Hi, I’m a new member and after reading advice in some of the topics on this site I have decided to ask for some advice of my own. I’ll get straight to the issue as the title describes my family (actually my two Sisters), have a real issue with my wife.

I have been married for 11 years and have 2 children. The relationship between my sisters, (who are both married with children) and my wife has always been civil but not overly friendly, they get along buts its luke-warm, not house on fire stuff.

There have over the years, been a few blow-ups but things settle down, normally by me having to go and straighten things out with my sisters. The blow-ups always seem to come back to what my sisters perceive as behaviours they don’t like from my wife, maybe the way she spoke to them or how she may have been/acted in a certain situation.

I feel a lot of the issues arise from the first 3 years of our marriage when my wife and I lived with my parents in my parents house. My sisters have got an impression that my wife was not as respectful as she could have been during that time towards my parents and to them when they would visit. One sister who lived nearby would visit every single day for a minimum of an hour sometimes twice a day. The other sister, who lived further away, visited every 3 months and typically stayed for 1-2 weeks. My wife did find this environment claustrophobic but put up with it for my sake. Both sisters never considered my parents house to be our home or respected our privacy whilst we were there and insisted it to be an open house with them having keys to the front door so they could come and go as they please.

Anyway these issues would normally come and go as the visits would come and go and we would visit each others houses and families happily enough, the kids would all mingle and usually it was all good.

We now live in our own house (past 7 years) a good distance away and visit my parents when we can, normally every 3 months as a family and I visit every 4-6 weeks on my own.

Recently, during a visit to my parents house we stopped at my sisters house for the night where the 10 years of underlying issues between my wife and sisters blew up again. This time it was really ugly and a lot of slurs and old complaints were made in mine and my wife’s presence about my wife. My wife was quite shocked but stayed quiet and next day we left and returned to our own home.

I informed my parents of what had happened and they were quite shocked and said they would find out why this happened. After a few days my parents informed me that both my sisters had now said that she did not want any future relationship with my wife and she was no longer permitted to visit them, but if I wanted to visit my sisters with my children that would be fine. They also said my sisters would no longer be visiting my house because of my wife.

The bottom line is that my sisters want to cut my wife out of the family and maintain a relationship with myself. My parents at first went along with this idea.

Now, I know my wife is not perfect and I don’t have her on a pedestal, she can have her moments and we have had our arguments but nothing beyond normal so I’m not the blinkered husband in this play thinking my wife has no faults, she does as we all do have her flaws and she can sometimes speak without thinking, buts its usually through naivety then malice.

I will caveat that I always found my wife to be dutiful to my parents as much is as reasonable to expect from a daughter in law, both during and after we lived with them. In our marriage, my wife looks after me and the children really well. We have a happy marriage and family with no issues between ourselves.

However, this call to exclude her from my family seems an extreme action and not one I can go along with. I have informed my parents I do not accept the conditions imposed. On my part, I will not stop anyone visiting me but I will not visit my sisters  and leave my wife at home it just does not seem a fair thing to do.

So we have arrived at a stalemate. My sisters won’t visit me and I cannot consciously visit them under the conditions that exclude my wife from my family.

My sisters are adamant my wife is a rotten apple and will not move in their stance to exclude her from their lives and now they are accusing me of breaking family relations because I won’t visit them.

My wife has said she doesn’t mind if I visit my sisters, but I know it would be hurtful to her if I did, and in any case I can’t visit them with any happiness knowing how they are hating on my wife.

I also feel its quite humiliating and disrespectful to me for them to effectively say, ‘you can come but leave your wife at home, and we won’t be coming to your house either’.

Where do I go from here?