Another family wedding where my eldest is excluded - a year on

[Stuckinthemiddlewithnoone]

12 year old wants to go to wedding where sister hasn't been invited | Mumsnet

This was my thread from almost a year ago and it's happened again.

Younger one invited but not older one, this time the brother of the original groom.

Younger one went with her gran and the rest of the family and we stayed at home. It's set a horrible precedent.

My husband isn't doing anything and younger one going on her own again.

The family clearly want to make some bizarre point.

I genuinely believed that this wouldn't happen again, only last week husband was at his mother's with the father of the groom and nobody said anything. My mother-in-law won't get involved but thinks we made too much of an issue last time and we should have asked for an invitation grovelled for my eldest daughter instead of declining with dignity.

I don't think this is against my daughter, I think this is payback for last time.

She cannot stop her daughter from attending the wedding if she is determined to go, and especially not without her husband’s support.

Be realistic
OP has said her Daughter will create hell.
He DP who is her father wants her to go.
Her family want her to go.

So if OP tried to stop her, she wouldn't be able to.

And then just by trying. The fallout would be unbelievable.

you are obviously projecting; you are mashing up my words to suit yourself. I never used the word stop.

It isn’t an ‘imaginary idea’ when it’s evidenced by other posters on mumsnet who have posted because they’re now living with the confidences of trying to enforce so-called ‘sibling loyalty’.

The younger daughter may very well consider her paternal family to be just as ‘main’ as her parents and sister, given her closeness to them. She cannot be forced to share her mother’s opinion, regardless of how much OP attempts to indoctrinate her. She cannot even be forced to obey her mother if she did attempt to prevent her from going/continuing her relationship with them.

OP’s husband does not sound like he’s going to give in to her either, any more than he did last time.

That would necessitate personal experience, which I do not have. A swing and a miss there.

OP does not have the power to make her daughter agree with her, nor to prevent her from attending the wedding or continuing her relationship with them.

I agree. I have a few (full, not half) sisters, a few I’m close to and one that I’m NC with. Me and NC sister are so different that we may as well be strangers. We see each other at family events but never speak. If I was invited to a family wedding but she wasn’t, there is no way I would miss that wedding out of loyalty to her. I’m closer to my cousins than I am to my NC sister.

I’m not suggesting that OP’s dds aren’t close to each other, just that it would be very short-sighted to rupture OP’s younger dd’s relationship with her dad’s family out of a mistaken belief that it will somehow bring her closer to her older sister.

Oh, I think it's definitely an imaginary idea, that the sky will fall if the mother doesn't allow her thirteen-year-old to go to a wedding. Also, please read before arguing. If you had, you would see that I am talking about "enforcing sibling loyalty" or the other limited ways you've framed this, which really makes it seem like you have no actual experience with this kind of thing.

I am talking about not allowing other relatives to drive wedges within her nuclear family and cause trouble by favoring some and disrespecting others and causing trouble within their family. A thirteen-year-old is far too young to understand the dynamics that are going on with all that. She needs to be protected from it, not be allowed to be used as a pawn in it.

I was not afraid to be the parent and did not let my children call the shots. Also, I have a lot of experience with this issue myself and am sharing what I've learned, which is not anything like the strange way you seemed to have framed the whole situation. I think you've missed the overall issue, tbh. To sum it up, if anyone caused too much trouble within my nuclear family (me, husband and kids) they would be put at as much of a distance as we thought they needed to be to stop that problem. More distant relatives are just that.

For prioritising my nuclear family over some distant cousins who would exclude one teenage girl from a family of 4 and a MIL who sees nothing wrong with jeopardising her granddaughter's relationship with her sister after what happened last time? For instilling in my child that she needs to have loyalty to her sister - that is bad parenting to you? If you'd be happy to sit back and allow one child to be excluded then I pity your kids. No thought given to the oldest child who has known no different father since she was 2 who suffers.

Genuinely can't believe the attitudes of some people on here. And I don't have a blended family so no skin in this game but what happened to being a decent person. Would they exclude an adopted child this way? Not blood related after all.

she might though, in everything in life, people can be spoken to in the right way, persuaded, reasoned with, be shown a different viewpoint ... I have no idea what you are projecting; no personal experience, that would suggest a very flat existence. Again I never said you had this exact situation, a swing and a direct hit in the obvious defensiveness.

