EDIT: How would you handle your brother in laws girlfriend not wanting anything to do with you or your husband?
My husband and I have been married for 3 years, together for four years. His brother is six years younger than us (he’s 20, we’re 26). He’s had a girlfriend for the past two years, that I’ve tried desperately to have some sort of friendship, or any relationship, with. We didn’t really see them often for the first year of their dating, due to my husbands work schedule (drilling rig) and his brothers work schedule (pipeline) not really lining up with time off. But, we did see them occasionally and spend time together as often as we could. For the past year their schedules have been lining up pretty awesome and we’ve all been hanging out together a ton. I love that the men can spend so much time together because they have always been really close (husband says he practically raised his brother, and brother agrees that he doesn’t know where he’d be today if not for my husband). All of that being said - brother in laws girlfriend is seeming more and more like just a complete little bitch. Excuse the language. She is extremely rude. She hasn’t had an actual conversation with me, ever. Despite me trying to figure out what she’s interested in so that we can at least have something to talk about while the men are goofing off together. Every single time they come over to our house, or we meet anywhere, girlfriend is always on her phone. If you say something to her, she gives a halfass one word response and then gets back on her phone. When the men get together to play video games, I invite her to come watch a movie with me or something while they play and she always refusing saying something like “yeah I’ll probably come in their in a minute.” Or just says “okay”. And then never does comes in there. She sits in the corner of my couch and plays on her phone for hours at a time, never looking up. I have been just chalking it up to the age difference between us. She’s young, I know, so maybe she doesn’t know what to say. That’s fine. But, me, my husband, and his brother have all been talking about going to Florida this summer to the beach. She has had nothing to say about it, just sits on her phone while we all talk about plans. Obviously she will be going to. My husband and I invited both of them. But, the other day she proved me wrong in thinking she was just acting too young for me to talk to. She and brother had stayed the night at our house, and I made breakfast the next morning. She looked me directly in my eyes, and I said “hey, I made us all some breakfast if you’re hungry.” She didn’t say a single word to me. All she did was cut her eyes away and get on her phone. That was the last straw for me. There’s no way in hell she just didn’t hear me. We held eye contact while I was talking. Of course I have been keeping my husband updated on all that I’ve just stated, so after girlfriend and brother left, my husband called his brother while they were both alone and asked him why his girlfriend will never talk and why she’s always just on her phone. Brother said “that’s just the way she is”. So my husband flat out told him that if his girlfriend doesn’t start trying to actually talk to anyone when we’re all together, then he sees no reason she needs to go on this trip with us. Husband explained to brother that it’s super shitty for girlfriend to be on her phone 24/7 and never talk to me and even ignore me. Brother tried to say “yeah well your wife doesn’t talk to her either”. And husband listed off all the things I’ve been telling him about (without throwing me under the bus like I’ve been complaining about her for a year - even though I have 😬). Brother was just like okay okay I hear you. And they moved on from it. We will see what happens the next time they come around. I guess my question for all of y’all would be: what the hell do I do now? I’m like two steps away from not even a acknowledging her when I see her from now on, but I don’t want to piss of brother in law because he hasn’t done anything wrong. What would you do in this situation??
EDIT: since this post is getting more attention than I expected, I feel as though I should clarify that the original post does not include every situation or interaction that has happened between me and the girlfriend. Thank you to those of you who are being supportive, and to those of you saying that she may just be socially awkward, here are some other examples of things she does that bother me.
The majority of the time when my brother in law tells his girlfriend that it is time to leave, his girlfriend immediately starts talking about the next place that they are going. On multiple occasions, it has been past midnight and his girlfriend is like “oh good, my friend has been wanting us to come over for four hours now. And just goes on and on about how excited she is to go over to her friends house now and have fun and hangout. This happened about a week ago, when they were leaving at 3:15 in the morning. She is always excited to go spend time with other people, but she can’t get off her phone or talk when she is in the company of my husband and me.
Another example is that when she plays with my daughter, who is now two (as of this month), she acts like she’s annoyed im in the same room when they play. For example, she found a bottle of bubbles and took my daughter outside to go play with them. I came outside too, it’s my daughter, and I saw that as an opportunity to have something to do that the girlfriend enjoyed too. The boys were playing video games in the house. As soon as she got outside, she took my daughter to the far end of the yard and played with her, she kept her back to me the entire time and acted like I wasn’t there playing with my daughter too.
Yet another example is that she always asks for my phone charger when she’s here. But not in a nice way. She never says “hey can I borrow your charger?” She says “ugh. Where’s that phone charger at” and just stares at me.
Another thing. We have a spare bedroom in our house for guests, and on the nights when she knows ahead of time that her and brother are staying the night, she goes into the spare bedroom and closes the door and stays in there all night. She only comes out in the morning , when it’s time to leave.
So for those of you saying she may just be social awkward or introverted, what do y’all make of those other examples? Again, this is not all of the stories I could tell y’all about her rudeness and disrespectful attitude.