Mum with lifelong emphasis on "fairness" suddenly wants to give sibling huge amount of money

[obstinatrix]

I feel horrible even writing this because I adore my younger sister and I don't blame her for any of this whatsoever. But.

I have been married for several years now. I am a woman and I am married to a woman. As such, I didn't ask my parents for help with the wedding because I know my mother doesn't approve of or believe in gay marriages. The whole wedding only cost £400 because a) I knew my mother didn't want any of my family to know about it because of how it might "reflect on" her, and also b) I don't believe in spending a lot on a wedding anyway. So we paid for that ourselves and it wasn't a crippling financial burden. My parents did not come.

Now, several years down the line, my sister is going to get married. A bit of background on my parents: my mother in particular has always had a huge emphasis on everything being "equal." If one of us wanted a monetary gift for Christmas instead of a "thing," the other would have to have the exact amount of money, etc. So, while I always thought my parents might spend some money on my sister's wedding, I had expected they might offer a similar sum of money to me to use for a house deposit. I have hinted a few times that I'd really love to get on the housing ladder and had little response, so I thought, ok, they don't want to give us any money. Fine, they're not obliged to. I know they're relatively well-off but it's their money.

Now, however, it turns out they're giving my sister £30k for her wedding. To say I'm fuming is putting it lightly. First of all, I think that's a ridiculous amount to spend on a wedding, but moreover if they have that much to spend, surely it should have been split evenly between us? The fact that I didn't have an expensive wedding and ask them to pay for it (they wouldn't have anyway) surely shouldn't mean they give my sister the whole lot of whatever they had in mind as "spare"?

It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly doesn't help with the underlying resentment I feel towards my mother for pretending I'm not married to my partner.

I woukd ask her where your 30k is? If she is so fair! What a nasty and vile thing to do, tbh I think it is because yiu are gay that she is doing this to you. I personally would go no contact with her after this. I can't imagine treating my children like this.

You should report her for discrimination!

I dont think it was unreasonable for the OP to reflect that the country and culture where her parents are may contribute to their attitude.

@petrolpump28 it is if it’s not bloody true! You can’t label an entire country based on a few arseholes.

It’s my country too, and for anyone who has never been and has never met any Scottish people OPs statement makes us all sound fucking awful, which we’re not. In fact Scotland has been lauded for its LGBT+ rights campaigns.

I’m not saying nobody in Scotland is a dick and homophobic, you get bigots everywhere.

But I am not swallowing that my country is homophobic and I stand by saying that OP was out of order.

Because she is.

If I labelled England because of the EDL would that be ok? Or Northern Ireland because of the DUP? Would that be acceptable? No, there’d be an uproar.

But it’s ok for my country to be labelled eh? Pfft.

I think the tone of it was reflection and searching for answers. I hazard a guess that mother lives in a small place in Scotland with parochial attitudes ?

And if that had been said I wouldn’t have an issue with it.

Come back and specify Manse/Presbyterian/straight laced/tiny village FGS OP

Your sister by accepting the money when it comes is just as bad as your mother IMO.
Not have the balls to challenge her views/ behaviour and her moaning about it behind her back along with your dad is pathetic.
I’d have a beef with my sister as well as my mum in your situation.
Unless you grew up in a small religious island, Craigneuk or Holytown (sorry to both )then it’s a ridiculous statement to make

Hi op. My advice for what it is worth is to tell your parents how you feel. It doesn't need to be any sort of showdown or drama. I just think that when you are being somehow conditioned to go along with something that hurts you, it will fester.

Different situation entirely of course but I came out of a horrendous and abusive marriage. My parents were supportive and helped me get back on my feet and buy a house. It was however very difficult accepting their financial help as they dance around things and aren't upfront about things. It causes a lot of stress even though they were helping me.

Then a matter of months later, mum announced she was helping my brother buy a house too with the same amount to be 'fair'.

The difference is he was getting an upgrade to a 5 bed dream house with his 25 year old girlfriend.

I told her it was none of my business of course, but I felt uncomfortable with my brother benefitting from what I'd been through. I had been made homeless and everything taken from me. I have a nice but modest house I had been at pains not to take more from them than was necessary.

Nothing has changed and I didn't expect it to, but I felt better for the honesty.

@giggly I used to live in Craigneuk (you’re right by the way)

I was farmed out to Motherwell many years ago. Probably explains a lot.

@petrolpump28 it’s probably not changed much!

I wonder.

There’s a housing estate, sports centre and pub where the Ravenscraig used to be but that’s about it.