It is very convenient to dismiss anything that doesn’t tally with what you want to be true, as ‘imaginary’.

Understanding nuanced family dynamics, and that is something the youngest child has evidently grasped, is not a ‘wedge’. The sisters are not the same, and do not share the same family members and relationships. Failing to acknowledge that, and pretending it isn’t the case, is far more likely to create a ‘wedge’. OP’s youngest isn’t an emotional support animal for her sister, and she should not be deprived of the loving relationships she has with her paternal family because her sister lacks one with her own. Incidentally, OP’s oldest is almost 18, an adult, so it’s highly unlikely her in-laws are going to suddenly start treating her as something she isn’t to them.

I do not have personal experience of this, but I have had professional experience of it, and ‘the way I’ve framed it’ very much reflects what I have been witness to on and beyond mumsnet. Your approach may have been successful for you, but that does not mean that it couldn’t and wouldn’t blow up in the face of someone else that attempted it. In any event, the youngest has the support of her father.

But they’re not a full nuclear family. DD1 has a bio dad and his family. DD2 has a bio dad and his family. Ideally DD1’s stepdad’s wider family should also embrace DD1 as intrinsically part of their family, but unfortunately they haven’t.

It sounds like DD2 is close to her dad’s family, she pops round to her grandmother’s house more often. Maybe DD2 even likes that she has these closer ties to them that DD1 doesn’t have. That would be a bit uncharitable of DD2, but it’s human to want to be a bit special, especially when you’re a teen and the youngest.

OP recognises that it would be an extremely bad idea to ban DD2 from the wedding. The good thing is that neither OP or her DH are attending. This is the support that is helping DD1 to treat this situation with equanimity. The sky won’t fall down just because her younger sister is attending the wedding.

a MIL who sees nothing wrong with jeopardising her granddaughter's relationship with her sister after what happened last time?

Why are you blaming the MIL? A man (the groom) has made the decision not to invite his uncle’s step-dd and yet as usual people are blaming a woman. The MIL does want DD1 at the wedding, but it’s out of her hands.

@nomas I think that is well put. I still think perhaps it will linger longer as a problem if the younger DD realises that this poor behaviour is acceptable and that 'some are better' than others. It wouldn't be a huge deal to offer an invite to the older DD would it. It's not like a childfree wedding situation if the oldest is nearly an adult, it smacks of petty, nasty behaviour.

OP, if it applies. I had a close relative who liked to drive wedges. I was victim to it and saw her do it to others all my life. Grossly favoring one sibling over another within families, taking one spouse's side over the other's and making a bunch of noise about it when the couple wasn't even having problems.

Everywhere she went, she started this crap, through many years. She was good at it too, working behind the scenes and turning people against each other. It's hard to understand when you don't think that way yourself. I guess it would be some kind of mental problem or personality disorder, or just some weird need for power, I don't know.

Since then, I've seen that, unfortunately, it's not that uncommon for a troubled person to do this. So if these brothers' parent or someone else is behind your daughter not being invited to two different weddings, this is possible. And if so, your daughter not being your husband's biological child would only be something they found that they could use for this weird purpose. If it wasn't that, they'd have found something else. That's why I said it's not surprising the younger child is the one being favored and (possibly) used to stir up mess within your family. She's the easiest way in, to be able to drive a wedge within your family, in other words. The wedding exclusion being repeated a second time with a different brother is what made me think there may be one of these people behind it all.

If you don't know about this rather common dynamic, you could look up things like "triangulation," "golden child/scapegoat" and so on, and see if you recognize a pattern. I don't know of course but your situation just has a familiar ring to it, to me.

Anyway, this person decided to start another round of sneaky wedge-driving, using my grown daughter, who is mildly disabled. She became close with her and started trying to turn her against me and oh, just stir up whatever she could for no reason at all, yet again.

