (the fiance was not allowed to lift anything more than 5 pounds) to the cleaned room, opened the closet to show them where they can hang their cloths if they wanted, and offered to get them as many fresh towels as they wanted and their preference on pillows.

I walked back in with the towels and the sister is already moving things in the room and opening dresser drawers. I should explain here that our guests were given our onr and only bedroom to sleep in while we used a very uncomfortable futon on the floor in another room, so those drawers She was yanking open had my underwear in them. My fiance had already told them which piece of furniture he used and which one I used for our clothes, so what gives?

We all went to bed late that night. Me setting up our own sleeping situation and preparing for breakfast the next day while the other three talking in russian. The guests turn in at around one in the morning, and I don't get to bed until three. I wake up at nine the next day to make a fresh quiche with hashbrowns and sliced fruit (I am aiming to impress and get respect from the mother here, but I busted my hump!), and when we sat down to eat, the sister immediately grabs the knife and cuts ME a slice then one for herself and then one for their mother (fiance has a speacial post-op diet). Mine is about half the size of the mother's, and the sisters is only slightly smaller than the mothers serving ME a laughable portion in my own home. She then outright watched me serve myself the hashbrowns I made as though I was going to dump the whole bowl out on my plate, and while she did speak to me in english during the meal, it was only to translate what her motger was saying. The exact same thing happened the second morning, only I had forgotten to grab a knife so she jumpped up, snatched one out of the utensil drawer she had not been shown to, and served me, then herself, and then her mother again with similar portions.

The girl is a size 4/extra small wearing wafer thin rail of a gal. There is so little meat there that she looks bobble-headed, and while I am plus sized, I am not obese. I eat one to two normal sized meals a day, and I work out. I just have a slower metabolism, but this girl is serving me miniature portions of food I made to me in my home. What. The. Heck.

Beyond that, she was cleaning the dishes that I used to prepare the meal, she moved our living room furniture, and reorganized the bathroom counter. I had told her time and time again to just relax, let me handle it, and to just enjoy being free of housework.

So she reorganized and cleaned the countertops as I slept.

We went to a nearby island. The mother hadn't seen the ocean before. 95% of the conversation is in russian, and I am forced to drive in near perfect silence with no idea what is going on. The only times I'm spoken to are when my fiance translates a joke and when the sister is telling me how to drive. It takes more than an hour with no traffic one way, and more than two coming back. On the island she is on my case about parking, about how long it took (come on, girl, an island in spring break is gonna have traffic.), and makes note that it isnt as pretty and clear as it is on the beach she goes to (which is over 3 hours away). We are only there for about 45 minutes, and then they ask to leave. We hit rush hour on the way back, and everyone but me falls asleep in the car. Again, I get nothing but silence.

The next day we go to the zoo. It is more local, but traffic is terrible and there are barricades because of the spring break traffic causing me to have to loop around several times before deciding to drop off people at the front and hoof it in from a long distance. The whole time I was getting suggestion after suggestion, none of which I could act on due to being in the wrong lane or beyond the turn she wanted me to make. This coming from the girl who uses gps to find her way to work on a route she takes daily. Then she wanted a map of the zoo and kept asking me for one, but I am no kiosk nor am I a storefront, so needless to say I didnt have one. I finally managed to get one on my phone only to then be questioned on if I knew how to use the darn thing.

Everyone got hot and tired, so they insisted on leaving, but they exited the zoo from the second entrance on the opposite side of the park from the car. I find a posted map, and figure out where I was and where the car was, and she hops up stating that she would walk with me. She then.. in front of the map.. started asking me if I kne where we were, where the car was, how to get to the car, how long it would take, and if I would be able to pick up her mother and brother with a tone of doubt in her voice. I about lost it then. I wanted to tell her that I was going to leave them there to be street people because I don't use the wayzz app.

Ugh. I talked to my fiance about all of this, and at first he was concerned but didnt even know where to begin. When I pressed he told me to stop being so pessimistic. I still think she was being incredibly rude on several fronts, and I've lost his ear on the issue because he feels like it is in the past and I am just brooding.

