1. I hate to agree with Eric on this, but he's not wrong. When you lend money to friends and family, the word "loan" is a polite fiction. What you are doing is giving them a gift, with no strings attached and no expectation of repayment. LW apparently did not get that memo, nor did anybody tell him, 35 years ago, that you should not give large sums of cash to people with active addictions.
If LW1 does not really want to rekindle this relationship then LW needs to tell Brother to stop calling and then block his number. But one way or another, he needs to let that money go.
2. Holy missing missing reasons! LW2's daughter absolutely has explained, more than once, what the problems are in the relationship. "She started pulling away and setting boundaries I did not fully understand" - so what if you understand them? You can follow them, or you can get cut off. You don't need to understand "Only call me on Sundays between noon and 6pm, I won't answer other times" or "Don't bring up anybody's appearance", you only have to decide if that's really the hill you want to die on.
Anyway, Annie's advice is terrible. Daughter told LW2 to give her space, so that is how LW2 needs to proceed - not by stalking Daughter through her socials, not by continuing to send cards on birthdays and photos of those happier times which Daughter clearly does not agree were happier, but by giving her space. I will give permission for one card at Christmas, with a check for each child, unless Daughter has specifically told LW2 not to do that either.
3. And once again, Annie misses the mark! Now, LW3 tells us exactly what she said, and I gotta say, as a relationship-ender, "you'll understand when you have kids" is pretty weak. Either there's some backstory there that LW3 carefully elided or - and I think the letter makes a pretty strong case for this one - SIL is deliberately isolating Daughter from family and friends. Annie ought to have named that possibility and provided information for help for family members in handling this delicate situation.
She's probably right that blaming SIL for the rift is a bad move. People in abusive relationships rarely react well to being told point-blank that their partner is abusive, and the last thing you want to do is drive them away. But unless somebody explains this reasoning using those words, LW3 is not really going to have the information necessary to make the best moves here.
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If LW1 does not really want to rekindle this relationship then LW needs to tell Brother to stop calling and then block his number. But one way or another, he needs to let that money go.
2. Holy missing missing reasons! LW2's daughter absolutely has explained, more than once, what the problems are in the relationship. "She started pulling away and setting boundaries I did not fully understand" - so what if you understand them? You can follow them, or you can get cut off. You don't need to understand "Only call me on Sundays between noon and 6pm, I won't answer other times" or "Don't bring up anybody's appearance", you only have to decide if that's really the hill you want to die on.
Anyway, Annie's advice is terrible. Daughter told LW2 to give her space, so that is how LW2 needs to proceed - not by stalking Daughter through her socials, not by continuing to send cards on birthdays and photos of those happier times which Daughter clearly does not agree were happier, but by giving her space. I will give permission for one card at Christmas, with a check for each child, unless Daughter has specifically told LW2 not to do that either.
3. And once again, Annie misses the mark! Now, LW3 tells us exactly what she said, and I gotta say, as a relationship-ender, "you'll understand when you have kids" is pretty weak. Either there's some backstory there that LW3 carefully elided or - and I think the letter makes a pretty strong case for this one - SIL is deliberately isolating Daughter from family and friends. Annie ought to have named that possibility and provided information for help for family members in handling this delicate situation.
She's probably right that blaming SIL for the rift is a bad move. People in abusive relationships rarely react well to being told point-blank that their partner is abusive, and the last thing you want to do is drive them away. But unless somebody explains this reasoning using those words, LW3 is not really going to have the information necessary to make the best moves here.