This story is very long and TW: suicide/self harm mentions.
My brother married a woman who honestly seems like she’s controlling him. I want so badly to like them and be a part of their lives but after a traumatic event, things seem irreparably broken.
For context, they moved very fast in their relationship. I believe they knew each other for a while but once they got romantically involved it was about 6 months before they moved in and got married. Me and my family started noticing that they didn’t act… normal? Around each other. Like she would always make little put down comments implying he was inept at everything. After she got pregnant things only got worse and eventually she flat-out refused to let my brother visit our house with the baby because “you don’t know how to work a car seat”. She also made comments alluding to wanting to harm their newborn which deeply alarmed me, but when I tried to talk to my brother about it he basically denied ever telling me that and “it’s really not a big deal”. I started to feel like our conversations were being monitored by her, I can’t confirm it but she would say little things to me or text me when I was texting him that made it seem like I wasn’t allowed to have a normal personal relationship with him.
Things finally came to a head one day when he texted me saying his wife was freaking out threatening to leave him and take the baby away and never let him see her again. He said he was suicidal, he had a specific plan and he was thinking about following through. I was terrified bc I lived over an hour away and I couldn’t just go there and take him to a hospital or something.
I asked my mom (who is/was a social worker) what I should say or do. Before we could even come to an agreement, his wife messaged both of us on fb to basically leave the situation alone, she was handling it, my brother was safe, he was seeing a doctor in the morning. I just didn’t trust her, tbh. My gut was telling me everything about the situation was wrong. She just threatened to harm his life and now she expected me to sit back and be calm while my brother is saying really scary things?
I called emergency services and told them what was going on because I was scared for his life. I told them specifically that he didn’t own any weapons and he wasn’t super dangerous outside of hurting himself but I was alarmed by his wife’s statements and I just needed an outside source to check on them and see that things were okay like she said.
Apparently according to both of them, half a dozen police and ambulance arrived, basically busted down their door and took my brother away in handcuffs, traumatizing the entire family. I have no clue what actually happened that night but that is what my SIL says occurred. I want to stress that I absolutely did not say anything to the emergency services that would’ve warranted such an extreme response, I just wanted a wellness check. I also have no idea what the truth is about that night because I soon found out that my SIL is a psychopathic liar.
She told us she would keep us updated about my brothers status, but she left us in the dark for 10 days. When I was finally able to call my brother after he got out of the hospital,he put me on speakerphone with her in the room and they started screaming at me, mocking me/my family, saying absolutely vile things that were both untrue and super fucked up. They accused me of ruining their lives forever. SIL said I deserved to die of Covid. I started bawling and trying to understand wtf was happening but they just kept going on this massive tirade of cruelty. They even gaslit my mom (who was in the room at the time) by saying she was ?? Never a social worker?? Which was objectively false. The whole thing was so toxic and ended with both of them saying if I ever contacted them again they’d call the police on my entire family.
So we didn’t talk to them again. For over 2 years I spent many days crying and blaming myself for tearing the family apart. I would replay that day over and over in my head and have panic attacks where I would sob so hard I couldn’t breathe. Eventually, as things simmered down, I moved across the world and lived my own life for a bit trying to heal. But I was still hurting and my now-husband decided to reach out to my brother to see if things could ever be fixed.
My brother agreed to talk to me but he refused to do it without his wife in the room. And she pretty much immediately started accusing me of the same things as the last phone call, that I was a manipulative asshole who only wanted to break them up and how badly I traumatized them and their kids. I felt so fucking helpless but I just nodded and agreed. My husband, who was in the room, was livid at her, but I told him to let it go bc I wanted a relationship with my brother again.
Ever since then, I’ve basically not been allowed to talk to my brother without my SIL being the “goalie”. If we text, it has to be in a group text with all three of us. If I want to call him, I don’t get to call him, I have to talk to her. And when I do talk to her, every time she brings up the big traumatic night over and over again and how my family are horrible narcissists for doing that to them. Recently my brother had heart surgery that was extremely tough on his body and even though she said she’d keep me updated, she hasn’t. I’m scared to ask.
I feel like a loser who did something wrong. I’ve been to therapy a bunch since the initial trauma and my therapist told me point blank that I may have saved my brothers life that night but it doesn’t seem to matter. They just tell me over and over again I fucked up everything for them. They (quite wrongly) accuse my mom of being a narcissist for encouraging me to make the 911 call because in their mind she was trying to force them to get a divorce. My mom is/was a mandated reporter so I don’t know that legally she could’ve sat back and listened to what my brother was saying without calling 911 herself… I just beat her to it.
The whole relationship between all of us is so toxic and messy but I’m scared to just abandon it because I invited them to my wedding, and they seem to want to go, in spite of everything. What’s making things worse is my n-dad, who abandoned me constantly in my childhood, spoils them and dotes on them with support, money, and gifts when he hasn’t even remembered to call on my birthday. All three are invited to my wedding but at this point I want nothing to do with any of them and I’m scared of all three.
TLDR, am I a bad person for calling a wellness check on my brother? Does any of this seem like a normal or healthy dynamic? How do I banish these people from my life and protect my peace without causing another massive trauma explosion? Sorry this is so long.