Anonymous wrote: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.

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Anonymous wrote:So your precious perfect brother has been spirited away by this shrew of a woman. Well, I never!

OP, you sound like an ugly, nasty person here. I challenge you to reread your initial post as if someone else had written it, to try to get you some perspective. The question is, can you stop judging this woman long enough to make time to do that?

Let me rephrase it all and summarize it. My brother is a wonderful person and used to be very in love with this woman. Things have changed and he is now miserable, but feels dutybound to try and make things work. I play no role whatsoever in this situation. I live 6,000 miles away and see them very little. I never talked bad about her to my brother... but things have gone bad anyway. He has only recently started sharing his pain with me and I now care about it. I have been thinking that there was something wrong with her for a while, but never said anything because my brother seemed happy.

It may not be normal, but so what?

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Anonymous wrote:Then your brother is an IDIOT.

He was married 5+ years before having a kid. If he was that miserable he should have split a long time ago.

Are you Asian by chance? They tend to have busybody mothers and put their sons on pedestals.

No, European... my mom can be a lot and we all know it, but she is being very careful not to invade SIL’s space. She always asks SIL if she can visit the baby and 9 out 10 is a no. My mom sees the baby maybe once every 2 weeks and they live nearby. My mom understood and she is completely out of their lives. She barely sees them.

If you think that your mother who visits the grandkid every two weeks is barely seeing them, I understand why your SIL thinks your family is ruining the marriage. Way to exaggerate and create drama.

And then OP wants to be left with the baby without the SIL (the new mom). Why? To pretend the SIL does not exist?

OP here. While I would love to bond with my niece, I have never asked for this... I still don’t understand why I can’t see her unless the mom is present as well, but I don’t argue with SIL about it... I never argue with her... I may not be very warm with her as I used to be, but I am not cold, mean, or argumentative. I simply don’t start conversations with her anynore

You still have not answered the question. Why do you want to see the niece when the mom is not present, what’s it to you? She is a nervous new mom with a baby who has gone through a health scare. You bet she does not want to leave her out of her sight, especially with someone she sees two weeks a year. This is not about you or your family, you have to start getting used to the fact that you are now in supporting and/or episodic roles. Maybe your SIL is going through something, maybe she has PPD, but she does not seem paranoid to me. You are clearly not supportive of her and her marriage, and you discuss these things with your brother/her DH.

I don’t want to see my niece only when mom is not present, but it so happens that when we are able to see them, SIL will be working. It means that we will have to wait a few more days to see them because they are then traveling. Again we are there for only 3 weeks and they will not be spending Christmas with us. Same happens this summer. We were nearby their house and I asked if we could stop by to see the baby for a few min. SIL said no because she was not home. I have sent them together a couple of times in 2 months I was at a maximum 1 hour away from them...

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Anonymous wrote:So your precious perfect brother has been spirited away by this shrew of a woman. Well, I never!

OP, you sound like an ugly, nasty person here. I challenge you to reread your initial post as if someone else had written it, to try to get you some perspective. The question is, can you stop judging this woman long enough to make time to do that?

Let me rephrase it all and summarize it. My brother is a wonderful person and used to be very in love with this woman. Things have changed and he is now miserable, but feels dutybound to try and make things work. I play no role whatsoever in this situation. I live 6,000 miles away and see them very little. I never talked bad about her to my brother... but things have gone bad anyway. He has only recently started sharing his pain with me and I now care about it. I have been thinking that there was something wrong with her for a while, but never said anything because my brother seemed happy.

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Anonymous wrote:Then your brother is an IDIOT.

He was married 5+ years before having a kid. If he was that miserable he should have split a long time ago.

Are you Asian by chance? They tend to have busybody mothers and put their sons on pedestals.

No, European... my mom can be a lot and we all know it, but she is being very careful not to invade SIL’s space. She always asks SIL if she can visit the baby and 9 out 10 is a no. My mom sees the baby maybe once every 2 weeks and they live nearby. My mom understood and she is completely out of their lives. She barely sees them.

If you think that your mother who visits the grandkid every two weeks is barely seeing them, I understand why your SIL thinks your family is ruining the marriage. Way to exaggerate and create drama.

And then OP wants to be left with the baby without the SIL (the new mom). Why? To pretend the SIL does not exist?

OP here. While I would love to bond with my niece, I have never asked for this... I still don’t understand why I can’t see her unless the mom is present as well, but I don’t argue with SIL about it... I never argue with her... I may not be very warm with her as I used to be, but I am not cold, mean, or argumentative. I simply don’t start conversations with her anynore

How do you know you can't if you have not asked? You contradict yourself. Also, I'd be very uncomfortable if I was asked to leave for my SIL to play with my baby. Believe me, if you don't stop meddling and trying to make her fit into your mold, you won't be seeing your niece at all. Let go, let her be, stop making it about ”us” vs ”her”. She wants to enjoy her new nuclear family, instead, she gets a call of new judgmental relatives with their expectations about her marriage. Do you want your brother to divorce? It looks like you are doing everything for this to happen.

Apart from the fact that I have 3 kids and I would be totally capable of taking care of my niece for a bit, I don’t ask because I know she would be very uncomfortable since I cannot see her unless she is also present. This is NOT normal come on! I cannot see my brother and his daughter... SIL leaves my brother with they daughter all the time since she works part time, but I cannot see the baby (10 months) unless she is also present. I don’t ask if I can be alone with niece because it would obviously be a no. BTW, my brother and his wife baby sat my kids many times... so I would not find it strange that they left me alone with their daughter at all

Let me rephrase in case I wasn’t clear. I cannot see my niece if she is alone with the nanny or with my brother. SIL has to be present. How can this be normal?!?! I understand if she thought I would harm the child, but this is the only situation in which I would understand such behavior! My parents have seen my brother and granddaughter without SIL without her knowing... [/quote]

Great recognizable dynamics. Reminds me how my Eastern European MIL made sure to do the opposite of everything I asked, like fed my toddler whole grapes. What else does your family do to show the SIL her place?

Not purposely obviously, but my brother prefers not to tell his wife that he met my parents out when she was not present...

Obviously, haha. You guys are ganging up on her, imagine how hard it must be to be her? If your want your brother to be happy, stop creating drama, follow her rules. I know my words fall on the dead ears, it seems like you all are full at war.

Again I don’t talk to her so there is no war... maybe I should talk to her, but I think that anything I do she will find it wrong for one reason or for another