Ch-ch-changes

One of the things that's most shocking to me as I look back on my life is how my sister is now my best friend. Growing up, maybe it was just too much time spent together, forced to get along on too many family outings, that shook up our relationship. I had a friend in high school that I was so jealous of, because her best friends were here younger sister (a sophomore our senior year) and her younger brother (not yet in high school) and it always made me wonder about the "picture perfect family" that she must go home to every night. To be honest, they are an amazing family, and you can see their love for each other even after just a few minutes with them.

My sister and I fought all the time. Most of it was verbal - throwing insults, screaming matches, saying really hurtful things that we really didn't mean. And then there were the occasional instances where it got physical - biting, scratching, hitting (she swears up and down I broke a phone when I hit her with it; while I don't remember that I do remember covering her head with a pillow and then sitting on it.) Finally, my mom quit trying to referree and just let us go at it. My poor dad got more calls at work from one or the other of us crying about something. We were just plain awful. The few times we managed to get along great were more often than not ended on a sour note. Yes, I will take the blame for a lot of it happening. My teenage hormones, coupled with the difficulty of my parents' divorce (though now I see it as a blessing in disguise) made me a really unpleasant person to be around, at home if not with friends.

Now, things have changed. We call, we email, we chat online every time our schedules match up. When I go home to visit, I'm excited to see her and to do things with her, even if that thing we do is nothing. Every now and then, we get exasperated with each other (we've grown up to be two very different individuals) but deep down, we have such a fierce love for each other it make the trivial stuff, well, trivial.

Of course, everyone loves friends. Especially best friends. And what could be better than a best friend? How about TWO best friends! And what am I gaining when I walk down the aisle (besides an amazing husband?) A sister-in-law. Another girl, who even lives in the same city, that I can share things with, talk with, commisserate with. Right? Wrong.

Here's the problem: Jason and his sister aren't close. They're not best friends. It's not that they don't love each other, or even dislike each other. They just don't have the same close relationship Chelsea and I do. And what makes it hard for me is trying to find my boundary in all of this. I feel like, in fairness to Jason, I shouldn't be closer to her than he is. Because after all, she's only my sister IN LAW.

Sometimes I feel like I pressure him too much to call his sister, see what she's doing, see if she's free, if she wants to hang out. We have a wonderful time when we finally do manage to make plans, but those times are few and far between due to 4 very different, very hectic schedules.

I'm stuck in a veritable tango - take the initiative to adventure with her and overstep my boundaries, or back off for Jason's sake and potentially lose a great friend. I really want a great relationship with Jason's family (and I have it with most everyone from parents to grandparents) but I don't want it at the expense of his own relationships!

There are times when she makes effort towards me as a friend - like the fact that after we got engaged she let me borrow/have a lot of the wedding stuff she still had from her wedding last August. And the fact that I am borrowing her veil and headpiece to wear on my wedding day. There have been times where she and her husband have invited us out to dinner, or even over to their house for a cookout. While she and I aren't to the point of calling each other directly, we definitely aren't at ground zero.

What's the best way to approach this, to let my relationship with her blossom, without offending Jason or making him out to be a bad brother because I'm more involved with her than he is? I really hope we can have the type of relationship that Jason has with my sister, the type where alone in a room the two of them wouldn't sit in an awkward silence or make small talk. My sister loves Jason, and in his own way, Jason loves her. I want to love Jason's sister, too, but not at the expense of Jason's own love for her.