I (20F) and my boyfriend (21M) have been dating for less than a month. For some background information, we’ve been friends for six years before dating. Also, since this will be important to the story, I am white and he is asian.
Due to family reasons, he lives alone with his sister (22F). I have only met her twice, so I never got to form a real opinion on her, besides based on what our friend group says about her. Most of them seem to regard her with a sense of fear, and according to my boyfriend, she dislikes all his friends besides one of them.
When he first told her we were official. She interrogated him pretty badly. She asked him about my political beliefs, if I was in any past relationships, why they ended, if I wanted kids, and asked him if we’ve been intimate at all. She was also upset that she wasn’t the first one he told we were official.
She asked if she didn’t like me, would he break up with me. And he obviously said no.
Because of this, I think she didn’t like me before she even met me. And that’s not me guessing. According to my boyfriend and his friends, she told them that she was “going to be the crazy sister” and that she would try to make me uncomfortable. So yeah.
We all agreed on a place to meet at, but an hour before we were supposed to meet up, she asked to change it to a different restaurant. Our group has a mix of dietary restrictions (my boyfriend and his sister are vegetarian, and I have a deathly food allergy that has left me a picky eater) and the original place was chosen with that in mind. But still, we switched to the place she wanted so she’d be in a good mood.
So I met her for the first time. We went out as a group. I tried making conversation with her a few times, but she was only really talking to everyone except me.
Afterward, she texted my boyfriend “we need to talk.”
She told him that I was being disrespectful by breaking multiple Korean customs that I was not aware of, nor did my boyfriend inform me of. This includes:
- I didn’t shake her hand with two hands.
- I wasn’t trying hard enough to win her over (she said 9t was my job to impress her, not for her to impress me)
- I held hands with my boyfriend.
- I didn’t look like I was enjoying my food enough (she said that I spit my food out, but that literally didn’t happen, and I asked my boyfriend to back me up on that one)
- I didn’t use chopsticks (I was eating a salad)
- I didn’t eat all my food (I took a to-go box)
My boyfriend describes himself as “ethnically Korean, not culturally Korean,” and does not really engage in Korean culture, so I didn’t know any of this.
Because she said before I even met that she was going to try and make me uncomfortable, I feel like she went into the meeting with bad faith, already deciding she didn’t like me, and was just looking for reasons to.
I told my boyfriend this is how I felt, and he said while she didn’t come in with a friendly demeanor, that he doesn’t think she came in disliking me. I talked to my family about this and they all agree with me that she wasn’t acting in good faith.
I love my boyfriend. I’m willing to learn about his culture and act more Korean if that means his family will like me. But I can’t help but feel like no matter what I’ll do, she’ll never like me.
TL;DR: I (20F) just started dating my longtime friend (21M). His sister (22F) admitted before meeting me that she’d be the “crazy sister” and try to make me uncomfortable. At our first group dinner, she ignored me, then later told my boyfriend I was disrespectful for not following Korean customs I didn’t know about. I feel like she went in with bad faith and will never like me, but my boyfriend thinks I’m assuming the worst.