I would never tell him. So the young dude said something stupid. Big freep. Maybe he was drunk. Why make a mega big deal about it? Why spoil a sibling relationship over a couple of clumsy phrases? I understand that the wife is hormonal but she needs to get over herself. In 30, 40, 50 years, her husband will really need his brother. Robbing him of that over a chance to feel self-righteous stinks.
Don’t Tell Him
Clarissa's Blog 
I am surprised by your glib and nonchalant take on this.
Barring the several assumptions you are making in your post regarding it being melodramatic exaggeration or acting under influence of alcohol (as if the latter makes it palatable), such behavior is highly distressing and can make any woman feel unsafe who is not even in a particularly vulnerable state like being pregnant.
Fostering and preserving such toxic and predatory relationships in the name of some old-age security or kinship is sure shot recipe for disaster.
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Please don’t use the word “unsafe”. You’ll see how everything gets better once you stop.
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And maybe once you make sweeping presumptions about other people’s lives and circumstances, you could claim the same for yourself.
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For the millionth times, I don’t see what you are answering to. Try to imagine what your comment looks like to a person who sees it outside of a comment tree.
Everybody else managed to figure it out and is responding normally.
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In most places, I respond to comments like this with a photo of an old-school overhead projector.
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I am inclined to say that I wouldn’t tell my husband either. But I think this is a tough one. I don’t keep things from my husband. So it would feel unnatural and dishonest to hide this from him. And what if the BIL continues this behavior? At some, if this becomes a cycle, then the husband would have to be informed. And then he might feel even more betrayed that he wasn’t informed earlier
I think I would have a very serious talk with the BIL and ask that he never repeats this behavior?
I’m just surprised that you see this as such a minor incident. I would feel extremely upset, uncomfortable, and isolated.
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The dude is 25. So he said something dumb, big whoop.
If I reacted every time when somebody got needlessly flirty, that’s all I’ll ever do. People sometimes say unnecessary, clumsy things. It’s OK, it happens.
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Also, if I started telling my husband every time somebody hit on me, that would be manipulative. “See? Other people want me. You better stay alert. I’m in high demand!” I pretty much never mention such things because I don’t see the point.
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I would never tell the husband.
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eh. I’d tell my husband, but he already has zero relationship with his brother, so it wouldn’t break anything.
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I wouldn’t tell him. Not because I wanted to hide anything, but because it would make his life in the warzone much worse.
TLP writes about this:
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/10/how_not_to_prevent_military_su.html
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I certainly wouldn’t tell him when he was deployed. I honestly would only share happy and sunshiney news with anyone who was deployed. They need idealized visions of home so they can come back as physically and psychologically strong as possible. And, like I said above, I would probably make the choice to never tell my husband. But I do think the “never tell” case is a bit thorny.
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yeah, this is a legit consideration.
when my sibling was in basic, other guy received a letter from his gf informing him that his best friend back home had assaulted her. The other guys spent days preventing the dude from going AWOL and get arrested trying to return home and kill his friend. Still ended up leaving basic, I think.
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“But at the same time, this is a massive betrayal” writes the woman.
Now, the hyperbolic language is telling. Massive. Betrayal.
This is so American in the way it shows the detrimental effect of mass derangement movements such as we have witnessed these past few years: MeToo, BLM, LGBTQ+ and so on. These are nothing new in American history: there were the rapture movements, the Christian Revival movements, Joseph Smith and the Church of Latter-Day Saints, all those strange sects such as the Shakers and many others, one of which preached absolute abstention from sex, leading obviously to the prompt extinction of said sect.
What is it with America and hysteria? What is it with Americans and fads, rages and raves?
You ask an American if a film (movie) was good and they say it was “awesome”, they taste home-made ice-cream in Rome and they erupt in “It’s amaaaaazing!!!!” and so on and so forth. They have opinions on everything and everything is black or white and they are on the right side of history, and it goes on. Apparently no American has ever heard of understatement or being discreet.
I do not understand what this woman thinks she will achieve if she tells her deployed husband that his brother has made a pass – on the phone – at her. I even think that she has not even fully considered the possible consequences of her action if put into practice.
She cannot tolerate the fact that her husband and his brother have a close relationship in which she does not play any part since the strong bond uniting the two was formed before she entered his life. All she can think about is that her young brother-in-law, a young man at 25, has somehow shown some disrespect towards her, is a hypocrite in her mind because since the two brothers are so close she thinks that it should not even be possible for him to desire her or else what kind of loyal and trustworthy brother is he? She wants a showdown, she wants to bring him down in the eyes of her husband, she wants to make a spectacle of him… and why? Why the outrage? Why the hysteria?
An the fact is that she really has quite a lot of other weighty things to ponder about: a husband – whom she calls “the love of her life” – away at war, a new life blooming within her, God knows what else that may be going on in her life, and yet the scandal is that she has found out that her brother-in-law covets her as an object of carnal desire.
I don’t know: I’m thinking of all those Ukrainian and Russian mothers and fathers who have lost their sons and grandsons in the war, Israelis and Palestinians mourning their loved ones, and this outrage of an incipiently pregnant wife of a soldier on active duty in a war scenario ranting about being the object of unwanted male attention seems such a displaced form of attention seeking and virtue signalling…
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“Now, the hyperbolic language is telling. Massive. Betrayal.”
