God, this is so unnecessarily long and so ridiculous but I think I just need some reassurance that I’m not crazy to be bothered by this.
I am in a few family group chats on WhatsApp. With my family I have one with my immediate family so parents, siblings and their OH’s, one with just me and my siblings. This is fine and manageable. The siblings chat is usually only ever used if we’re planning presents for our parents and everything else e.g. updates on dc or just general chat goes in our family chat. My brother lives abroad so it’s nice to all chat with him and SIL and share photos.
DH’s family on the other hand is something else. He has a sister and BiL as well as another brother, his wife and their children who live down south. With them we have the following group chats:
⁃ All the family (PILs, SIL and her DH, BIL and DW, me and DH)
⁃ Local family (all of the above apart from BIL and DW)
⁃ Updates on Coronavirus (local family)
⁃ Updates on DS (about our son which is just for local family)
⁃ Sibling chat with SIL, her Dh and me
⁃ Just DH and SIL
⁃ Updates on DN (about SIL’s son which is for all family)
⁃ Shopping (local family)
⁃ Food (local family)
⁃ Updates for all the children (shared with all family)
I hardly speak in them unless asked a question or if I have to tell someone something. All of these chats were made by SIL who has some control issues which I’ve spoken in here about before.
Anyway last night it came to a bit of a head. DH shared a photo in the group of all the family of DS. BIL replied and asked me something, I replied and asked SiL a question about DN. She then responded in the “updates for all children” chat reminding me and DH that this was the group from discussing children. DH just replied and said that it was easier to just talk in chats and not compartmentalise every conversation. SIL replied that it was easier for her to keep track of everything we were talking about if everyone just stuck to the groups. I carried on the conversation with BIL in the original group as normal and was then sent messages from SIL asking me to just follow the group chat agreements (?) this will then make sure she can keep track of everything that is being said. I had to reply telling her that it was not up to her to police our conversations and that I will talk about whatever I want with who I want. She replied saying that she was just trying to make sure everyone followed the correct chats and I just replied telling her she was not a moderator of our chats and that this was just another way for her to attempt to be in control and I wasn’t going to put up with this kind of shit any more.
I removed myself from the other ridiculous chats such as food (where she updates us with pictures of food they eat and asks us what we’re eating), shopping (where she tells is what she has been buying and shares discounts), COVID updates (where her and her husband share links to news about it) and the rest of them but stayed in the one of the whole family.
SIL sent a message to that group basically calling me out for trying to take over chats and said that she would no longer be participating in family group chats. I replied to say that this wasn’t true and that I was happy to talk to the family but felt that having so many different chats was excessive and pointless when it was easy enough to have a group conversation in one place. I also said about her attempts to police chats being ridiculous. DH backed me up and said that he felt that it was silly to be talking in a chat and then change to a different one if we want to have a conversation about another topic and that everything he would share in the other groups he would share with everyone so didn’t see the point in having different groups. SIL then removed herself from the group and hasn’t spoken since.
Of course DH got a phone call from his mum asking him to apologise to SIL for both me and him. He asked her what we’d done wrong and she said that we (meaning me) had over reacted to what she was saying and she was really only trying to keep everyone talking. DH said that he thought the whole thing was just a pointless argument over nothing at all and didn’t see what we had to apologise for. He asked mil if maybe she would like to discuss SIL’s control issues with her as he is worried about that need to be in charge has got so bad that she feels she needs to police family group chats on WhatsApp. MIL said that SIL wasn’t the problem here and that they’d be waiting when DH and I were ready to make amends.
I’m not surprised that mil has got involved. I think I may have over reacted slightly but years of anger about SIL needing to be in control of everything or make things about her for no reason other than someone else getting attention have obviously built up! I am low contact with her anyway but feel like I just want to be done with her. I love DN though and she wouldn’t allow me to see him if I stopped talking to her or if I didn’t apologise.
Was I being completely unreasonable to say I was done with this shit and to refuse to apologise? Or is it best to just be the bigger person, apologise and move on? The whole thing seems so high school and trivial so maybe it's just lockdown getting to me!