This is a photo on my (f28)Instagram. My brother in law (m42) reacted to it in DM, and said the above. I feel I replied normally, but now my sister (f39) apparently saw the message and is saying that I engaged in hot discussions with her man! I am myself married and I feel so bad now. I told my husband who said I did nothing wrong. Any idea how I could approach my sister ?
How the fuck is one supposed to respond to this bullshit? We try to avoid uncomfortable situations even after other people have already created them, so we tend to entertain people a bit too long.
Of course in retrospect it would have been better to not engage with him at all, but it’s hard to completely understand what’s going on at the spot, and as humans we feel a need to respond.
Don’t be mad at yourself. You’re not the creep here.
For the record for anybody else reading this in the future- if my BIL (who my sister married when I was 11) had said that to me, I would’ve replied, “Ew, what the fuck are you doing?” And immediately called my sister.
I get that we are giving grace to the person who received the thirst message, that’s fine, but you don’t have to “play nice” to anyone making comments about your body. If you need to, stop and think about what you’d want your sister to say if your husband was being a creepy asshole. (My sister would just want me to call her immediately. The ‘ew’ message is gratis.)
Yeah, that would be the better thing to do, but women tend to have been trained to try to salvage men’s fragile emotions in situations like this.Especially when similar things happen in real life it’s all about trying to escape without making the man upset/escalating the situation, and a text message from someone you know can feel similar.
I don’t think it’s a good thing to try to maintain civility, but I think it’s the natural and understandable reaction from anyone who is not prepared for this kind of situation.
I think it’s a common pattern that men do unacceptable things and that women are left questioning their own behaviour afterwards. On a societal level I think it contributes to a shortage of accountability for men.