Weddingbee boards

I got married a little over a week ago. The wedding was wonderful and we are still in the blissful newlywed stage. Since the wedding I feel like our relatinship has been renewed, like we fell in love all over again. In the 6+ years we've been a couple I haven't been happier, but today something happened that made me feel completely deflated.

A lttle background info - I come from a broken family where my mom worked hard to support my sister and I alone. She instilled in us strong work ethics and I have always believed in working hard to earn the things you have/want.

My husband has a "baby" sister (she is 21, I am 28 and DH is 33). She is is nice person but also a big time freeloader. She lived with us for a while about 2 years ago because she didn't want to live with her parents anymore. After 6 months of not doing anything, my husband (then fiance) told her she needed to get a job or move out. So what did she do? She moved out into her friend's 1 bedroom apartment and crashed on the couch. That only lasted a few months, after that she eventually moved back in with her parents. They also told her she had to get a job, so she found a job at the mall where they only needed her twice a week - the easiest nonjob she could find just to say she has one.

In addition to living off other people, she also freeloads other things - food, rides, gas money, clothes, basically whatever she can get. I mean, when I was 21 I had a full time job, went to school, lived on my own (with roommates, but I paid rent). However, like I said earlier she is a nice and even funny girl, but her lack of ambition drives me crazy.

Today she called DH saying she needed a ride home from work because she was "stranded". We had been running errands all day and were on our way to pick up some food, but we weren't too far away so we picked her up. After we picked her up we went to a drive-thru deli to buy food. Out of courtesy DH asked her if she wanted anything. Of course she jumped on the offer, ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, a side dish, chips, and a drink. All I ordered was one small sandwich, nothing else (I had a bottled water). It's not that we can't afford it, but we are money conscious and trying to save up since we spent so much on the wedding.

I was hungry and irritable, so I admit I made some not-so-nice comments (sort of half jokingly). First comment I made was "Gee, do you really need the large sandwich? It wouldn't hurt you to have a small you know." After she ordered the next item I said "Wow do you really need that potato salad too?" As DH handed his sister the large coke she ordered, I said "A coke too? That won't soak up the grease from the chips." I laughed as I said this.

So then DH looked at me and jokingly said "Hey - you're the one that couldn't fit into your wedding dress!"

I was completely shocked, angry, and hurt. Let me say that his sister is NOT fat at all. I wasn't trying to imply that she was fat. I was trying give her hints that she was taking advantage of our hard earned money.

Looking back, I can definitely see how they both would have taken it that way (that I was calling her fat). But I didn't know how else to say, "Hey stop mooching off of us and buy your own damn food!"

I understand that DH loves his sister and felt the need to defend her. But I am his wife now - he knows how I feel about her freeloading - and I feel like he should be on MY side. It made me so sad.

I also know it was just a joke, because I'm not the least bit overweight and I fit in my dress just fine. I know he thought I looked beautiful on our wedding day, so that is not the issue.

Later I told him how his words hurt me, and he apologized. He said he didn't realize what I was getting at and he thought I was just trying to be mean by calling her fat.

Even though he apologized I still feel so hurt and upset. I feel like our blissful bubble just burst because he sided with his sister over me.

I'm still angry at him for saying what he said so close to the wedding. I feel like he sort of trivialized our wedding, and now it somehow doesn't feel as special because he's already making jokes about the day.

Am I completely overracting? Did I have this coming for being way out of line? Any honest opinions are welcome. I just need to know if I should be as upset as I am at him or if I should be the one to apologize.

Thank you for the honest opinions. I probably should not have phrased it the way I did. I was just so frustrated - this has been an ongoing thing. Even after she move out of our house for the past 2 years she has still taken so much from us and never given anything back (DH bought her a cell phone b/c she lost hers and had no money to replace it, everytime she comes over she eats our food, leaves her dishes for us to clean up, on several occasions he gave her money b/c she spend her paycheck on nail polist, etc etc.)

I'm still upset, but starting to put things in perspective...

I talked to my best friend about this, unfortunately she is biased in my favor so it really helps to hear some outside perspectives.

I'm under the realization that there are underlying issues here.

Actually, DH and I have discussed his sister's behavior many times in the past. Each time he agrees that she does take advantage of other people and he needs to stop facilitating her behavior. But then it's like he forget and goes back to doing what he's been used to doing for so many years.

I had no intention of offering her lunch yesterday, so when DH offered it kind of irked me already. (Last week something similar happened and I didn't say anything. Afterwards I reminded DH that we agreed to stop supporting her to which he agreed, but it seems that he forgot already).

After she moved out of our house a couple years ago, DH was so fed up with her and quit giving her anything for a while. He was pissed that she would rather sleep on someone's couch than go get a job and live in a nice house with her own room & bathroom. But she seems to have a handful of sources which she will suck dry then move on to the next.

Since that time period DH's relationship with his sis has gone back to normal. When he bought her the cell phone, it was because her parent's had sort of cut her off.

They gave her money for school but she only signed up for 2 classes one semester and then quit going. She spent the rest of the money on random things. She didn't even bother to formally drop the classes (if she had she could have gotten a partial refund). Later she said she didn't know that she had to actually drop the classes. So after her parents cut her off, she lost her phone and they refused to buy her a new one. So she came to Dh with a sob story about how she got harrassed on day but couldn't call anyone for help. I don't know if the story was true or not, in the back of my mind I think she was manipulating him to try to get what she wanted.

So I guess the real issue is I don't know how to deal with this. Should I just back off and let him pamper his sister if he wants? (We recently discussed opening a joint bank account - now I don't know if we should). Argh!

@Future MrsB - It sounds like your FI's sister is at least making an effort and working.

But my husband's sister will do anything she can to avoid working. Anytime we go out together I always assume we're paying (and we do). She's not struggling financially as she has no bills to pay. She lives with her parents who provide all her food and basic necessities. She has an old car that was given to her by her parents when they bought a new one. If she would just get a real job, she'd have plenty of spending money and she could afford to pay for her own meals.

It's weird because DH, his parents and other siblings are very hard workers. His parents, like my mom, struggled to provide for their kids. People have said it's because she's the youngest. Well I am also the baby in my family, but I saw how hard my mom worked to give us more than she could afford so I told myself that I would work hard to provide for her whenever she needs it.

@MissMarriage - You described her perfectly. She is a nice, funny girl but I think she is also manipulative. DH and his parents have had serious talks with her about her behavior. After each talk she will be on really good behavior for a few days (cleans house, takes out trash, etc which I think she should be doing anyway). But then she'll go right back to being lazy. At one point or another we have all cut her off. When that happens she just gets her resources elsewhere.

@mypinkshoes & Brielle - Thank you for your posts. I felt so stupid writing the original post because I know it sounds ridiculous - getting mad over a sandwich!! It really helps to know that other girls experience the same feeling of the "bubble" bursting. Perhaps it's because it was the first non-nice thing DH has said to me since the wedding, and also because what he said was about the wedding. (Sacred grounds for a recent bride, again I know it sounds silly). I just didn't expect the bubble to burst so soon.