Just told DH I will divorce him over a fucking wedding

[KeenHiker]

This is my first post. I think my head’s going to explode.
BiL has shown no interest whatsoever in my daughters, not my eldest who isn’t my husband’s or his actual niece!
We first met SiL at a baptism of cousin’s. She brought personalised Easter eggs for cousins’ kids and my youngest. I immediately went over and said my eldest would be jealous in a jokey way but she had no idea that my eldest even existed!
Three years on neither kids have been distinguished by them at all.
Husband is close to his brother.
One Sunday last month we are at in-laws’ and eldest said that SiL had taken youngest out in rain and told eldest to give them a minute. When I went out to see what was happening she had just asked youngest to be a flower girl. MiL knew and everyone was happy. 10 year old was really struggling and burst into tears in car.
Sister-in-Law has a sister with three stepkids. Two lads virtually same age as her, both have partners and one has baby, as well as fourteen year old who lives with them. Her own daughter will be other flower girl.
invitations come but my eldest isn’t invited. DH is best man, he assumes she is invited but just not on invitation. Clarifies! No! It would mean 5 others plus baby would have to be invited.
I went mad and said none of us are going or I am off. All he could do was slag my ex off and this was the thanks he got for stepping up.
He has stepped up. You wouldn’t know she wasn’t his but this is too much. If eldest is invited I could see how they would have to invite the 14 year old step niece but not the two eldest step nephews who are independent.
I did ring MiL but she’s not getting involved. I am fucking fuming.

It's interesting because when women come on here and talk about how they treat their step children differently because they are not theirs, they're Congratulated because these children "already have a mother" but when a man does it he's a cunt.
The double standards on here never cease to amaze me

A lot of this is the hurt you feel at the realisation you cannot replace what your elder dd has lost in the split with her father - an extended family who cherish her. That is definitely sad for your dd and burden she will
need support navigating. You have to own this hurt as you produced, though. It is not the fault of your DH’s extended family that your eldest DD is from a broken home, and they are not responsible for healing that by pretending to feel a relationship to your child that they do not feel. The fact they are surprised she wants to come indicates how much she is not part of their family. It was a dick move to not invite her - but it isn’t up to your stb Sil to centre her finance’s brother's wife’s child in her wedding plans.

I think where there are two biological parents who are fully involved in the care of their children, it's perfectly okay for a step parent to not feel or behave like an actual mum or dad. But I seriously doubt that any step mother would be congratulated if she was okay with leaving out a step child from a family event, if that step child had no biological mother in their life, lived with the step mum full time and where the step mum had professed to love them and had raised them since they were tiny.

@Shetlands · Today 10:53

The fact is, your eldest isn't related to the great-grandmother so if she just wants her descendants in that photo then you have to live with it.

100% this.

It's the reality of the fact of marrying No2 when you have children with No1. You can't control the fact that some in-laws/relatives will always see step children from a first marriage as unwanted and unfortunate inconvenience. No one sits around wishing that their child/sibling/best buddy will find happiness and create a family with someone who already has older children with someone else. It might not be nice thing to hear but it's life unfortunately.

As others have said, if you and your elder child had a better relationship with the extended family of your elder child's father, you'd probably be less upset about all of this.

The bride is trying to be nice. Don't bite off your nose to spite your face.

If you plan on staying in this family, do you want to always be missing from the wedding photos and be classed as the bitch who had a tantrum about nothing and persisted even when they tried to make it right.

Completely agree with you. Your brother dating a woman with a child, doesn’t make them your niece.

In this particular situation, the couple is married and has had a child together, so it’s not a new, nor casual relationship.

Surely, you therefore take your brother’s lead and accept the DSD as a member of the family. If you’re a good person, that is. It’s not acting entitled to expect both of your children to be invited to the wedding, therefore.

Read the OP's posts. This child doesn't 'already have' a father. This is more akin to an adoption, and I would feel exactly the same if the stepparent were a woman.

You don't tell everyone you don't distinguish between your kids and then distinguish between your kids. obviously.