Yeah… apart from the academic question of how to react in such a real situation… I don’t think this really happened the way it’s related. It would be interesting for a forensic linguist to have a look at it…. to me it lacks coherence and… congruence and there’s a bunch of red flags…
No concern for the husband at all and a few sentences that make me think this is either a pure fantasy or she’s considering an affair herself, maybe with the brother…. there I said it.
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I agree. “The love of my life, zero interest in anybody else” – the lady most certainly doth protest too much.
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“the lady most certainly doth protest too much.”
I’d give even odds that the whole thing is entirely made up…
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Women aren’t occupied nearly enough, so this kind of thing is rampant.
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OT: are leftists going to win in Poland?
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“are leftists going to win in Poland?”
No. The only close to actual leftist candidates had about 10% between the three of them.
Trzaskowski is not a leftist either. He’s basically liberal centrist.
Duda is a weak figure who’s tried to pathetically assert himself a time or two and was brutally swatted down by Kaczyński….
The President isn’t that important a position and was not well-defined when it was created (supposedly at US insistence). It’s evolved into something a bit stronger than Germany’s president but a lot weaker than France.
Nawrocki is a weird one. After he was drafted by PiS it was obvious he’s been given a _lot_ of training about how to act in public but it’s not second nature yet. It’s also emerged that, under a pen name, he wrote a biography of a local gangster (haven’t read it but the tone is said to be flattering) and he’s said to like the company of some shady figures. And for sure he conned an old man (Pan Jerzy as he’s now known) out of his apartment.
Generally the optimal voter strategy in Poland is to vote a party out of power after two terms (if not more frequently). Technically the president can’t belong to a party but they still have connections. Two PiS presidencies are enough. Trzaskowski is not a great figure by any means but he’s good enough.
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OK, that’s comforting. Thank you! I saw a lot of drama on social media about this.
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“Last week’s lecture on the suffering of Jews in Nazi Germany was eye-opening. I can relate to the Jewish people because I have also experienced terrible hardship. In Junior year of high school, my English teacher gave me a C on an assignment where I definitely deserved at least a B. I was so traumatized! That’s how I found out that injustice exists in the world. This made me realize that I want to fight to make the world a better place and prevent such atrocities from ever happening again.”
True story.
Of course, I immediately proceeded to commit another atrocity by giving a bad grade for this assignment.
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LOL c’mon, first consider the source. The posts of “Hazel Appleyard” closely resemble the ridiculous American afternoon television shows dealing with preposterous stories, usually involving sexual, familial, religious, monetary or all of the above, all highly emotive matters. Moreover, all of the participants, including the announcer(aka carney or barker), the arguing subjects(aka circus clowns), and the loud and appreciative audience have at best room temperature IQ’s ;-D
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Right, but it’s still a lot of fun to discuss. We all have discovered new sides to each other. Plus, I got a chance to share my “terrible atrocities” anecdote, so it’s all good.
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On the topic of marriage and trust: When I was married, I would have told my husband these things, because that sort of sharing was part of our trusting relationship (as I saw it). He doesn’t have a family member who hit on me, but I definitely would have told him that sort of thing because we were married and he was my best, closest friend, and if something happened that bothered me I generally told him about it.
We aren’t married any more. This is for many reasons, but one big one is the strain that respecting each other’s family dynamics put on our relationship. I hope this young couple can find a way to navigate the (real or imagined) situation without too much damage.
On the topic of being hit on: When I was in my 20’s, I would get hit on about once a year on the bus or in public. It was a little bit flattering and very very confusing because the whole notion of someone finding me attractive just did not compute. In retrospect it was very convenient and saved me enormous time that I didn’t react to any of that because I was 1) sure that no one would ever find me attractive and this was probably some misunderstanding or prank and 2)married.
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I think this story was made up to generate responses and clicks, likely by ChatGPT.
I have noticed recently a pick up in bot activity posting stories on some of the discussion fora lot attend. They all read like this (kind of a relationship or marriage problem story somewhat related to a topic being discussed) and it really works great to generate a lot of discussion.
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WordPress does not like me – this comment was by random reader.
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“I saw a lot of drama on social media about this”
People love their drama…
I’d prefer Trzaskowski (slow horse race) but Nawrocki wouldn’t be a national or international tragedy (though if he loses it would probably mark the beginning of the end of PiS in it’s current form, which depends a lot on internal… patronage).
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“I’d prefer Trzaskowski”
I’ll add, I probably would have preferred Sikorski who, who despite some downsides, already has a lot of international connections. But there was a party internal poll and he lost.
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This is why I keep coming to your blog. I think I know what your opinion will be on an issue and then you prove me totally wrong lol.
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Right? I can be deeply annoying but nobody can accuse me of being boring and predictable. 😁😁
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I didn’t anticipate that line of argument about the brothers needing each other in the future. And it hit home for me. That’s what my father tells me when I sometimes complain to him about my brother’s wife (with whom I don’t get along haha).
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