Wedding Woes

We get a 'Part Deux' of sorts this week!

Dear Prudence,
In last week’s column a letter writer told off her half sister for flaunting the fact that their father—who had absented himself from the letter writer’s life after leaving the family—was paying for the sister’s year of travel and then college, neither of which he did for his first family. You advised that the letter writer owed her younger half sister a profound apology. None of it was the sister’s fault, you basically said. But I take exception to that. Why shouldn’t the younger sister be made aware of how her privilege has impacted others? That there was time, affection, and money for her in part because it was denied to the other children? This is one of our great national conversations, isn’t it? To acknowledge the impact when people in power (in this case, the father) privilege some and deny others? For the sister to be so oblivious to how their father had treated his other children is, frankly, her fault. The older sister may owe an apology for the way she delivered her message, but the younger sister owes it to her siblings to recognize she gained from their poor treatment and not blithely go about mentioning it. The younger sister is an adult and doesn’t need to be protected from her siblings’ truth simply because it makes it her shiny, happy life less shiny and happy. If she’s truly upset that her sister laid out some basic truths of what it life was like for her older sister, the person who owes the younger sister an apology and explanation is her father.

Re: We get a 'Part Deux' of sorts this week!

  • I disagree.  It was not the younger sister's responsibility to "know" how her father treated his children from a previous marriage.  That is between the father and her half-siblings.  LW sought a relationship with her half-siblings, not with the father.  If LW chose to disclose that information prior to the meltdown she had, that was her business.  Half-sister was probably completely clueless there was an issue at all, given that she even had a relationship with LW.


    "And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me..."
    --Philip Pullman

  • I don't disagree, but I go back to @mrs.conn's reply that teenagers are assholes. The original LW does owe an apology and maybe an explanation, so that teen can grow from it.
  • I disagree with LW to a point.  Yes, privilege needs to be addressed.  But there are better ways to do that than blowing up at a teenager.  The original LW was put on the back burner by their father and it wasn't fair to original LW, at all.  Even if original LW's father was there emotionally and not monetarily, I think the conversation between original LW and her half-sister might have gone differently.
  • "the younger sister owes it to her siblings to recognize she gained from their poor treatment and not blithely go about mentioning it."

    How does LW know that, had dad not been an assbag, he would have provided the exact same treatment to his other children?
  • "the younger sister owes it to her siblings to recognize she gained from their poor treatment and not blithely go about mentioning it."

    How does LW know that, had dad not been an assbag, he would have provided the exact same treatment to his other children?
    I was wondering the same thing.     There are many reasons why kids from a  same parent are treated differently.  Sometimes the parent is an asshole.  Other times situations are just different.        

     My husband's dad is MIA and never had another kids.    However, his mom had 2 more kids more than a decade after DH and his brother.  DH and BIL lived with their mom, however  the girls were raised differently.  Partly because of the new step-dad's influence, partly because they had more money than when DH and his brother were younger.   And partly because MIL was older and learned from experience.

    Heck, in my own family there is only 5 years between us, but my brothers experienced different things that my sister and I.  Why?  Because when I moved off to college my parents moved to Japan.  Their high school years were spent living in a penthouse with a maid.  Taking trips to places I didn't get to see because they lived on that side of the world.






    What differentiates an average host and a great host is anticipating unexpressed needs and wants of their guests.  Just because the want/need is not expressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated. 
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