My SIL has been married to my brother for approx. 20 years. The rest of us immediately saw less and less of him, as she controlled his access to friends and family. (My brother pretty much let this happen and devolved all 'family administration' to her. )
There are incidents after incidents of him not turning up at long planned gatherings - think family flying in for a wedding from all over the world, the one time in, say, five years that my mother would have all her adult children in the same place. SIL would always have an emergency that would scupper plans at the last minute. There is always drama. I can't keep up with who she's not speaking to - she's gone years without speaking to her mother. Then her mother will be back "in" and it's her father that's out. Or a sister.
SIL has been explicit that her nuclear family is all that matters. (Ahem, particularly after the children were older and she didn't need babysitting services.) There's been crazy incidents that I won't use the space here to detail.
At no point, and this actually seems strange to me, has anyone from my brother's side of the family actually say to him, WTF?! On our side I'd say we're quiet, a bit (quite a bit) dysfunctional in our own way; we're not a close family, which is sad, but I think the roots of that go back a long way and we can't change now. We do care about each other. We're also very geographically dispersed.
I've watched cautiously, held my tongue during very occasional visits with my brother and SIL, etc. Visits usually painful with SIL exploding very dramatically, particularly obvious if the attention is not on her. Really difficult to get my brother alone for an actual conversation. He is naturally quiet anyway, and they've also done that thing where they have joint email addresses/messenger accounts.
Two years ago my brother developed a serious health problem. Potentially life limiting, though luckily it has turned out that this is not the case.
Last time I saw SIL alone, a year ago, she was was particularly angry and vitriolic about my mother, who is in her late 80's. That my mother had been a bad parent. Now, my mother is NOT perfect, I'm the first to admit. She wasn't very interested in being a mother and yes, I've visited the Stately Homes thread. Nothing terrible but disinterested in being a mother and stayed in an abusive marriage which affected us as kids and into our adult lives. SIL went on and on with a level of anger that was unnerving, ending with saying that my mother would die, "but nothing will kill her off, she'll last forever."
To not cause a row - hmmm, I see a pattern here - I kind of just took it all, said my mother had little self awareness and in her late 80s, she's realistically unlikely to change. That I had made my peace with it, that it was nothing personal towards SIL. Was pleased to make my escape, also from the very right-wing, anti-vaccer and racist comments.
Since then my mother's had a very hurtful email message from SIL and just recently a weird text. My mum has asked me not to tell anyone else because she fears a blow up where she'll see and hear her son even less.
The main charge against my DM seems to be that she is not sufficiently interested in SIL and is insensitive. The later is true, my DM is TOTALLY INSENSITIVE but she has been since time immemorial - there are standing family jokes about it - and is that a reason to harass a woman who's heading towards 90!?
Reasons to do something:
- this is OUR mother, not hers, FFS, back off
- DM is late 80s and has had cancer this year. The messages are upsetting her. She can't sleep. I suspect there have been more messages than she's letting on.
Reasons to do nothing
- DM doesn't want me to
- brother is ill. Whatever the marriage is like on the inside, my brother has been with SIL a long time and will be in the future. I assume he doesn't know about the messaging. My mum doesn't want to get him involved.
- SIL will explode. Go nuclear. I imagine I would never be allowed in her home again and she will restrict access to my brother and access to her children to my mother. My mother will be upset. My other siblings (who have their own SIL stories) will be drawn in. I know this sounds dramatic, but it's got really dark. I suspect there a personality disorder at play here.
Sorry, I imagine this is long!