My Husband Threatened to Divorce Me After I Refused to Attend My SIL’s Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving was supposed to be family time, right? But this year, it felt more like I was heading into a battle I didn’t sign up for.

It started with my sister-in-law, Amy’s text announcing that she’d be hosting Thanksgiving this year, and that it would be a strictly vegetarian meal. This wasn’t a suggestion, mind you, but a declaration.

I couldn’t help but laugh as I stared at the words on my phone screen: No meat or animal products allowed! Anyone who doesn’t respect this rule will be kicked out. Trust me, you won’t even miss them once you try my Tofurky roast!

Yeah, right. I’d choked down enough of her cardboard-flavored fake meat experiments since she decided to become vegetarian last year to know better.

I could hear her voice in my head as I read the text, all high and haughty, the way she sounds when she’s convinced she’s right about something.

“Can you believe Amy’s Thanksgiving dinner message? Can’t she just make a lentil curry instead of forcing us all to eat that awful faux meat?” I turned to Jeremy, expecting him to chuckle along with me, but he just gave me a look that stopped my laughter dead in its tracks.

“It’s just one meal, Belinda,” he said in a low, tense voice. “You can handle it.”

“I know I can handle it,” I shot back, rolling my eyes. “I just don’t want to.”

“Why does everything between you and Amy always have to be such a big deal?” he asked, running a hand through his hair, eyes fixed on some invisible spot on the carpet. “It’s a family holiday, and this is important to Amy. For once, can’t you just do something to make her happy?”

I don’t know whether it was the way he suddenly seemed so rigid, or how his voice took on that edge, but something in me snapped.

I was tired of constantly bending to Amy’s needs and whims for every family gathering. Maybe it would’ve been easier if she weren’t so controlling and erratic, but I was tired of riding the roller coaster of being Amy’s sister-in-law.

“Because it’s not about the food, and you know it. Amy always steamrolls everyone else’s plans, and it’s not fair.” I crossed my arms, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice. “Jeremy, we could just spend Thanksgiving on our own this year. Make a nice dinner, watch a movie…”

He shook his head like I’d just suggested setting the house on fire.

“We’re not skipping Thanksgiving at Amy’s. It’s… you’re not being supportive, Belinda.” He looked at me, then with tightness around his mouth and tension in his shoulders, he said, “If you can’t be there for my family, maybe… well, maybe you shouldn’t be a part of it anymore.”

My jaw dropped. I felt the blood rush to my face, a mix of shock and anger. “You’d really divorce me over one family dinner?”

“It’s not just dinner,” he muttered, looking away. “It’s about supporting each other.”

Supporting each other. Right. Except the support only worked one way, and I always came off as second best to his sister.

But I bit my tongue and swallowed the one thousand things I wanted to shout at him, mostly about his unwavering dedication to Amy, which went beyond the typical brotherly concern.

I’d noticed the late-night calls, and the anxious glances when she was around. But I couldn’t quite figure out how to bring it up without sounding… petty and paranoid.

“Fine. We’ll go to Amy’s Thanksgiving,” I said, but the words tasted bitter.

I could feel the weight of his expectations pressing down, and that weight carried me straight into the storm I had no idea was brewing.

The days leading up to Thanksgiving felt like walking through quicksand — every step heavier than the last. Jeremy seemed to slip away right in front of me.

He was always out early and back late, his shoulders hunched under an invisible weight. I’d never seen him so preoccupied, so completely withdrawn, and the walls he’d put up between us grew thicker by the day.

It wasn’t just his absence. Money, too, had become strangely tight. I noticed him pulling our bank statements more often, scanning them with an intensity that seemed out of character.

He’d insisted on managing our finances when we first married, saying it made sense since he worked in accounting. Back then, I’d shrugged, trusting him completely.

But now, the way he pored over each line, his brow knitted with worry, stirred a growing unease in me. What was he hiding?

One evening, after he’d gone to bed, I gave in to my instincts and pulled up the details for our joint account on my laptop. Guilt whispered that I was crossing a line, but my need for answers drowned it out.

As I scrolled, my breath hitched. Regular withdrawals, small but persistent, were labeled under a vague “medical expenses.” Doctor’s names cropped up every month, one more than the rest.

I typed the name into my browser. The last thing I expected was to find out that the only doctor in the area with that name was a psychologist.

My heart pounded. During dinner the next night, I worked up the nerve to ask, “Jeremy, are you… are you in therapy?”

His eyes widened, a flicker of something unnameable darting across his face.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he mumbled, too quickly. His hand fumbled for the edge of the table as if anchoring himself. “It’s just… uh, it’s been a rough year. So much stress.”

My stomach twisted. He was lying. My steady, unflinching husband was lying to me, and I didn’t know why.

A few nights before Thanksgiving, I woke to the soft murmur of his voice drifting from the living room. Tiptoeing to the doorway, I held my breath, listening.

