I (28F) am married to James (30M) for three years now. After about a year of dating, my brother Ryan (31M) is recently engaged to Jessica (29F). She has always been an extrovert, the “life of the party” type… until recently when her behavior crossed the line.

It started a few months ago. Jessica kept making little comments about James at a family barbecue. She joked about how ‘hot’ he was for a married guy and that Ryan should ‘start working out’ to keep up. It made me uncomfortable, but I laughed it off at the time. Being polite, James just smiled and didn’t answer. A week later, James showed me a text Jessica sent him “by mistake.” “Can’t stop thinking about last night 😉.” When James asked her what she meant, she said, “Oops, wrong person!” and said it was for Ryan. I was uneasy but told myself I was overthinking it.

But things escalated. Suddenly, Jessica was texting James all the time, asking for ‘advice’ about her relationship with Ryan, and what outfit to wear to family events. They weren’t outright flirty, but they felt off, like she was fishing for attention. Take for instance that she once sent him a picture of herself in a dress and asked, ‘Do you think Ryan would like this? Be honest.” I felt sick when I found out, but James didn’t respond.

Last weekend at Ryan and Jessica’s engagement party was the final straw. I saw Jessica talking to James in private. As I walked over, I heard her say, “You know, if things were different we’d make a great couple.” James shut her down immediately and told her she was being inappropriate. Later I confronted her and she laughed it off, saying, ‘Relax, it’s just a joke!’ You’re being insecure.”

I told Ryan what happened, expecting him to be shocked or angry at Jessica. Instead, he got instantly defensive and quickly twisted things around. He didn’t seem concerned about Jessica’s behavior towards James at all. His only focus was ‘the scene’ I made, how I was trying to ‘make him look bad’ on his big night, and how I was clearly ‘jealous’ of Jessica. He insisted Jessica was just ‘being friendly’ or ‘stressed’ and I was overreacting and ‘choosing the worst possible time’ to bring something up that would ‘ruin their celebration.’ He seemed more focused on shutting down the issue and protecting the image of their perfect engagement than listening to me or confronting Jessica about her actions.

Now Ryan is mad at me, my parents are pressuring me to apologize to ‘keep the peace.’ Meanwhile, James is feeling terrible about the whole thing and says he did nothing wrong.

I called her out because it was inappropriate and disrespectful to both me and James, and frankly, concerning. But seeing how Ryan reacted makes me wonder if there’s something deeper going on in their relationship that she’s acting out, and if I just stumbled into something I don’t understand.

So, AITA for calling out my brother’s fiancée for repeatedly flirting with my husband and crossing boundaries, even though my brother’s reaction suggests there might be deeper issues within their relationship that I wasn’t fully aware of?