I don't know if I need validation or constructive criticism, but this is a lonnng post.

I also wanna preface this with my awareness that I'm an outsider to most of the underlying issues and I will appear flippant about mental health in an effort to stay on topic. All aspects of mental health are incredibly important to me and I take them very seriously. There's a lot of baggage to unpack and I am trying to stay on topic and avoid tangents.

My husband and his sister have never had a good sibling relationship. Their parents made a lot of mistakes (a really nasty divorce and subsequent custody battle 25ish years ago)and from what I can gather my husband essentially learned what not to do as a husband and a father. His sister, however, has used and still uses her parents choices as a road map for what she can get away with, and her parents have voiced to me that they don't feel like they can admonish her choices when they did the same things.

His sister is a fully-formed functioning adult(27) who has mental health issues. Without getting into just how severe her illness is or the prevalance of it among particularly the female members of her family I will outline exactly why we are moving:

(for reasons I will not explain, as I could write a whole fucking book) my husband's sister was not allowed around my son unless she abided by our rules. We don't expect everyone else to enforce those same rules on his sister and thus we have avoided family gatherings where his sister was present. She has met my 2-year old son twice because she otherwise refused to accept our guidelines: the day he was born and this past Christmas day with my MIL.

On Christmas day we knew my MIL was coming over with gifts. When she alerted us that she was on her way she slipped in that she was bringing my husband's sister (anger tangent for me here). After watching my son open presents my husband and his sister went out to the hallway just outside our apartment door. Before I knew it she was screaming. After my husband told her she couldn't come back inside and she needed to leave she rammed into and through our door demanding to speak to me alone. Meanwhile I rushed into the room to grab my son, as my husband was telling me to get him out of there. I was holding my son to keep him calm but had nowhere to go but a far corner. When I refused to talk to her (read: get screamed at) she got even more hysterical and advanced on me. Luckily my husband's best friend was there with us and he held her back while my MIL stood frozen and I was shielding my son from her outburst.

My husband has never used his sister's erratic behavior in the past against her, and it actually wasn't the reason she had to follow rules to see my son. But if our friend wasn't there she was going to physically attack me and it didn't matter that my innocent son would be hurt in the process. Because of this alone she can never see my son again. Ever. We are moving ultimately to protect our son.

My husband, though he said that fight with his sister wasn't even top 10 worst fights he's had with her, has never seen her go postal like that and until we knew she left town he was afraid she was gonna come back and kill us. That is how terrifying the incident was. She lives a couple hours away but she has visited the area often enough in the last year for me to be on my guard all the time.

We have to move because she knows where we live now and because we are tired of my in-laws constantly second-guessing our decision to avoid her, as no reason, logical or otherwise, is good enough to keep my son away from his aunt. As far as I'm aware my MIL who saw everything doesn't feel anyone was in danger, she has offered no apology, and even tried texting my husband afterwards with something harmless as if it it would make us forget what happened. It's clear to me that my in-laws have enabled their daughter's behavior and victim mentality, which I don't really hold against them. They care about their daughter and probably have a lot of guilt about how much they fucked up their kids. But we don't have to be a part of it and we are keeping our son away from it. It's only unfortunate because they love their grandson and theoretically would never let anything happen to him. But they don't think my husband's sister is a threat and don't agree with our decision to keep him away from her. My FIL is slightly more reasonable and will respect what we want but my MIL literally did nothing while her daughter had a psychotic break in front of a toddler and continues to think it wasn't a big deal. In fairness to us in this situation his sister uttered the words," You're dead to me" which I guess she's never done so hopefully we don't have to worry about her protesting her ousting from our lives.

I insensitively told my husband to cut ties with his parents. In the past when their relationship with my husband was on the line they never chose my husband. Again though, my husband doesn't hold this against them. He still loves his family and neither of us want to cut them off from our son. I hate that there's such an emotional attachment with his family when they are in denial of fostering this toxic enviromment. My husband is a good person and he deserves better, but as long as his sister isn't seeking professional help and his parents aren't encouraging her to do so, my son will be raised away from their constant presence.