Going forward, I would be snarky as hell to SIL. Yes, I would be very upset that I made all this effort and my husband didn't appreciate it.
I mean I probably won't see her for another year and while I do think it is rude to complain about other people's birthday plans, I think the way H reacted and handled it is what I have the issue with. BIL and SIL are odd/rude and like @this said, H should still be on my side and stick up for me/or the plans I have made.
I mean, I definitely agree that your DH is the real issue here but I'd pretty much refuse to have much, if anything, to do with accommodating SIL at this point.
So what did SIL end up ordering? Did she eat anything?
We went to a cuban place, she ordered fish. Hated that and sent it back, refused to ordered anything else. BIL said she was fine. She ate a few bites of rice and a margarita.
I have a few dumb questions about social anxiety. I do not love meeting random/new people or hanging out in larger crowds especially with people I don't know well, so I can definitely understand. I don't know how to say this gently, but does this cause you to isolate yourself from everyone except people you already know? Do you ever get to know people or do you just avoid all interaction with people you don't know?
- any friends I made between about age 12 and 27 were friends of friends. I mostly hung out with the same small group through middle school and high school. I didn't really realize until I moved out and went to university on my own just how bad my "shyness" was. I spent most of my time in my dorm room. The only longterm friend I made that year was my neighbour who also was a hermit so we rarely talked lol. My room was right next to the lounge and I remember one night everyone was drinking and having fun and I tried so so hard just to leave my room and join them. I wanted to make friends so badly and I knew these people well enough from living with them and eating with them at the caf for 6 months. But I gave up and just stayed in my room and cried. I swear the only reason I ever met dh was because I severely sprained my knee running and he helped carry me into my residence lounge. Then he sat and talked with me for an hour and I couldn't escape his company, lol!
I HATE the chit chat of meeting new people, but realize that in order to have friends/relationships that it is necessary to go through those to meet people. SIL won't ever be comfortable with us because she won't spend more than 24 hour with us and even that time more than half of it she is in a bedroom/reading or on the computer. They also never come to anything we invite them to and if we do see them, they come late/leave early or when we stayed with them, they asked us to leave early. - see for me, developing new relationships/friendships really wasn't on my radar. I was happy if I have one good friend in my life at any given time.
Is there anything I can do to help her feel more comfortable with us or anyway we can get to know her better? Or is this just the way that it is and we need to accept it and move on? - honestly it doesn't sound to me like she really wants to try to help herself. You can only do so much to accommodate this kwim? . So I would not go out of your way to do more, but just continue to make gatherings that include them small and try not to take it personally if their visits are short or she's being antisocial. Hopefully she'll get some help eventually or age out of it with time. Really the only thing that helped me get over my panic was having a baby. It was like a built in conversation starter and people would pay attention to and talk about him instead of me. I'm still much more confident out in public when I have one of my kids with me.