I've been thinking about this a lot because of my current situation so I thought I'd get some opinions from random people on the internet.
Everyone's thoughts are appreciated but I'll be especially interested in those that are married or in serious relationships.
To give you some background, I've been with my girlfriend for 3 years now - we met in Victoria where we both lived for the last 6 years prior to last summer. Prior to moving to Vancouver where both our families live, I was almost set to propose to her, but we moved to Vancouver and I never got around to it.
We had a great relationship before moving back but once we did, we were fighting a few times a week over one thing another, and after addressing this, we've cut it down to once a month or so although it still happens way more than before.
Her family is a huge source of her stress in Vancouver as they are not the easiest people to deal with - especially her two older sisters. She's almost always fighting with one sister but fights less with the oldest one because they had a close relationship growing up, although they do still fight because her oldest sister can also be a huge you know what.
Both her sisters recently moved back home to Vancouver as well (after us), so I never met them until our recent move. I met her parents whom I get along great with and they love me.
The first night I met both her sisters, we all went out to dinner with the family. It was pretty daunting in a way since there were two older sisters, one of their husbands and then the two parents. We created as much conversation as one would expect at a first meeting, but her parents carried much of the conversation and I spoke a lot more to them than I did to the sisters and husband.
My girlfriend and I left the dinner feeling good about the meeting.
Found out later that the oldest sister thought I was super quiet during the dinner to her and her husband and mentioned something along the lines of, "maybe he doesn't care to get to know us?"
I was obviously a little pissed to hear this but what angered me more was that my girlfriend changed her opinion of our meeting after the fact and agreed with her sister that I was a little quiet.
Ever since then, because I consider the oldest sister to be unreasonable for making those comments and having those expectations, it's been hard for me to truly be myself around her and her husband. It's like I have my guard up.
Something else that is important to know is that when growing up, my girlfriend was always with her oldest sister, while the middle daughter was a bit of the outcast of the three. Because of this, my girlfriend has always looked up to her big sister and the big sister was always the one that told my girlfriend what to do and how to live.
To this day, I've noticed that when my girlfriend is explaining to me about how her biggest sister is being a ***, she'll follow it up with words in defense of her sister.
My girlfriend recently admitted to me that the reason we fight so much may be because she's angry that her biggest sister and I aren't close. We aren't rude to each other by any means, but we aren't best friends and because my girlfriend has seen how personable I am to everyone else, she knows how I feel.
So what do you think? Is this something that one can live with? When we get together for family parties, etc. I make small talk to her oldest sister and her husband (who I get along with much better), but it doesn't get any where because like I said, I just don't like her older sister to be honest.
Is this something that will eventually become just too much to live with for either myself or my girlfriend? My girlfriend has told me she just wants to see an effort and that she understands her older sister is very difficult, but that she wants me to be the bigger person here and extend the olive branch, since her sister most definitely won't be the one to do so.