We shared everything — and then I married her brother

I

have a friend — we’ll call her Sarah — who has been my closest friend since high school. Coming from a city with a tiny frum community, she boarded in my hometown for the last two years of high school and then we went to seminary together.

During all those years, Sarah and I shared a close friendship. We grew together in many ways. Sarah was the first one there for me when each of my grandmothers passed away, and I was by her side through a broken engagement. She got married one year later, and obviously our relationship shifted when she got married; I was single, and we naturally had proper boundaries in place without ever discussing it.

I continued in shidduchim, and no one was more shocked than I when, at age 23, Sarah redt me to her 22-year-old brother. I was soon engaged to him, and three months later married and living a ten-minute-walk away from Sarah and her husband in Lakewood.

And that’s when our entire relationship kind of derailed.

Suddenly Sarah wasn’t just my best friend — she was my husband’s sister. Not only that, but as an only daughter with several brothers, Sarah is exceptionally close with her mother. They share everything. Like, everything. Her mother knew what she made every night for supper. I imagine that since they lived so far from each other for so long, this was their way of staying connected.

But the first time my mother-in-law asked me how my fettuccine Alfredo came out — without my ever mentioning to her that I was making it — I was rattled. Sarah must have just mentioned it casually in conversation, but it brought the reality of my situation into clear view.

In addition to my own need for privacy, there was my husband’s desire as well. He wasn’t comfortable with his sister knowing things about his life that, to me, seemed normal to share with a best friend. I thought it was normal to ask Sarah (who had been living in Lakewood for a few years, while I was brand new) about sandwich or shawarma places, but my husband didn’t appreciate his sister and mother commenting every time we went out — and I have to say, I was beginning to see his point.