SIL refuses to apologize for birthday hijack, claims she 'cast a dark shadow' over her happy announcement.' AITA? UPDATED 2X
"AITA for not forgiving my SIL when she didn’t apologize for something she did?"
OliviaPope
Context: I (31F) moved to my husband’s (31M) country 4 years ago. None of my family live here, and his family is nearby. I have a good relationship with my MIL & FIL, and my relationship with my husband’s siblings (F29 & M25) is usually good.
A few weeks ago, it was my 31st birthday. Last year, my BIL (25M) used my birthday gathering to plan his own birthday party. To avoid a repeat, I decided not to make a big deal out of this year’s celebration.
I didn’t want to spend money on a party, and I didn’t want the attention to be diverted again. We decided to celebrate at my in-laws' house because they have more space. We invited my husband’s siblings and their partners.
They arrived late, around 4:30 PM, which is typical for this family and not a big deal. Since I live in a foreign country, English isn’t the primary language. I know the language but I find it hard to keep up with many fast conversations at once.
Everyone spoke in the local language throughout the evening, which made me feel disconnected & overstimulated. Eventually, I gave up trying to keep up and started scrolling on my phone.
The issue began when SIL (29F) asked if she could show her vacation pictures to everyone. In husband’s family, it's common to share vacation photos at gatherings, but the way SIL asked caught me off guard. She asked for my permission in front of everyone, which made me feel obligated to say "yes."
I found it rude to show vacation pictures at someone else’s birthday celebration. I briefly excused myself to get coffee. When I returned, BIL and his girlfriend asked to see our wedding photos, which they hadn’t yet seen. SIL seemed disappointed, and she and MIL went to the kitchen, where they had a loud conversation that we could all hear from the living room.
After viewing the wedding photos, we had dinner, and SIL again pushed for us to look at her vacation pictures. She and her husband spent about an hour going through the pictures, explaining each one in detail.
Again, it was in the local language, and I struggled to follow. My husband noticed and told me to put my phone away, which frustrated me further. The last picture they showed was a sonogram and announced their pregnancy.
They had many chances to announce this before or after that day, but they chose that moment. I faked a smile, congratulated them, and excused myself to the bathroom.
My husband and I left soon after, and he didn’t understand why I was upset. In his culture, it’s normal to announce major life milestones at others’ celebrations, but in my culture, it’s not. We argued about it for the rest of the night and the next day.
An hour later, SIL sent me a text justifying their timing and laughing it off. I responded, saying I was happy for them but hurt by the way they announced it. She later responded, claiming they were hurt by my reaction and that my response had "cast a dark shadow" over their happiness. She didn’t apologize but continued to justify her actions. AITA for not simply forgiving her and moving on?
Edit: Since this doesn't seem to be clear (because I was limited to 3K characters and couldn't elaborate), I DO speak the local language. Not fluently by a long shot, but I understand significantly more than I can speak.
I can follow a conversation, and I can hold a conversation. What I can't do is follow 4 simultaneous conversations being held all at once, with people shouting across the room towards each other. This is a very common practice for birthdays in this country (the Netherlands). It's called the ring of doom.
It's the standard layout for birthdays and by default the layout that people gravitate towards. As a foreigner, it makes it incredibly difficult to follow any one given conversation at any one given moment, when there are 3 more being shouted across the room. I think it would be difficult to keep up even in my native language, and especially difficult in a foreign one.
Edit 2: A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that I expect a huge milestone-like birthday celebration for a non-milestone birthday. I just want to say this isn't the case. I'm honestly more than happy to just not celebrate at all.
I don't need presents, I don't like attention, and I don't like the work of organizing events. Birthdays are important to my husband and his family (milestone bday or otherwise). Every year I am asked for birthday plans and every year I put it off as long as possible.
After the events of last year, I really put it off til basically the weekend before, and relented and said we could just do something low-key at husband's parents house.
Before you guys start telling me that nobody forced me to do it, yes, I know, but I did it because it's important to my husband and his family. That's not to say that if I do go ahead and plan something and set time aside for it, that time is meant for someone else to just swoop in and use it as a convenience for themselves.
I don't really think that's acceptable. The main issue in all this is that I communicated very clearly to SIL that I was upset by her actions, and rather than any kind of acknowledgement of my feelings, she doubled down, justified all her actions, and then flipped the whole situation around on me and told me how I upset them by casting a dark cloud over their happy news.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
Background-Ad7590
NTA. Both parties have a responsibility to research and respect cultures and customs. From what you’ve told us, it sounds like you’ve done a great job of respecting their customs, even when it is uncomfortable.
Where is return of that energy? Why don’t they bother to care about your customs at your celebration? It would be one thing if it were your BIL’s party, but it was your party. And you didn’t ask for much.
CinderellaGoneCrazy
INFO: Have you actually voiced any of this to the family? Would it be difficult to ask them to speak English on your birthday? You might want to stop doing birthday gatherings with them for your birthday and do something you can genuinely enjoy.
OliviaPope (OP)
That is the ultimate decision I came to. I decided to forego any form of birthday celebration in the future, which upset my husband more than it upsets me. Birthdays are supposedly important to him and his family so I was constantly asked to plan something to celebrate, and I did so against my better judgement.
But at the end of it, it felt like I just planned a special evening for his SIL to announce a pregnancy. Personally I don't see the point of planning something, for it to just be used as a "convenient time" for other people to make their own life changing announcements. In that case I'd rather those people do the work of organizing a gathering themselves, instead of me doing the legwork for them.
It wouldn't be difficult for them to do it, since English is basically the official 2nd language of this country, and everyone except MIL speaks English very well. But the second one of them starts speaking the local language, they all immediately shift back to it (understandably so) and I just don't feel like constantly having to say "can we speak English please?".
I don't even mean that in a pouty or combative way, I'm just usually quite shy and quiet, so I don't really like asking/forcing people to do things just to accommodate me.
bashfulbrownie
why don't you and husband celebrate your birthday without the family to do what you want, how you want. if rest of the family insists, you can do a birthday dinner at a restaurant another evening - there is more of a time limit to eating out.
shalowind
What planning was needed from you to have this small family dinner hosted by MIL? You make it sound like you put a lot of effort into this, could you elaborate?
OliviaPope (OP)
MIL didn't do anything. The gathering took place at her house but other than that, nothing was arranged by her. For a bit of context, Dutch people are notoriously difficult to schedule things with, as their calendars are filled up months ahead of time.
I planned a time that would work for everyone, I spent an entire evening making a cake (also common in Dutch culture - to make a cake for your own birthday). I went grocery shopping, I made all the dinner plans. Obviously it's not an exorbitant amount of planning, but it's planning nonetheless. It's something that I otherwise would not have wasted my time on to begin with.
Salty-Initiative-242
ESH They're being rude in not being sure that you're included and engaged in their family discussions. But you are in their country, so it's natural for them to speak their language and follow their customs, and to a large degree it's on you to adapt and make more effort. Playing on your phone at a party FOR you is rude too. Sounds like you and SIL are both being dramatic.