We will definitely be doing that. Thank you for the advice.
I don’t know, maybe this only makes sense to me, but I feel like there’s a difference between her just seeing the pictures in a frame or on the refrigerator and her actually possessing a copy of them, either electronic or physical.
It’s not just you.
My mother has a lot of issues, too. She’s a really nasty human being. I’m not a psychologist, but people to whom I’ve talked and who have been able to evaluate her neutrally tend to use the word “sociopath”–and that on top of substance abuse issues.
When I got married, one of the more dysfunctional people from my past got some of my wedding photos (they were old family friends, and I thought it would be nice to send them some), used them in a totally inappropriate way without my permission (think as advertisements for a group that I can’t morally support), and then, when I objected, threatened to tell my mother my current address and send her all of the wedding photos if I followed through on hiring legal help to deal with our pictures being used like that. I was in the unpleasant situation of not being able to explain to this person, even if she’d listen, the details of the issues between my mother and I because it wouldn’t be morally right of me to tell the world all the bad things my mother has done over the years, even if that former friend would have listened.
The way my mother would use our wedding photos would be to post them all over her house and office and brag about what a good marriage I made in order to imply what a wonderful mom she is. Never mind the beatings, the emotional abuse, the alcoholism, the fact that we cut all contact years ago…you get the drift. Basically, she’d use something terribly wonderful and precious to us for her own ends yet again, and it’s not something I can bear thinking about.
Similarly, she doesn’t know about DD. That’s led to my having to make a pretty hard decision: neither does my only living grandparent. He’s elderly and not in good health; it wouldn’t be fair of me to burden him with all that background information (it would break his heart), or to tell him about his great-granddaughter but tell him not to tell his daughter.
If she knew about DD, I can already predict what would happen. While she doesn’t have visitation rights in our state, she would if we were investigated by CPS. She’d probably file anonymous complaints with CPS. She would almost certainly sue us in court and make our lives a living hell that way–her default method of attacking people is suing them. She would steal DD’s identity, like she stole her daughters’, and use it for tax fraud purposes. And yet she’d manage to make most people see her as the poor, victimized grandmother if we had her arrested for that! As it is, she made sure that one of her kids couldn’t get a job because of a messed-up tax history and how that affects security clearances. I only recently got the last of the tax mess off my credit history, and I’m almost 30. (Read: a few years ago, I was financially solvent enough to be able to tell her that I was no longer a teenager with no recourse who lived across the country; I had a decent-paying job, and if I ever, EVER saw something suspicious on my credit report again or either of my younger siblings reported something similar on theirs, I’d contact the appropriate law enforcement agencies about identity theft and let them know that she’d done that to us in the past, too.)
People who’ve never lived with this don’t understand. Me? If you think they can’t accept the boundary of “SIL doesn’t see the photos,” then they don’t get any, and they don’t get any alone time with your kid, either. I never post pictures of DD on social media, and the only people who get them via email are people I trust entirely who have no contact with my parents. That having been said, someone could still take a picture and share it. Were I you, I’d make it clear that doing so will mean contact being cut.
One last thing: you may have already thought of this, and if so, forgive me for bringing it up. Please, PLEASE talk to a few trusted people and make plans for if anything, God forbid, happens to you and your husband. Figure out who you’d want to raise your DD, and put it in writing legally. Talk to a few others, and ask them to promise to do anything necessary to ensure that your SIL will never raise your daughter. In all likelihood, you’ll never need to utilize that, but you don’t want something to happen and then a judge handing custody over to that sweet Aunt Marcy who seems to adore her little niece.
It indicated to me that the OP objected to her SIL actually seeing the photos.
so I know they still don’t really get it and laying down an ultimatum that they not forward any pictures to her will not go over well. I also can’t think of any way to stop them, since pictures sent over facebook, email, and texting can be forwarded, physical pictures can be given away or copied, and they could just give her the password to any photo website we set up. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s reasonable to not send any pictures at all.
At this point the only thing the OP can do is stay physically away from SIL.