Husband too touchy feely with sister

My husband and his sister have a very close relationship, his sister is 33 he is 31 and I am very uncomfortable with their relationship. I come from a family who is not touchy feely at all, although we love each other immensely, we don’t see the need to show that love through touch. My husband and sister in law on the other hand do. The night me and my husband got engaged, we had a get together at my parents house where his sat next to him, locked arms and all, with my fiancé, now husband spoon feeding her cake. She hugs him every chance she gets, kisses him out of nowhere thinking she is being cute, talks to him in a baby voice, calling him “my booboo” booboo being her nickname for him. All of this makes me very uncomfortable. Am I crazy for feeling like this? I need some help please as this has been an ongoing issue in our marriage and my husband seems to think I am crazy and jealous.

This is hard for me, admittedly as someone who can be a bit of a flirt. There's something about layers of boundaries that make being naturally affectionate more easy. In the instance of not only a taken woman, but a woman taken by my brother while I myself am taken, I'd probably be as comfortable as my brother would be comfortable with me being. My lady's got coworkers who would honestly be amazing guy friends if they were guys, and I'm pretty flirty and affectionate with them at parties. Everyone knows I'm going to bed with my wife and, and beyond an arm around them or a kiss on the cheek, there's not a single other thing happening between them and myself.

The thing about it is I know it's not something that in any way should be a conventionally acceptable dynamic. This was introduced very early on in my relationship, when my lady was crashing my Latin American Student Association parties, and virtually everyone's got their arm around one another regardless of who they're in a relationship with. Had she seen it and been like, "Nah... I don't think this what I'm looking for," I would've given her a complete understanding and a best of wishes. But she chose to stay with me, and she accepts me as I accept her.

It's really up to you whether you want to fall on your sword over this. Is it a weekly occasion you have to see another woman hugging and giving your guy a kiss on the cheek? Do you feel a real threat of disrespect or infidelity? Yes, at least by your account it's obvious there's flirtation involved. Feel free to ask your husband to assert what you feel are proper boundaries, but I'd start considering it as an aspect he'd be fine with whether it's his brother's wife or a close friend's wife. Is this really a brand new dynamic to your marriage or is this something you'd tolerated until now?

Why did you marry someone who regularly upsets you with his behavior? If I had dated someone and he engaged with with another female like this, I would've ended it. You already spoke to him about how you don't like it and he continues that behavior, so obviously he rightly guessed it wasn't a dealbreaker since you stuck around and married him. You can't change anyone, at least not most of the time, so it's a good idea to choose a lifetime partner you DON'T want to change.

I come from a touchy feely family and the few times a year I get to see my sibling I hug him a lot and call him “ baby brother.” I cuddle my mom. My husband comes from a family where he has never seen his parents hug even once. My husband is almost 50. I think THAT is bizzario. But that is me.

I find her disrespectful for behaving like that with your husband (if it's sister in law) and I find your husband the same not caring how it's affecting you, even though you've told him.

It's a very weird dynamic in my opinion. Certain boundaries shouldn't be crossed, especially with in laws. It's one thing to be polite at family get togethers, have a chat, maybe even laugh. But to get into intimate behaviors such as touching, kissing, baby voices and nicknames...no, that's not only weird but in my opinion, wrong.

Out of the two of them though, I blame your husband. He should be the one stopping this and caring more about your feelings than anything else. He's the one who is putting your feelings on the side and not hearing you when you tell him it bothers you.

My husband and his sister

My husband and sister in law

Just to clarify, is this with his sister or his sister in law?

Just to clarify, is this with his sister or his sister in law?

I believe his sister.

My husband and sister in law on the other hand do

She said this though?

She said this though?

Maybe meaning HER sister in law. As it is her husband’s sister .

Just to clarify, is this with his sister or his sister in law?

