Long story short, my brother in law lives across the street. We live in NJ. He says he’s very concerned about coronavirus. His daughter and wife have pre-existing conditions. I totally get it. However, he tries to police everyone else. “You don’t care about my family because you aren’t doing things the way i think you should”. This includes him watching out his windows and creeping on his cameras and calling us out when our kids get too close to the other kids when playing, or if I inadvertently shake a neighbor’s hand while saying hello out in the street (yes, it’s like that). We are taking reasonable precautions, but we aren’t totally cucked. This has been going on for a year. His parents and sometimes my wife are enablers for him. They’ll say things and all but there’s never any consequence to his actions. He’s done and said some pretty mean very disrespectful things about this all. Even calling me “a fucking asshole” because I got the virus last year, from going to work to keep my bills paid. This is only the tip of the iceberg. This dude claims it’s about concern for his daughter, meanwhile he lets her go into the gaggle of kids playing “too close” outside.... lets her play for a bit, then comes over to pull her away and make a scene that no one is wearing masks and social distancing. Or he’ll let her around all of us who he says “I can’t trust you with the covid precautions”. Then complain that he can’t trust us and pull all this other watchdog shit. Sounds more to me like someone who just wants to trap people into shit he can complain about (which was pretty typical of his BS even before covid. I’m somewhat venting here, and I apologize. But I don’t really have anywhere to turn about this. Everyone around me and involved basically says “He’s over the top and shouldn’t act like that, but it’s ok because he’s only trying to protect his family”. Drives me up a wall!! I’m not a confrontational person, and I’ve given him/them the be if it of the doubt for this past year, but it’s really starting to affect our lives and more importantly our kids’ lives in a negative way and it’s causing problems between myself and my wife (who is finally starting to see it for what it is) and my in laws. For me personally, my family is basically not in the picture and these people are really my only close family and they do a lot for us. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. Anyone else have to deal with a similar situation? How are you getting through it without blowing up on people and damaging relationships?
-Sorry for any misspellings. Typing on a rush on my phone. I’ll try to fix whatever I find.
Additional Info: There's no avoiding this guy. My in laws are all so close, there's no way to cut him out, or get away from his BS. Also, there's no talking to him about anything ha already "knows".. He's stubborn as a mule. I'm not really trying to even be friends. But I have to get along to get along. My in laws are literally involved in every aspect of what we do, and now, with this, every decision has to pass the test of whether or not it' something he can start shit over or not. Fucking blows!!
You have received a lot of advice here. Some good, some not so much. I’m only going to add something I taught my kids when the became young adults. Designed to take both logical and emotional aspects of a situation. The method helps you make decisions. It’s pretty simple but does require a bit of thinking on your part. When we have a problem we tend to mull the same disconnected thoughts over and over and we still don’t have a decision that we don’t question. Step #1 - Write down every thought you have about the situation. Every thing that comes to mind. Don’t chose a solution just list thoughts. IE: I could belt him, we could move, I could learn to deal with it. So explore everything that comes to mind about belting him. That would upset the family. I could get arrested. On and on what ever crosses your mind. Don't assign how you feel about a list item belting him fright now save that for step 2. You stay in step one until no more things come to mind, this sometimes take days. When you know you have nothing left move to Step #2 - Where you give each item on the list a score of -5 to +5. You assign emotion to each item on the list. For example. Belting him would feel good, real good so you you give that list item a +5, making the wife mad may be a -5 but the brother n law May only be a -2, the neutral point would eat a zero. During this stage you should not come up with more list items or you have not spent enough time in step 1. When your don’t with adding to you list and assigning a vale to each item on the list add them up. A sum in the negative range will tell you not to belt your brother in law. In the positive range, wail away. Do that for each idea you come up with for solutions and you sound be able to clearly see what option would best fit you and your family. It’s sometimes hard not to question you’re answer but in truth you considered every possible angle and numbers assigning the emotional side gives you the best answer. Sorry for the long post but I hope it helps you decide what is best for this though situation.