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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I hear your anguish.  I see why you are upset. Your SIL sounds possessive and dangerously controlling.

For this giving OP grief, imagine if the genders were reversed.  Op’s Sister married a man who won’t let her take calls from her family.  He won’t let her participate in family chats.  He won’t let her family visit unless he is present.  Obviously abisive and sick, right,  oP’s SIL is abusive and sick.  This is not normal boundaries.  This is pathological insecurity and possessiveness.

OP, your brother can’t make this work.  He needs to contact a lawyer and work on getting at least half custody of the kid.  But he’s gotta figure that out himself.  Keep loving him, keep being ther for him.  She has isolated him and he needs you.  But you can’t fix him...you can mirror back what he tells you in hopes it might give him clarity but you are not responsible for him and n Ed to try you let this go.

My brother was in a similarly abusive marriage with a paranoid, volatile woman. He became more and more isolated from all his friends.  She threatened to leave him and take their kids back to her country any time he wanted to see friends or talked to us too much.  It’s a longer story but he died by suicide and we hardly ever get to see the children, who are Terri boy emotionally abused by her.  I hear in your voice the kind of increasing desperation I felt.  Just make sure your brother knows he is not alone and always has you.  Make sure he know he has options and doesn’t need to stay married.  Make sure he knows that you love him even when she is awful to you.  Good luck.[/quote]

I am sorry you had to experience such a horrific tragedy, but it seems like OP’s situation is different. He brother is hardly isolated - he works with his dad, his family visits him every 2 weeks, they vacation together. OPs family is judgmental and pushy, they destroy their son’s marriage.  OP is upset that SIL avoids her, she is writes that she is upset that SIL does not leave her alone with her brother, and so on and so forth.[/quote]

This s not normal boundary establishment on SIL’s part.  OP admits her mother is overbearing, but SIL’s reaction is possessiveness and control.  I find my DH’s family annoying and overbearing, but I don’t tell him they can’t call or insist that I be home every time they visit.  To the contrary, I relish being able to get out of her and let them have time with our son and DH without them getting on my nerves.

OP’s brother can be isolated while still seeing people.  SIL restricts how and when he can communicate with people and she flips out about any perceived slight.  Of course he is going to feel less and less able to reach out and confide in his loved ones.  My brother lived in a 2-family house with my parents but still felt alone in the world.  They’d overhear terrible screaming fights and he would be so ashamed and so humiliated at the abuse he tolerated that he couldn’t talk about it.  I’m not projecting my brother onto OP’s; I just see clearly the possessiveness and controlling behavior that any of us would recognize as such if it were a man doing it.[/quote]

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