Pregnant Wife Refuses to Wait on Her Sister-in-Law: You Can Take Care of Her However You Want

(From a reader submission, images in this article are from the internet)

Husband, you can take care of your sister however you want, but making your pregnant wife wait on her is out of the question

Watching my sister-in-law reach new heights of drama, I felt absolutely speechless. She used to act out at home and the whole family spoiled her, but less than a year after getting married she dramaed her way into destroying her own marriage and still didn't reflect on it. After coming back to her parents' home, she even took it out on the family members who loved her. How the people in her family of origin want to treat her is none of my business, but wanting me to be like them, sacrificing my own self-respect and health to please her, is something I absolutely cannot do.

My sister-in-law is 5 years younger than my husband. When she was little, she was very good at acting cute and charming. My husband said that back then, whenever she pouted her little lips and made her requests in a sweet little baby voice, everyone including him would melt, and no one had the heart to refuse anything she asked for. But in my opinion, although my sister-in-law is still very pretty now, that personality of hers is a real headache. After I moved in, she looked at me like I was a servant, constantly ordering me around in that tone as if it were only natural, telling me to do this and that for her. Even when the whole family sat down together for a meal, she wouldn't even lift a finger to get herself a soup spoon and just had me serve her.

I think in her heart she doesn't treat anyone but herself as a real person, and this personality was clearly formed because her family spoiled her and gave in to her every whim, making her extremely unreasonable and willful, with no respect for me at all. Her whole family has obviously completely accepted everything about her; no matter how she treats them, in their eyes she's always cute and lovable. But I always believed their attitude toward this youngest daughter was actually affecting her future life and happiness. Yet my husband always dismissed it, saying his sister is pretty and good at acting cute, so in the future she'll definitely find a man who loves her and takes care of her in place of the whole family. He told me not to worry over nothing and to just be good to her like they are, and that keeping score with her just meant I wasn't generous enough. Seeing this family spoil her so much, I really didn't quite understand it. It wasn't jealousy. I genuinely felt there was something wrong with her personality.

Later my worries were confirmed. After she finally got married, because of her selfish, domineering and completely unreasonable personality, her husband and mother-in-law simply couldn't accept it, and within just a few months they had fought to the point of divorce. She ran back from her in-laws' home and cried all day long at home. No matter who tried to comfort her, she wouldn't appreciate it. She wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, and threw a tantrum over the slightest thing. Seeing this situation, I just wanted to stay far away from her to be safe, because I was pregnant. I had already been having morning sickness during this period and wasn't feeling well. I was afraid she would affect my rest and my mood, but my husband still wanted me to take care of her and comfort her. Hearing that, I was furious. He wasn't worried about me and his own child, but was fretting over the sister who had dramaed her way into destroying her own marriage. What kind of logic was that?

At the time I told him directly: "Husband, you can take care of your sister however you want, but making your pregnant wife wait on her is absolutely impossible." I felt I really couldn't stay in that environment anymore and wanted to go back to my parents' home to rest and protect my pregnancy. If we don't buy our own house in the future, I think our marriage might even end because of his sister. This really isn't alarmist talk, I just don't know whether he himself can feel it.