Honestly I think YABU now. Eldest is invited, you've made your point: you're a family, all of you, and won't be separated on invites. Now the thing to do is not ruin this for your DH and all of you go.

I was fully on board up to this point but now think that you're being a bit precious about DD, she's old enough to understand that youngest is in the photo because that's her grandmother.

At the start of the relationship the in laws shouldn’t be thinking of the child as there own. Yes be nice, welcoming, give token gifts but for their own sake as well as the child’s they shouldn’t get too attached yet as if the relationship doesn’t work out they will likely never see them ago.

As the relationship progresses and becomes more serious this can change to the point where they do see and treat them as their grandchild/niece etc but that’s hardly going to be overnight. I would expect it to be more like a sliding progression/scale.

you need to accept that it will take time and do what you can to help facilitate it but don’t get angry if it’s not where you want it to be yet.

Sorry that shouldnt have been to a quote

I think I'd just see it as he dated someone with an existing child, then married that someone with an existing child.

Her existing children don't suddenly magic into my niece/nephew. I can still like them and be nice to them, and as I said previously, I might even think the child's utterly brilliant. Still doesn't change that it's not my niece. And I wouldn't take kindly if the mother tried to force me to behave otherwise, and threw tantrums if I didn't. It's not my choice, or the kids choice she's had children with different fathers - she just has, and with that, there are two different paternal families, and there's nothing wrong with that. Great if my brother wants to call himself dad, that's his life choice, for him. Calling himself dad doesn't mean either he or his wife can dictate my life choice and inist I have to call myself aunt.

@NothingVenturedAndAllThat

Read the OP's posts. This child doesn't 'already have' a father.

The child does already have a father but one who is not involved. That is a father just not a good one and the OP terminated visits with the biological paternal grandmother.

OP said:

Eldest’s dad does not see her, his father died during the pandemic not of Covid though. Nobody told us for a year. Eldest’s gran can’t stop crying on the odd time she has seen her so I had to stop the visits.

I agree with @2Hot2Handle and @WillYouPutYourCoatOn . My brother's or sister's step child is not my niece nor a child who I would have any interest in at all.

I'd be polite and nice if we had to interact but that would be it. I would probably never care about them because they are nothing to do with me. I'd actively avoid getting close to them because I'd also be very concerned that there was a risk that if a mother would have a child with a man she was no longer with, that she'd do the same to my brother [unless there were good reasons to think otherwise like she was widowed], I'd be fully expecting her to be off on to man no.3 in short order.

As @WillYouPutYourCoatOn says that may change over time - it's a different proposition after 15 years than it is after 3 or 4 years but no one having hufty tantrums about my having no interest in the "step niece" or "step nephew" and not regarding them as part of my own family would make me feel any different.

All it would do would cause a potential rift between my sibling and me and the wider family which would be unfair to someone the step parent is supposed to care about. & would make me think even less of the spouse/partner.

I'd also be very concerned that there was a risk that if a mother would have a child with a man she was no longer with, that she'd do the same to my brother [unless there were good reasons to think otherwise like she was widowed], I'd be fully expecting her to be off on to man no.3 in short order.

Talk about an attitude straight out of the 1950s! It's obviously the hussy woman's fault for having children with different fathers, isn't it? I think it's far more like the absent father abandoned his family than the OP just decided to move on and start a family with another man for the hell of it.

Either way, it's not the child's fault, and she's the one being punished if she's left out of family events. (I'm not talking about the photo with great grandma, which I wouldn't personally get too worked up about.)

If you went to the wedding you could explain to your dd her sister is on top table because she is a flower girl. And you could distract her during photo. A big deal doesn't have to be made of it.

But yes I agree a pity invite sucks and I'd be tempted to say no thanks

Op I think you should look at counselling.. i get you are hurt but your feelings are so strong that I honestly think they are not all to do with the wedding- it’s triggered something. You don’t want to pass on these emotions to your eldest so speaking to someone to work it out would be good.

your eldest will not be the only child she knows in this situation, absent dads aren’t that unusual. She needs to understand the extended family dynamic, as it’s not going to change.

