Dear Prudence,
My fiancé and I were engaged for a year and got married a month ago. It is a second marriage for both of us. Three months before we got married, my fiancé’s 34-year-old son got engaged, and he and his fiancée then demanded that we cancel our wedding and wait to get married until after the son’s wedding—saying that if we got married first, it would take all of the joy out of the son’s wedding. Needless to say, we went ahead with our wedding. The son and his fiancée were invited but did not attend. Nor did they return any of the numerous calls or text messages from my husband in the months before the wedding.
We received the invitation to the son’s December wedding last week and learned that only my husband is invited—not me. Just to be clear, I hardly know the son or his fiancée since he and my husband have been estranged for a while and the son aligns himself very much with his mother, who makes no secret of the fact that she believes she was entitled to more money in the divorce. I came into the picture after the divorce but the son has always been openly hostile to me and my family. Worse, he is very hostile to my husband who has given him a thriving business to run and hundreds of thousands of dollars in properties. It seems the more he gives him, the more hostile his son becomes.
I have urged my husband to go to the wedding without me since his daughters will be there with their husbands and he enjoys spending time with them. I am afraid if he doesn’t go, it will cause a bigger rift and will be seen as a tit-for-tat or retribution for the fact that they did not come to our wedding. My husband, however, says he is sick and tired of being treated like a second-class citizen by his son and in a very rare conversation with his son this week, told him he wouldn’t attend the wedding unless I am invited. We both know his son is highly unlikely to relent so the next move will be up to my husband. I am going to support my husband no matter what he decides, but what is the right thing to do in these circumstances? I also have children and would be mortified if any of them did this to me or their father so I recognize that his son is very much the bad actor here and my husband does not deserve the treatment he’s gotten. On the other hand, a child’s wedding is a big deal and I don’t want him to do anything that he’s going to regret.
—Married Into a Family Rift