BIL problems. Hugely, massively long: thank you.

[Solidur]

Hello, may I please ask for your collective wisdom and advice? I’ll try to be as brief as possible, but so as not to drip feed, this will necessarily be very long. Please bear with me and thank you in advance.
Background: DH is the oldest of three brothers. They lost their father as children and had an extremely chaotic upbringing where they were not taught any life skills. However, despite this, DH and youngest brother are now fully functioning adults with careers, homes, long term partners and children.
Middle BIL is not. He lives in squalor because he cannot clean and refuses to learn. He has a very poor diet because he cannot cook and refuses to learn. He is financially incontinent. He is sporadically self-employed as he is incapable of holding down a job long term. He blames their mother for all his problems, saying that she is toxic (she may very well be Narc.) but will not go NC as she subsidises him financially in addition to benefits. He has been an in-patient at psychiatric hospital and has medication, and for many years has been involved in an extremely fundamentalist evangelical church. This has led to numerous disastrous, short lived relationships.

He and my ex-SIL have a sixteen year old daughter, our niece. She was unplanned, but they married. When niece was a baby, SIL and niece left BIL as one day, SIL had asked him to keep an eye on niece whilst she was in the bath; BIL left niece unattended and wandered off to smoke a cigarette in her room. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for SIL after numerous incidents (see second paragraph!)
Ex-SIL and niece however maintained contact with BIL until a couple of months ago. Niece told BIL that she identifies as lesbian, which is absolutely unacceptable according to the teachings of his church.
For many years, Niece and SIL were not in contact with us anyway because BIL is a master of divide and conquer, and had told SIL and DH and I separately that following their break up we each wanted nothing to do with the other. This isn’t the case and SIL and I, and particularly DD1 and niece now get on extremely well indeed.
SIL’s relationship with BIL has always been tense and he would ask after SIL and I were reunited that I act as a mediator between them. This I did willingly.
So, two months ago I got a communication asking me again to ring SIL on his behalf. When I did, she told me how he had rejected “The” (BILs words) daughter for her “sin”. Niece was devastated and went NC.
I sent BIL an email saying that I had rung SIL, and she had told me that Niece had gone NC with BIL and why, how very sorry I was to hear this and that I hoped that things would work out.
His attitude turned on a knife edge, he sent me very sneery, goady and smug emails including one saying that he wanted nothing more to do with niece and of course, since they are so close neither of my DDs!
I hit the roof. I rang him and as soon as he heard something he didn’t like, he slammed the phone down and refused to answer again. I told him that this had nothing to do with DDs, but that meant by extension he wanted nothing more to do with me or more importantly their father, his brother.
I challenged his homophobia (I detest prejudice and will always challenge it) and all I get in return are rambling about how god says it’s wrong, I’m deluded, I’m accusing him of homophobia (I’ve been very, very careful not to actually call him homophobic) I’m controlling, hate-filled – you get the idea. He’s very angry and prone to be a martyr. This whole situation, of course is due to his mother’s toxicity, he says. He has dragged both his brothers into the argument and has been playing them off against the other
MIL asked DH if we could go and see her in December (she, and the two brothers live overseas) but due to the season and short notice it was financially impossible so could we see her at Easter? No. She demanded that DH go, she’s paying for his ticket but can’t be expected to pay for all four of us.

I’m still getting emails from BIL, but on DH’s advice I’m now ignoring. They’re becoming more frequent though, and I’m getting concerned that BIL is going to divide and conquer, telling all and sundry that “Waaaaah, Solidur is meeeeean, she’s horrible and is ignoring meeeeee!” I couldn’t care less about myself, but I do not want DH to suffer any backlash.

I’m so tempted to just reply “Dear BIL, thank you for your emails dated the sixteenth and twenty-first. I’d like to reassure you that I’ve received and read them. Thank you! Solidur”
Please advise me. Thank you so much for getting this far!

The phrase used for what your doing is called flying monkey.

Hello, and thank you all so much for taking the time to reply!

Ina answer to your question, anitimatter, DH was born non-observant Jewish – now atheist - I’m not, so I don’t know if things go beyond the usual son/daughter dynamic. However, when their father died he did get a lot of the stereotypical “Oh, you’re the man of the house now” as eldest.

We used to have a good relationship with Middle. Despite his quirks, he was nice, got on well with all of us and he was pandered to a bit as “special” Middle because of his quirks. He has been welcomed into this house, we’ve lent him money, tried to help him learn to cook, even - all the stuff a “normal” family does. I did my level best to get on with all of DHs family because they’re his family and he loves them. And until a couple of months ago it wasn’t hard. As a matter of fact, badbaldingballerina I’m definitely no longer mediating between Middle and exSIL since he turned on me. I want to make that absolutely clear, ptumbi that I have not emailed Middle since his personality transplant.
If you want an honest answer as to why I ever did, it’s quite simply this: because Middle asked me to!
The sequence of events was (I’m sorry, I’m rubbish at explaining things)
*I received one of the periodic emails from Middle: “Could you please ring SIL and tell her that I’m sorry I did (stupid thing) and said (stupid thing) It’s all my mother’s fault, you see…”
*Two or three days later, when I hadn’t had a chance to call SIL yet, another email “Any news from SIL yet?!”