Even though my child was grown and had become close to this relative, I asked her to cut ties. I explained why, the best I could and reminded grown child that she (grown child) and I are the closest by far, not outsiders who try to cause trouble between us, even if they are relatives, too. My child trusted me and did cut the tie, even though she was grown and I couldn't make her do it.

But if she had been a minor, I would have made that decision for her because I know this person a lot better than she does and I know the whole deal through many years. Whereas all my kid knew was that this person was "being extra nice" to her. She'd have been a sitting duck, in other words. I'd think of it as my job to keep her out of that kind of miserable game. If this is even on the right track... Anyway, best wishes to you and your family. :)

I am talking about not allowing other relatives to drive wedges within her nuclear family and cause trouble by favoring some and disrespecting others and causing trouble within their family. A thirteen-year-old is far too young to understand the dynamics that are going on with all that. She needs to be protected from it, not be allowed to be used as a pawn in it.
I was not afraid to be the parent and did not let my children call the shots.

This is what I wanted to say but articulated much better.

Perhaps OP can be persuaded to change her own mind?

No, no personal experience of being in a blended family, hence why I said I am not projecting. I am quite content with my existence being a very flat one, if that is indeed the case. I can’t say I’d be inclined to swap it for the alternative.

I think that this is utterly shit of the bride and groom. They are related to her. They’re related to her by marriage. By their own logic, I assume they’ll be excluding all aunts and uncles who have married into the family rather than being born into it?

I wouldn’t have let youngest DC go to the first wedding but, as the precedent has been set, it seems a little pointless trying to make a point now. I would definitely have a talk with her though, tell her I was disappointed that loyalty to her sister didn’t come before extended family members and that she’d better hope her sister doesn’t hold a grudge, or she may find herself excluded from her sister’s future occasions on the basis that they’re ‘only’ half siblings and not full family members.

Should your eldest DD get married in the future, I really hope she remembers who didn’t consider her to be family when she’s writing her guest list.

In fairness to the OP, she did let her go to the last wedding. I suppose this time is a bit different, as I said, what would it cost them to throw out an invite to a child, now near adult that has been in their lives since she was two. They are making a stand. It obviously has nothing to do with the child in question, more a statement against the OP not being good enough. That is how it reads. It is very cutting. the children are just being used like pieces on a game board.

@nomas It's one thing not to embrace her intrinsically as part of the family, but it's another to think so little of her that they leave her out of family weddings.

For all those saying that you'd stop the younger daughter going because it's not fair to the elder, are you seriously saying that you think it's ok to teach younger dd that her sisters hurt feelings are more important than her feelings? That her relationship with her paternal family is unimportant because older dd doesn't have the same? Younger dd should not have to miss out on her family events just because older dd doesn't share her wider family. That's not fair on younger dd. No one wins in this situation, it's about taking the least harmful option, and younger dd's feelings and wishes are just as important as the elders.

Well, we all see it differently but personally, I would not define the problem like that, so not exactly.

But I will say that anyone outside my family unit (me, husband and kids) who caused too much unnecessary strife within my family unit would be put at a distance from my family unit.

Unfortunately, we (husband and I) had to learn this the hard way after putting up with way too much unnecessary chaos created by a more distant relative. If a similar situation came up now, we'd do it a lot faster this time.

Well, our kids are grown now so my husband and I wouldn't be able to make that decision for our entire family but we'd certainly discuss it with our grown kids.

Even if the eldest sister wasn't hurt and didn't give a shit, most likely the OP would be hurt and presumably the dad too.

So it's not about her sisters hurt feelings being more important than her own, it's about them thinking that it's wrong that she got left out, like it's a conscious slight to the family. It's a horrible thing to do.

What is this? Of course they are a "full nuclear family." The OP, her husband and their two daughters.

Here is a dictionary definition, if it helps:
nuclear family:
a couple and their dependent children, regarded as a basic social unit.

A nuclear family consists of a couple and their dependent biological children.

OP’s family is a blended one:

“a family that consists of two adults, the child or children that they have had together, and one or more children that they have had with previous partners”

OP and her family are a blended family, not a nuclear one.

No. That is incorrect. A nuclear family does not have to only include biological children. Look it up. They are a nuclear family and a blended family.