Freeloading and Causing Conflicts at Home Made a Wife Infuriated with Her Sister-In-Law
Supporting a household has never been easy, especially when five or more people live under your roof. Sometimes extended families live with one another when a crisis hits their home. It’s alright when the other adults are helping with the expenses and chores. However, when a freeloader takes a year or more, the situation can get frustrating. It isn’t easy to talk it out with the person when they’re your in-law. You’ll be torn about whether to ask them to leave or tolerate their behavior at the expense of your peace at home.
Lots of people experience this conflict with their relatives. Family should always be there for each other. Although it’s only right to support a family member amidst a crisis, boundaries must still be respected. One of the many people who experience this problem is Reddit user krose_7137. She couldn’t handle her sister-in-law anymore and had to rant through a Reddit post. OP had been living with her partner and her stepson in the first house they ever bought. Both have full-time jobs that could support their family until the wife’s sister-in-law came into the picture.
Her sister-in-law is a single mother who has four kids. The whole family shared a home with her parents until they had to give up the house due to financial issues. OP offered their roof to her sister-in-law’s family — the three kids stayed with her while the other stayed with her parents. Everything was fine until the sister-in-law- began showing signs of extreme freeloading. Her actions showed that she was taking advantage of the kindness the couple presented to her. Even the kids were messing up the place, and she wasn’t doing anything. OP and her husband covered all the expenses for a year.
“I would tell my partner that she needs to move out, but as she is his big sister, he defended her (even though he was annoyed as well). She ended up getting a boyfriend and would let him stay over at our house with his 2 kids. That’s a total of 9 people now in our 3-bedroom house. They would have fights in the house and even broke one of the bedroom doors,” krose_7137 complained. Although they replaced the door, the sister-in-law had already caused so much trouble. She crossed the line too many times — it even came to the point that she was caught trying to break up the couple.
“Later on, I found out that she was actually speaking to my stepson’s biological mother (who at the time was very jealous of my partner and I being together and having my stepson full-time) and trying to come up with ways to try and break my partner and I up. It was the ultimate snake move in my opinion. It didn’t work. We had to sit her down and confront her about it.” After all the help she received, the sister-in-law still had the audacity to create conflict. What made OP more furious is that her husband keeps letting the issue go.
It was chaotic at home when the couple had a conversation that made the husband realize nothing was okay about the situation. Redditors clearly knew who was wrong and supported OP in the comment section. “NTA. She is beyond disrespectful. Set a date and tell her that she needs to be out by that date, whether she has somewhere to go or not,” throwaway49076 commented. OP mentioned that she showed house listings to her sister-in-law, but she seemed uninterested.
The sister-in-law overstayed and over-crossed boundaries. Hopefully, OP’s husband can enlighten his sister to alleviate the situation. It’s also best to make the sister-in-law face the consequences of her actions. She needs to learn and act more maturely for her kids. If not, she’ll keep being a freeloader, which may cost her so much in the future. The comment section was engaging because readers were too frustrated with the issue. OP found the people who back her up — which will help her get through such troubles with an in-law.