“I told you I’d handle it,” he whispered, his voice warm and tender. The way he spoke — so careful, so… intimate — it sent a shiver through me.

“You don’t have to worry,” he assured, the words almost a caress. Then there was a long pause, thick and lingering, before he murmured, “Goodnight, Amy.”

As he hung up, my heart plummeted, thudding painfully in my chest.

Amy. Of course.

I wanted to demand answers, to press him until every last hidden truth unraveled before me, but the words stuck in my throat, a bitter knot of suspicion and fear.

If I pried too far, would I even recognize what I found? Or would the truth change everything I thought I knew about my husband and his relationship with his sister?

Jeremy was so different now, a stranger masquerading in the familiar face I’d trusted for years. I could feel the edges of something larger, a whole tangled mess of secrets he’d worked tirelessly to keep buried. But there it was, just beneath the surface, waiting to be exposed.

Thanksgiving Eve dawned gray and somber, casting a dull light over the kitchen where I sat, my stomach a knot of nerves and questions.

I couldn’t stomach the idea of sitting across from Amy, pretending nothing was wrong, stuffing my face with tofu roast while my husband’s lies swirled around us. No, I needed to know what they were up to before I walked through that door.

Jeremy entered, his face blank with that practiced calm of his, but I could see a flicker of something when he met my gaze. I waited until we were both settled at the table. The fridge hummed in the background, filling the space between us.

“Jeremy, I need to know.” I kept my voice steady, though inside I was anything but. “Why are you so…committed to Amy?”

His face shifted, and for a moment I saw something raw flicker in his eyes before he blinked it away.

“What are you talking about?” He tried for nonchalance, but his hands were clenched tight, his knuckles white against the tabletop.

“All the secrets, the money, the phone calls in the middle of the night.” My voice wavered as the words spilled out, no longer restrained. “Are you hiding something… something I need to worry about?”

He opened his mouth as if to deny it, then shut it again, his gaze darting around the room like he was searching for an escape. But there was none.

Trapped, he let out a small sigh, his shoulders slumping under the weight of his secrets.

“It’s… complicated,” he murmured.

“Try me,” I said, my voice rising with a mix of desperation and anger. “Whatever it is, I deserve to know.”

A thick silence stretched between us, heavy and unyielding. Finally, Jeremy looked away, his face shadowed, haunted by memories he’d kept hidden from me.

“Amy has had a lot of issues. Mental health things. She has bipolar disorder. It was bad a few years ago. Really bad.” He paused, his eyes far away. “She was hospitalized for months and when she got out, I was the only one she trusted. So I was there for her. I made sure she was taken care of and felt supported.”

His words sank into me, each one heavy, each one unraveling my understanding of him a little more. So this was the burden he’d been carrying, alone, without letting me in.

My anger surged, not at Amy’s demands, but at him. At the lie he’d been living and the betrayal that came from not being trusted enough to share his truth with me.

“And all those expenses? They’re for her, aren’t they?”

He nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the floor, unable to look at me. “Yes. Therapy, sometimes groceries… whatever she needs.”

A chill settled over me as I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of his confession suffocating. “So, you’ve been lying to me for our entire marriage. About our money, about everything.”

“It wasn’t lying, Belinda,” he insisted softly, his voice breaking, barely above a whisper. “It was just… keeping the peace. I’m her big brother and Amy’s life has been hard enough without having to face people treating her differently because of her illness. I didn’t think you needed to know about any of this.”

I wanted to scream at him, shake him until he understood the cost of his silence. Instead, I sat there, silent, as the reality of what he’d done washed over me like a tidal wave.

I shook my head, feeling the tears rise, hot and unforgiving.

“But what about us? Keeping this secret has been tearing us apart, Jeremy. And you’re so focused on Amy and protecting her from everything that you’re willing to lose your wife over Thanksgiving dinner.”

He stared at me, his face a mix of sorrow and regret. “I… I didn’t know it would come to this.”

“Well, here we are.” I took a shaky breath, gathering the last of my resolve. “And Jeremy, you need to make a choice.”

“Not between Amy and me,” I added. “I would never ask you to abandon your sister. But you need to choose between hiding things and being honest. Between enabling Amy’s controlling behavior and setting healthy boundaries. Between being her caretaker and being my partner.”

The silence that followed felt endless. When Jeremy finally spoke, his voice was thick with tears.

“I’m scared,” he admitted. “What if setting boundaries makes her worse? What if she can’t handle it?”

“What if she can?” I countered gently. “What if she’s stronger than you think? What if she needs the chance to stand on her own two feet?”

“I… I don’t know if I can risk losing her.”

I stared at Jeremy and sighed. It felt like we were at an impasse with no obvious way forward. Amy couldn’t keep running our lives, but I understood Jeremy’s reluctance to confront his sister.

One thing is clear: we can’t carry on like this. After everything I’d uncovered over the past few days, I wasn’t even sure our marriage was built on a solid enough foundation to be worth saving.

What should I do now?