His sister, so my sister in law, I’ve told him multiple times that it bothers me, but he makes me feel stupid for feeling this way. I feel as though his sister is trying to show me that she is in charge and he is hers and I cannot take him away from her. It really sickens me and to see my husband being this way with another girl, albeit his sister, is such a turn off and leads to other issues in our marriage including lack of wanting to get intimate. He makes these plans for his sister when she comes to visit to do things that he thinks she might enjoy and asks me if I think it would be “cute” to do these things, when we’ve only been married 6 months and every time I ask him to be more romantic and make special plans for us his excuse is he never has time or when he wants to do these things, something else always comes up. But for his sister, he finds a way. I just don’t get it

Oh, duh, sorry. I misread.

Hmmm..then my reply changes. It is unusual but not threatening in my opinion. It would be somewhat annoying but at the end of the day, who cares?

I'm not invalidating your feelings but it's his sister. I can't see how it would ever be a threat. Annoying, yes, but threat, no.

I'd just take it with a grain of salt and ignore it.

Oh, Jesus. I likewise misread, relating to something I didn't even need to.

It's his sister. They're not banging behind the couch while you're not looking. Get over it or dump him. I hug and kiss all of my sisters routinely, and I'll lock arms with them whenever and wherever they damn well want me to. If my lady had a problem with it, I'd divorce her tomorrow. He's her baby brother. It's honestly either excessively puritanical or outright perverse that people take offense to this kind of dynamic. Uncomfortable to the extent they don't want to be around it? Fair enough. Nip it at the bud and dump him. But beyond that, creating a grudge or snowballed resentment over it? I genuinely can't understand.

I agree j.man. I can't see it, OP. If it was sister in law, yeah, but sister? Makes no sense to me why you're so bothered. You need to turn the jealousy down massively.

It's his sister. Get over it!

Honestly, I think this is one of those things you're going to have to find a way to accept...or not. I'm not saying it's cool or disrespectful--to each his/her own--but family is family, and those dynamics predate romance. Did he behave this way when you were dating? When you were engaged? If so, why would you expect it to change?

I'm not saying this is your fault, just that family is generally something that can't be changed.

Could it at all be that the issue here isn't only the sister, but the fact that 6 months into marriage you're already feeling your husband is being complacent, not romantic enough? If so, that's the kind of stuff you can talk about, and maybe if he's putting in effort to do "cute" things with you the sister stuff won't seem so pronounced?

Brother spoon-feeding sister and sister speaking to an adult brother like a baby seem like endearment to me... however it is over the top endearment that has been accepted by them as "normal sibling love."

Your two choices... stay or leave, because their relationship dynamic isn't going to change just because you are in the picture now.

If you choose to stay, maybe you should try to spoon-feed him in front of her and call him "my boo boo" like a baby just for kicks.

My he feels your lack of affection? Does your family lack of outward affection also extend to spouses? I know when I met my husband I had to teach him what a open affection was. He was totally creeped out by displays of affection because of the way he was brought up .

Brother spoon-feeding sister and sister speaking to an adult brother like a baby seem like endearment to me... however it is over the top endearment that has been accepted by them as "normal sibling love."

 

Your two choices... stay or leave, because their relationship dynamic isn't going to change just because you are in the picture now.

 

If you choose to stay, maybe you should try to spoon-feed him in front of her and call him "my boo boo" like a baby just for kicks.

With all due respect, no to this last suggestion. Nothing good comes from passive aggressive drama, and the last thing you want is to create some kind of quasi-sexual triangle that only exists in your mind.

He's her little bro, end of story, and they're close. You're cool with that, and how they express it, or you're not. Is he bothered by the cold, touch-free way you deal with your own family, or does he accept it?

His sister is not “ another woman” but someone he grew up with as a little child . Someone who remembers him as a little child .

My brother had a wife who despised the fact that he had a mother and a sister . She took away 20 years with my brother .