• I called SIL. She informed me that Niece had taken the very painful decision to go NC with Middle because of his extreme, negative and condemnatory reaction to her coming out. *I email Middle, “I called SIL, and I’m really sorry to hear Niece has gone NC with you?! That’s really upsetting, I’m sorry". *He replies: “Yes, the daughter has. Well, I don’t want anything to do with her anyway and it’s all my mother’s fault” *24 hours later he sends another email “Oh, and still more reasons why this is all my mother’s (and SIL’s) fault – by the way, I don’t want anything to do with DDs since they’re so close to Niece. This is what caused DH and I to hit the roof, we told him it wasn’t fair to make DDs and DH “choose sides” because really, at the end of the day did it matter if Niece was a lesbian? It’s not the end of the world. You could have tried saying “I disagree with you but still love you” instead of going off at the deep end. Then, personality transplant. Middle becomes furious, and if anyone isn’t as viciously homophobic as him THEY ARE WRONG and EVIL HEATHENS. GOD HATES THE GAY. We say, “Actually, no that’s not right. “ And that’s that. Middle then tells Youngest how meeeeeeean DH and I are and almost causes a row between them. MIL demands that DH goes over: it’s this that I was really worried about – following his recent form I was very concerned that Middle would cause a huge scene between Youngest and DH as he seems to like making people “choose sides”. DH and Youngest though, are fine. They sorted things out yesterday evening and DH has reassured me that Middle won’t cause trouble whilst DH is over there. This is a huge relief to me. Middle has apologised to me via Youngest for the unanswered sneery, goady emails – the same way that he used me to apologise to SIL - anyone see a pattern…?

DH has advised that I send the following “Dear Middle, I acknowledge receipt of your emails and acknowledge your apology for their contents. Please think more carefully before you press “send”. Solidur.”

And then, Attila I am very strongly inclined indeed to block Middle.

Thank you all very much indeed again for taking the time to reply and thank you all for your advice – Felicity, Matilda, Attila, nilby, BeCool, tribpot, HumblePie, Manatee, anitimatter, ptumbi and badbaldingballerina.

Were you meant to be apologising to the SIL on his behalf? That wasn't, I think, mentioned explicitly in your first post. Not that it really makes any difference.

I would not reply as DH advises. It just invites him to respond (a) at all and (b) to get the hump at your advice to think carefully.

If you want to reply at all I would say "Dear Middle, Youngest has made me aware that you wish to apologise to me for the tone of the recent emails. I now regard this matter as closed."

Then step away from the whole thing. I don't understand why it was necessary to hit the roof about the fact your DDs would have to "choose". You were hardly going to allow them to choose the bigot over their cousin. If they are sad that they are related to a homophobe - well, that's life.

Just forward all BIL's email to your DH and let him deal with it. I would suggest you do nothing because nothing you do will improve things.

Ye gods, what an inwards looking web between you all.

fwiw I reckon:

1. Get your husband and Youngest Brother to speak openly and plainly about Middle's stunt and agree that where stuff involving Middle is concerned in the "he said, she said" line, they will communicate directly and fully. If they don't want to be driven apart, theyre going to have to put a bit of work in.

2. It hurts when someone close turns on you but you have to grieve the loss of the previous closeness and then draw a line that you won't be treated badly. If in the future the bridges can be mended, you can decide just how far you want to lower the self protective barriers. He sounds a troubled, sad and damaged man who may only get worse. I'd recommend thinking self-protectively. Though ime once someone's turned on you like this, you never quite let the barriers down fully again.

3. Set up a separate email folder and direct all emails from him to that automatically.

4. explain to your daughters that Middle Bro has some problems and that because of these problems he is thinking in strange ways and at the moment he can't be in contact. You don't sya how old they are, but if they're old enough you could say calmly and neutrally that he's very unhappy about his daughter being a lesbian and because you don't see anything wrong with it, he feels he doesn't want to have contact with your family either.

it sounds like he's so troubled that in the end he was going to turn on the people closest to him, as he did to SIL. Bulls rarely gore only one human who comes close to them.

if anyone told me that they didn't want anything to do with my (non-adult) children, I'd tell the to FTFOATFOSM and not have anything to do with them!

You need to just back off from the brothers and stop meddling with your husbands family!

Not sure why you have taken on the role as a go between with SIL and BIL, you should have no role there. Be friends with SIL and Niece, this is nothing to do with BIL.

He sounds like a major pain, so no loss if he does not want to stay in touch with you and your kids.