BIL's wife is verbally and emotionally abusive towards him

My husband's brother has been married for the past 5 years to someone who is verbally and emotionally abusive. The extent of the abuse became much more apparent over the holiday weekend when we got together for a couples trip (just the four of us). They live across the country, so we don't see them much outside of visits, holidays and weddings. My husband is very close with his brother, and they talk on the phone once a week.

SIL is a very difficult and judgmental person, which is basically the opposite of BIL. BIL is calm, collected, loves to listen to people and get to know them, and has a very mellow personality. In the past, we've noted how different they are, but recently (over the past two years) she's turning her judgmental comments on BIL. Just a small sampler of what we noticed this weekend:

• She will say very degrading things about his appearance ("Oh look, everyone looks so nice in this picture. Except BIL.")
• she constantly berates him for doing things wrong ("why would you even ask me if I want honey in my tea? This chicken tastes horrible, you burned this bagel, etc")
• She is condescending to him when he is having a good time and we are laughing about something together ("Stop talking about your college days, you're like the uncle that tries too hard to be cool")
• She demands things from him in a very rude way. One night, she wanted a glass of wine and a blanket, so she literally snapped her fingers at BIL to summon his attention.
• She is condescending and unsupportive about his career. He's currently trying to start a business and he has his first few clients. Rather than hype him up when he was so excited to tell us over the weekend, she interjected with "It's not sustainable. You worked so hard and only got a few clients. This can never be successful. You're like a teenager trying to decide what they should major in for college"

I could go on and on, I actually had to write things down for myself so I could be sure I wasn't imagining things, and my list was up to 14 incidents just over the weekend before I stopped. On our last night got roped into an impromptu family counseling session because she was just berating him about everything (mostly career stuff) and wanted us to side with her.

Now I see two issues with this. The first is that BIL has been so supportive of SIL's career, has always hyped her up around family and just been an awesome spouse. In fact, he's been willing to uproot his life twice now and move to a different city for her career. They just recently moved across the country because she transitioned to a new role within her company. He's still working at his company but out of their location in their new city. He's so supportive, and she's so demeaning.

The second, bigger issue, that I see is that all of this amounts to verbal and emotional abuse. He's not quite the same as he used to be a few years ago, because every time he opens his mouth she acts like he's just said the dumbest thing. I didn't recognize the man I saw this weekend, and neither did my husband.

I guess I'm not sure if I need advice on how to proceed, but I'm just really hurt about all of this. My BIL is so wonderful and kind, and it hurts to see him so downtrodden by his partner who should be his biggest cheerleader. My husband is planning to talk to him about his observations this weekend.

TL;DR: BIL's wife is verbally and emotionally abusive towards him. DH plans to talk to his brother about it, but neither of us are sure exactly how to tread here. It hurts to see BIL in such a shitty situation.

Submitted December 04, 2019 at 07:50AM by loseit_coffeelover https://ift.tt/2OPCXZf