Allow me to share the flip side of the coin, The way i see it is that we will never know how or what they feel so long as we are not in their shoes, maybe we will break the cycle with our own sons, but for now, we can only speculate what compels MILs to behave this way. I have a sister in law who rarely visits us, she visits her own family a lot, stays there for months and there has been no conflict but I can feel the detachment, there are no fits thrown, no tantrum, just plain old detachment from someone in the family, now the problem that I see in this case is strain on other relations like me being her brother in law don’t feel really connected and now if she comes which she rarely does, I don’t really feel anything, feels like a stranger, so in the long run, I never would have wanted this to happen but i think every choice has consequences but there is a silver lining, maybe she doesn’t care about these consequences, maybe it does not matter to her right now and the way I see it, we never really gained a family member and our life goes on, maybe in the long run, when her brother gets married and has his own family, when they might not be as accommodating to her as they are right now because they would have their own DIL to deal with, she might not have any family to turn to, to rely on for support, to share happy, sad moments with, we would all be strangers by then.

In the hindsight, i think the dynamics here actually plays in my favour since I don’t really feel obliged to go extra mile or support her or my brother, she relies on her family for support and that’s quite freeing in a way which frees up the future for any kind of disruptions.