Emotional abuse - am I being too "armchair psychologist"?

[CotesduRhone]

Hi all, I came here to get some advice re: my brother's recent separation and his daughter, but I've been fascinated by so much of the information on here.

There are some things here starting to 'fall into place' as regards my ex-SIL, and I want to make sure I encourage my Bro to get the best possible advice and support. I can hear a penny dropping in my head, but I'm also totally aware that nobody can really 'diagnose' someone else on the internet.

While bearing in mind that these are only experienced from one side, do you think any of these behaviours would fall under the heading of 'emotional abuse'?

• systematically isolating a partner from friends and family to the extent that B believed he could not come to us for support; we would "have our hearts broken", or "never accept his behaviour" (ending his marriage); making them move areas (in some cases countries) as soon as he had established any kind of friendship and support network, insisting that they live in isolated areas
• becoming excessively anxious and paranoid if he had female friends, or even colleagues; refusing to leave his side for a second at social gatherings and passing it off as "I'm so devoted to him" (he's not even mildly flirty, there's no question of infidelity, she's the only person he's ever slept with)
• when he started to try and push back and have a life and some boundaries of his own, went off the pill without telling him and got pregnant
• when they started having couples counselling (clearly stated by him as having the aim of managing an amicable breakup; I know her aims were otherwise) suddenly revealing that she had been abused as a child and so he 'couldn't leave her'. This had never been mentioned in the previous 20 years together. Their joint counselling sessions became counselling sessions for her; he did not feel his questions/issues were addressed at all

There's clearly more here as I piece it all together but I have alarm bells ringing. They were together since they were teenagers, it's all quite bewildering but I have often had a weird sense that something was not quite right.

Didn't want your thread to be ignored.

The first two would ring warning bells for me and describes almost to a T how my exH was with me.

The problem is, as you've hinted already is that with EA you feel so worthless, that part of you feels you deserve this behaviour, or that it is normal.

That's just my 2p on the matter, but if you're really concerned, speak to your son, and just let him know you really are there for him.

here is the WA brief list of the signs of EA.

Quite clearly your SIL ticks all the boxes. EA victims are certainly not always women. A fantastic book on this subject is Patricia Evans - Verbal Abuse - How to recognise it.

Get it from Amazon - give it to your brother - he will be amazed and empowered.

Can't help feeling sad that she may well have been telling the truth about being abused as a child. Not that it makes her behaviour acceptable.

Why does it matter to you? Your brother has decided to split from his wife. Why is it important that the exP can be given a label? (she was an abuser). You obviously support your brother, but are you just looking for validation?

PS, I'm naturally sceptical of using too much arm-chair psychology, so there's my bias

Add to above, I think some like to claim they were abused at the end of a relationship so that they can clean themselves of any responsibility in the relationship

Thanks so much for your replies - yep, I'm a bit wary about the armchair psychologising myself so hence asking about this. It's just that it rang some bells so I'm kind of trying to get my head around it.

I really really can't imagine that someone would make up allegations about being abused at all. So I am wondering whether that's just a timing issue; perhaps these things can sometimes all come out in counselling. Or whether choosing a time like this (end of marriage inevitable, counselling is supposed to be for negotiating amicable separation, bombshell is dropped - he stays for another six months, which is what happened) to reveal something like this is somehow 'off' in itself.

I totally appreciate that in one sense it's absolutely none of my business; I'm really doing my best to stay reasonably detached (for my niece's sake) while supporting my brother. I don't judge my exSIL for any of this. People are who they are.

And also I'm so grateful to have him back in my life, albeit through unpleasant circumstances, that I don't want to rock the boat in any way. So I probably won't even be mentioning most of this to him - just maybe if more stuff comes up I will have some more useful assistance for him than "yes, this is all terrible, but you'll get through it."

He just seems to have no ability to accept that any of this is in some way not all his fault. I had somewhat put this down to our background (our mum always took responsibility for things that weren't her fault, for whatever reason) but I don't know.