I don't know. They left yesterday after she called me out on eating chicken fried chicken because it was fried and she "forced gerself to eat the white bread" I brought to the table "so no one else had to gain weight."

Well in my opinion it isn't your sister in laws fault (it is but there is nothing YOU can do).

This is your fiance's responcibility. If he allows them to be so disrespectful to you there isn't much to be done.

You could also correct this behavior on your own but it doesn't sound like you have support of your fiance, so you likely wouldn't get anywhere.

By the sound of it he would support them and not you.

It would be an easy fix with me. I would tell them cut the crap or find another place to stay. Super easy.

But it sounds like he thinks it is better to upset you than them.

Just know that if you marry him it sounds like his family will be a higher priority than you.

Is your fiance a citizen of your country?

He is a citizen here, yes. His sister is still going through the last of the process toward getting her official citizenship, but she has had her greencard and student/work visas for years. Before even entering the country they owned and operated a private school for English language and american culture, so they certainly understand most of the social mores and norms.

This was the second time that he has seen his mother in over four years, so I understand the excessive talking in russian. I just didn't appreciate the hours of being kept out of the conversation though I understand that it is important for him to catch up with his mother. His sister has been hosting the mother at her house during her visit since mid February, and in the past we have been able to visit his sister and be guests at her house, so I had hoped that she would be willing to speak with me while they caught up.

When we visited her house in the past it was a bigger mess than ours, the fiance and I had to share a towel for what was planned as a four night stay, there was dog hair on everything (she has 5 german shepherds and a miniature husky which barks all of the time), we have had to stay put for hours while she repaired/took a bike ride with her fiances' kid which caused hours of delay and ended up cancelled the plans that we had made, and as tacky as this will sound... her own fiance is well over 350 pounds, and I am absolutely no where near there yet I get the smallest portions when meals are served over there. The hypocrisy is part of what drives me up the wall.

In the past my fiance has gone to bat against her for rude and presumptuous behavior, so he knows that she is capable of it. After the bike ride thing they fought and then didn't speak for a couple of weeks. In the end, however, they're such a tight knit group that everything seems to blow over rather than getting actually resolved. He did offer to talk to her about how she is treating me, but then he admitted to never witnessing the food stuff, her asking obnoxious questions, etc. If I had asked him to speak up and she denied it or gas lighted the situation I would have no argument because there is no proof. I asked him to hold off on confronting her until he can see it happening. How everything was stacking up and up and up I didn't want to just be called out for being overly sensitized to her poor behavior. This is around when he said I was being pessimistic, but is was also nearing three in the morning on the final night of their stay and he was exhausted. I don't know.

Thank you for your feedback.

Rearranging your home. How rude! Portion thing was terrible, too. Very bad guest!

It was on your fiance to do the translating. Rude, again!

I would suggest that they not stay with you again. And, your bf should have had your back, and shut this nonsense down.

Thank God the sister lives 3 hours away and that she doesn't visit you very often, since she's a pet owner and you wouldn't have room in your house for her, and her bf and child. What would I do? Let your fiance know now, and remind him when another visit happens, about his responsibilities. Tell him it's his family and his role to make sure his sister doesn't cross boundaries. Tell him you don't want anything in your house moved or cleaned and that you want to serve yourself. It's also his responsibility to make sure you are treated with kindness and are respected and if someone doesn't, they will need to leave.

If I were you, since you don't enjoy the outings with her, tell him with a smile to enjoy that alone time with his relatives and that you have other plans, whether it be with a girlfriend and doing something by yourself, like going to a spa or reading alone at home.

If he wants to visit his sister more often than you'd care to, tell him you'd prefer he go alone. During the times you do go to his sister's, if you're not enjoying yourself, tell your husband you need to run to the store for something and go. Let them all know that when you are disrespected, they will lose the pleasure of your company.

I don't know if you want to try to be friends with the sister, and maybe spend one-on-one time with her. Take a fun class together like Paint and Sip. Perhaps this will improve her behavior. It can't hurt to try. Good luck.