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[quote=Anonymous]My husband’s brother and his wife are getting divorced after many years of a very difficult relationship including financial problems, trust issues, bad communication style, and now we think also some mental health issues. My BIL has essentially isolated himself from everyone. He doesn’t have any friends, isn’t close w his parents or any other relatives and now that his marriage has deteriorated so much he doesn’t have my SIL to talk to either. Only person he really talks to is my DH, his brother. I don’t talk to BIL much but I do talk to my SIL almost every day as she and I got close over the years (we’ve known each other for almost 20 years and she and I have always been close throughout but especially these past couple years when she needed someone to talk to as their marriage crumbled.)

Anyway…I was talking to my SIL yesterday and something I said must have really upset her bc apparently as soon as she and I got done talking she picked a huge fight w my BIL. This then lead my BIL to send angry texts to my husband and to me demanding to know what we said to SIL to cause her to start this fight w him. I sincerely don’t know what exactly it was I said that upset her (I asked her and she said oh it was nothing. I went over our whole convo in my mind many times and could think of nothing. Our convo was mostly her talking anyway and neither of us shared any new information; it was all topics we’ve discussed before but all related to how difficult their relationship is. So even though I can’t imagine why BIL is angry w me/us, just to try to smooth things over I sent both of them a text like this “I’m sorry I said something that made things worse between you. (DH and I) would never want to do that. We’re sorry for what you’re both going through.”

My SIL texted me back “don’t worry about it. You did nothing wrong. BIL just gets upset easily.” My BIL texted me something like “please use more discretion in the future.” (Discretion about what I have no idea!) And BIL told my husband he’d “appreciate keeping things said between them in confidence.” My DH asked his brother what was said that upset him too and BIL gave a very vague answer that’s really more about BIL’s general personality than anything specific so it’s not like some “secret” that we revealed about him.

Yet it really bothers me that they don’t just tell me what it was that I said that upset them. I feel like SIL (and then, by extension, BIL) blamed this fight they had on me and by extension my DH bc they feel they need someone to blame. But it drives me crazy that I don’t even know what I did wrong and I fear that BIL won’t share w DH anymore bc of this which would be bad as it would take away BIL’s only friend.

I guess Im mostly just venting but have you ever been in a situation like this where someone close to you is breaking up/divorcing and drags others into it? Or blames fights on others? Is that a common dynamic? Ive never had a close family member or friend divorce before. How can we stay close to both of them and also avoid something like this happening again? I already plan to really scale back and basically say nothing going forward but things are so tense between them and neither of them has many friends or other people to talk to so DH and I are basically it that I fear this could just keep happening somehow. [/quote]

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