Given that this is his sister, this is an argument where you come off looking bad and your husband is right to be annoyed. You should have resolved this BEFORE marriage. You sound incompatible in terms of what you consider appropriate intimacy between families. Each family has their own code of behaviours. You chose to enter a very touchy feely family. Trying to distance them after the marriage rather than having resolved the issue beforehand imo is very uncool. It also sounds like you wouldn't like her even without all that touchy feely stuff going on. Is that the case?

What you see is probably a dynamic that started out when they were 6 and 4 year olds i.e. when he was indeed a baby. Some parents teach their older daughters to treat their younger kids like babies that they should take care of to avoid jealousy when the first born is "upstaged" by not being an only child any more. Some behaviours carry on to childhood.

I can understand why you feel uncomfortable as you are from a family who was on the opposite end of the spectrum, and the spoon feeding part does sound over the top to me too. If it creeps you out to the point that you can't accept it, then sadly you should probably divorce due to irreconcilable differences. You are not to blame for how you feel but neither is he.

Brother spoon feeding sister? That seems quite odd to me, unless his sister is still a child.

Hugging, linking arms and kissing (in the cheek I presume) is a cultural thing. If your husband was for example purely Dutch it could be concerning as they are not known to be so physically affectionate with each other. Cultural context matters here.

Using nick names to refer to your sibling, I get. Using pet names or baby names, however, to show affection for your sibling I find weird.

Having said that, was he behaving like that towards his sister before you married him?

You're overthinking...They're siblings. It's weird to be worried over a sister! You need to relax.

If you come from a family where there's very little physical affection, seeing this kind of display is going to feel very uncomfortable for you. Families vary enormously in the level of contact which they experience as normal, and whatever you experienced in your family of origin is what you take out into the world unless you re-examine it.

With your husband and his sister, it sounds as though they're just being silly and affectionate and there's nothing more to it than that. Calling a grown man "Boo boo" sounds more like a form of teasing and infantilising to comic effect than anything else. So does spoon feeding him/her cake.

My current partner has a step sister who he lost contact with for a number of years; she was in her mid-teens when he was nine years old, and she 'parented' him when they were younger and part of the same family. Now, when we visit, she'll sidle up to him, put her arms round him in a huge hug and say in a little girl voice "He's my little brother!" It's hilarious, as he's 61 and considerably larger physically than she is - and the irony isn't wasted on her either!

However, this kind of childlike activity is going to hook into your 'Critical Parent' if it's not part of your experience. (Look up Transactional Analysis in Wikipedia if you don't know what I'm talking about). You have a choice here; you can let it ruin your relationship OR you can sit back and accept that this is the way it is, and don't let it affect you... OR you let them get on with it, and call him "Boo boo" and tease him when you're together. That's if you haven't already got a silly pet name for him (something I highly recommend in all relationships).

It sounds like you are not comfortable with his more physically demonstrative family at all. 😧

Agree with your husband that you are jealous and creating "issues". They have been a family with whatever strange but essentially innocuous quirks much longer than you have been married.

I come from a family who is not touchy feely, we don’t see the need to show that love through touch. this has been an ongoing issue in our marriage and my husband seems to think I am crazy and jealous.

So I'm curious if you are comfortable being physically affectionate with your husband and if that's a part of your relationship?

Also, is that something that you want with him?

I grew up seeing mom and dad hugging and kissing all the time, and there was lots of physical affection all around. I'm very close to my brother, and it would be very strange to me not to be affectionate with him... I'll still hug him and call him my buddy when we are elderly!

My partner did not come from a physically demonstrative family. Not at all. When meeting my mom and brother, and getting the round of hugs and usual physical warm that was typical for us, he got quite emotional. He was a little jealous - only because he never experienced that but he is a warm and affectionate guy. It was quite sweet to see him and my mom together. His parents are lovely people, they simply have difficulty with showing physical affection.

And in our relationship together, my guy and I, we enjoy being affectionate - any slight jealousy he had gave way almost immedietly to gratitude for what he has now. He's even greeting his parents with hugs- and they reciprocate !