I have read all of your updates and I still don't think you are being unreasonable.
It sounds like your DH sees your eldest as his child and therefore if that's the case the rest of his family should as well.
My Dad remarried and had another family when I was 3 (not the exact same situation as your daughter but I was the 'step child') and now as an adult with my own children I realise I have brought a lot of childhood 'shit' with me into adulthood as I know a lot of us do but nearly all of it has stemmed from me being the 'step child' and the adults around me (mainly my Dad and Step Mum) making me feel like an outsider, and still to this day do the same. It is wrong and seriously fucks with your self esteem and boundaries around how you allow people to treat you or how worthy you feel coming into adulthood.
Your daughter is extremely lucky to have a Mum that is fighting for her like you are and I know if I was in the same situation as you are now I would also be refusing to go to the wedding and taking my DD out for the day! Fuck them.

No if they change their mind and invite them all, then they all go, all good.

No, the damage has been done, the 10 year old will know she was excluded and the ensuing arguments that have followed, she will feel worse knowing no one wanted her there and they were forced to change their minds.

Poor lass.
And as for the 14 year old with no mother, God help her in that family dynamic.

OP…. I have just read your update.

Not only have you outed Jack and Mary and Anthony and Grace and Iris and whoever else because your blanking out of names was crap.

But you have come across absolutely horrifically. Horror show bad.

This is someone else’s wedding. And you have decided to act like a melodramatic crazy person over it.

Your daughter is not related to them. They have no obligation to her and she is not anything to them because they are not her family!!!!

They haven’t done anything out of spite, just didn’t occur to them to invite someone who isn’t related to them and who is not a young child so they didn’t know why she’d be interested….

You’ve decided to make everything about you and your insecurity over having a blended family.

And your outing everyone on the internet is completely mad.

No, the damage has been done, the 10 year old will know she was excluded and the ensuing arguments that have followed, she will feel worse knowing no one wanted her there and they were forced to change their minds.

Only if OP TELLS her. She has already said DD1 doesn't know she wasn't invited.

Which means OP is going to have to go "you know BIL's wedding where DD2 is flower girl? Well they didn't invite you at first then daddy and I had a big argument and I nearly left him but SIL changed her mind and you are invited now but we still aren't going." for DD1 to know anything about it

Or when this thread inevitably gets picked up by a trash rag and OP's terrible redactions out everyone and make a bigger deal

My friends mum fell out with her sister over a wedding invite (not inviting kids). My friend never knew her cousins and aunts brcause of it. She met them at her aunts funeral.

They made an error and apologised. Don't blow up your family for this. You DD1doesnt know about anything. You can look at the big picture if you want. Your DH did not cause this.

^ This

^ and this.

OP your reaction and behaviour are hugely hugely disproportionate to what is going on.

The situation you have created is liable to haunt you and your daughters for years, souring relations massively and people will steer clear due to it.

Whatever this is dragging up for you is big so please get help with it. A lot of this has absolutely nothing to do with the couple getting wed and your husband’s family.

Genuinely you need to be exercising damage control now.

I’m surprised that so many people would be ok with a child being excluded like this. You’re a family. Would they be the same with an adopted child? I’d be really upset about this and, as petty as it may seem to some, would still not go. It would just show me exactly where me and mine stood in the family dynamic and I wouldn’t allow a child to be made to feel less than. What a shit situation, it’s hurt your daughter, they’re all adults who have caused that hurt. Bollocks to them.

@ButWhatAboutTheBees agree it will end up in the mirror or something with all the heaps of info….

OP had one hornet to squish, done by shrugging shoulders and getting on with life, giving her daughter a lovely day out…or waiting patiently until they realise why she isn’t coming and apologise profusely inviting daughter (as this would have happened eventually).

Instead… create almighty fuss with entire family, make yourself the centre of attention creating histrionics when it’s not your big day… and then for good measure out the entire family and daughters on the internet so that there is a lasting record of the fiasco and embarrassment for all…..

OP you need to click on your initial post and ask MN to delete the thread as identifying or this could be even messier than it already is.