Hello everyone.
I am new here and I think this is my first time posting.
Let me start off by saying that I love my husband. He is my best friend and we have the best time together.
My in-laws are another story, specifically my sister in law, who we will call Amy and her husband Ned.
My husband is the second oldest of five kids (2 girls and 3 boys) and he has done a lot for his siblings. At one point, they were all living with him due to financial issues so my husband has more of a paternal feeling for them.
Amy is what can be described as the typical Mean Girl. She thinks very highly of herself, refuses to get a job since she believes that any man she’s with should support her. I have struggled with self esteem my whole life, and she’ll look at me sometimes with a sneer and go into her favorite story of how a mutual friend worshipped the ground she walked on and is still pining for her.
Anyway, Covid has been hard on everyone. I am currently working from home. My husband is currently on disability for a bad shoulder injury, so we have been enjoying the extra time together.
On Monday, Amy and Ned stopped over unexpectedly and she loudly was trying to make plans with my husband while I would be working. She was listing off places the three of them could go and have a good time.
I often feel like her goal is to divide my husband and I so she could have him to herself and she’d have another person who would spoil her. She refused to be in my wedding, and has done a lot of unkind things to me that are for another day.
I’m sorry this is so long, but I’m sitting there working, really annoyed that she’d try to make plans right in front of me and leave me out.
My husband told her he didn’t think it was a good idea unless I could go too, and she left in a huff after not getting her way.
Later that night, I told my husband that I felt like she was deliberately leaving me out and we got into a argument over it. He said I was overreacting and that even if he wanted to go, he wouldn’t because he knows how I’ll react and get jealous, so then I felt worse because he is stuck indoors 90% of the time due to his injury.
Am I wrong? Am I being petty? I always feel like I’m in this invisible struggle with her for my husband.
Am I overreacting?
First off, welcome to the community!
Family is a REALLY touchy subject you have to tread very carefully around. That said, you’re entitled to your perceptions. I don’t think you’re overreacting.
Maybe she doesn’t want to invite you because she feels insecure around you because you don’t fawn over her like everyone else. I don’t see a reason for her to wreck her brother’s home life by getting in between you two.
Good for your husband for sticking up for you when you weren’t there. Less good that he responded by accusing you of getting jealous. Perhaps that’s something the two of you could talk through when you can set aside time for it. Explain to him why you’re concerned when she invites him out without you, and how it hurts when he writes your concerns off as petty and jealous. Then listen to his side without interrupting. Calm communication has solved a lot of minor misunderstandings that felt like massive disagreements.
The question of if you’re petty is a tricky one, and one I struggle with too. Is it petty to think your in-laws are petty? Is it selfish to think they’re selfish? Who’s right when everyone’s wrong? Your feelings toward Amy are real because you’re feeling them, and it’s not wrong to have feelings. She sounds like the petty one, but then she may think the same thing about you. I don’t approve of some of the ways my wife’s family treats her. She knows how I feel, and she recognizes the patterns of mistreatment, but to call them selfish for our benefit makes us a bit selfish too. An example is us being relegated to the bunk beds at her family’s lake house while her single sister gets the queen bedroom to herself. When you find the answer to that question, let me know 
I hope you can have a good conversation with your husband, I hope he can understand the reasons you feel the way you do, and I hope that going forward you can stand together as a united front.
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