Your sister sounds weak like your father. They have made it perfectly clear that you are on your own. You otoh sound gutsy. You need to decide what to do from here.

Can you answer the question. Is you wife invited to your dsis’s wedding?

@SoddingUnicorns, sorry, I've just spotted your messages. I'm sorry if I upset you or other Scots! But please don't think that I, a Scottish person who was raised in Scotland by Scottish parents, somehow hate Scots! I don't at all, obviously. I just meant that in my experience, Scotland, both in smaller towns and in larger cities, is more homophobic than England. This may absolutely be subjective and is my own experience. I just wondered whether my mother and our relatively rural (but not religious) Scottish upbringing is related to the homophobia. However, accept that there are probably shit rural places in England/Wales/Northern Ireland/whatever as well.

tl;dr I'm not being xenophobic, I am Scottish too as I thought was obv

My wife is invited to my sister's wedding; my sister personally has been very friendly to my wife and has accepted her as such, but I don't know how she talks about her when I'm not around, to my mum. I am pretty sure she doesn't stand up for me because her modus operandi is to keep quiet. I do wonder if she expects me to bring my wife. The other thing is, various members of our family have met my wife but there has been a general understanding that I'm not meant to mention who she is. However, I'm sure a lot of them know and are just not saying anything because they know how my mother is.

Someone mentioned up-thread that my mother is being particularly weird about this because they have 90 year old grandmas who are fine about it all. I agree: my grandmother, who I absolutely adored (and I must admit I was her favourite) knew about me and my wife (before we were married) and she was born in the mid-20s. I could have killed someone and she would have cheered me on, but nevertheless the fact that she was happy to be happy about it because she loved me, but my mum isn't, just...ugh.

(Hilariously, it looks as if my original message has been deleted for -- racist content??? So now I'm just rehashing this in an attempt to demonstrate that I am not ~racist against my own people. WELL DONE MUMSNET CENSORS, A+)

Actually I asked that it was deleted/edited.

Because to anyone reading it who had never been to Scotland or didn’t know any thing about us, your post made us all sound like ignorant dickheads and you weren’t acknowledging it so....

I stand by it. You can’t fight prejudice by making prejudicial statements, and it’s important to consider how what you’re saying comes across.

I think you have a fundamental understanding of what prejudice means if you think me making a statement based on my experience of my own country is prejudice (not exactly "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience") but ok.

*misunderstanding

I cannot conceive anyone wanting to spend £30,000 on a wedding. Both your mum and your sis should be ashamed of themselves.

Op it’s disgraceful. If she’s got money go give away it should be 15k each.

Dreadful behaviour.

Oh bullshit OP, I fully supported everything you said about the awful way your mum treated you, and agreed that it was appallingly unfair and bigoted.

Literally if you’d left the line “I think Scottishness has something to do with it” out, instead of making out we’re all bigoted ignorant arseholes like your Mother I’d have had no problem.

I think YOU have a misunderstanding of how your posts read to people.

If you’d talked about just your own experiences of homophobia in a certain area of Scotland I’d have had no problem. But you cannot just label an entire country because you’ve had a shit time.

Accuse me of misunderstanding all you like. I find making prejudicial statements while complaining (rightly) about prejudice to be incredibly ironic, I guess prejudice only matters when it’s important to you eh?

Anyway, matter clarified. So I’ll move on.

I'm so sorry OP it sounds all caught up in the wider issue of how your mum views your sexuality and relationship. But you have mentioned children a couple of times...please don't base your decision on this on your feelings about your mum. Yes it will be horrible if you have them and she isn't interested. But they won't miss what they haven't had and do you want someone with those views in their lives anyway? I know this isn't the point of the thread but just wanted to mention it might be a good idea to take her out of the equation when making the kids / no kids decision. Even the best / most involved grandparents aren't always around or have a close relationship with grandchildren for loads of reasons.
I hope one day something happens so she realises how hurtful she has been to you and does something to change it. Have you ever told her how much her behaviour upsets you?

Sunshinesupermum - I hope you recognised what you were doing and stopped it when your DC were much younger. My parents did similar, I was favoured by my father (with ulterior abusive motives), my sister was his scapegoat so mum favoured her and made me her scapegoat, bro was all but ignored! It's extremely unhealthy. I also hope you're not still doing the favouring.

Op - I'm also a Scot, and a bi woman. Scots are no more homophobic than any other part of the U.K., and in some ways less so.

Will sister be ok with her being introduced as your wife at her wedding?

Was your supportive gran your mums mum or dads?