AITA for telling my mother not to come to my wedding?
I’m getting married soon, and my relationship with my mother has been extremely strained for as long as I can remember.
For important context, my mother is an alcoholic. This has affected our relationship for years and has played a major role in many of the issues between us. She refuses to acknowledge the impact of her drinking and has never taken accountability for how her behaviour affects others.
For months now, she has been completely inconsistent about my wedding. She’ll say she isn’t coming, then later say she wants to be involved, then pull away again. This cycle has repeated multiple times, and each time it causes me a lot of stress and emotional pain.
Recently, I tried to address some long-standing issues by sending her messages explaining how her behaviour affects me. Her response was horrible. There was no accountability, no apology – just blame directed back at me. This is typical for her. Whenever she hurts me, she deflects responsibility, is never sincerely sorry, and doesn’t show any willingness to change or do better.
Everything is always about how she feels, and never about how her actions impact the people around her.
After receiving her message, I spoke to my fiancé. He was awake when she messaged me and saw how upset I was. We both agreed that continuing this cycle wasn’t healthy, especially so close to our wedding. I was planning to message her to let her know she shouldn’t attend, even though this is an incredibly difficult and painful decision.
At this point, I feel like allowing her back into the picture would only guarantee more stress and emotional harm. Nothing has changed in years, and I don’t believe it will change now. I can’t keep living with this uncertainty and emotional whiplash leading up to one of the most important days of my life.
I’m scared that setting this boundary makes me a terrible daughter, but I also feel like I need to protect my mental health and have peace on my wedding day.
AITA for deciding that my mother shouldn’t come to my wedding?
I don’t know what to do.
NTA
You can uninvited her form the wedding
This will lead to low or no contact and I am sure she will not be happy
Don’t invite her. NTA
NTA. Your mother is an addict and quite possibly a Narcissist. Keep your happiness and peace. Univite her. If she ever wants to change and apologize, that will be on her, not for you to fix.
NTA. I think you are justified in not inviting her or uninviting her to be specific with all this background.
>For months now, she has been completely inconsistent about my wedding. She’ll say she isn’t coming, then later say she wants to be involved, then pull away again. This cycle has repeated multiple times, and each time it causes me a lot of stress and emotional pain.
Though going forward I think you have to learn to lower your expectations a lot if you don’t want to cut her out of your life completely. If you would have thought of her more like a normal guest, like a coworker, cousin who is not particular close to you, it hurts less when they are so wishy washy. Though it sucks that you have to kind of learn to expect nothing from her and not let her get to you anymore. When you have low expectations, it is easier to deal with parents like this. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore when they suck and it might be possible here and there to enjoy their presence when they have a good day. That is especially true in the case of addicts. They are not the most consistent and rational people out there obviously.
NTA. You’d had been better off severely limiting her involvement from jump do to the bare minimum. Seems like a situation where the best you could’ve hope for was her showing up timely, being respectful and leave. She wasn’t going to overcome her demons timely.
NTA. You have tried your best, you are not a terrible daughter. She is being inconsistent and is taking no accountability, so you have a right to tell her she can no longer go to your wedding if she’s causing you stress.
It’s not like she’s been enthusiastically looking forward to it, wanting to be involved, or showing some signs of curbing her normal behavior. I feel sorry for you. It’s got to be rough having an alcoholic parent who insists that they’re not. I mean, she’s your *mom* but she’s also the person who ruins a lot of things. I think a lot of kids in this position end up parenting their parent. In this case she seems to have other behavioral issues beside the alcoholism. I don’t think you’re the AH at all. Have a lovely and peaceful wedding.
NTA. Make sure you have security there for when she arrives drunk and tries to cause a scene.
Congrats on your wedding and enjoy your day. I’m sure it will be more stress free without her there. You are not a terrible daughter. Quite the contrary. You shouldered this burden for far too long.
NTA. Your wedding day should be one of the happiest days of your life. Ridding that day of toxic people is a must to enjoy it. Your mother sounds like a very toxic person. Plus, an unrepentant, unacknowledged alcoholic can never be trusted near alcohol. You can guarantee that she’ll get drunk that day and really ruin your time.
If you want to keep trying to have some semblance of a relationship with your mother, that’s your call. however, IMO, your wedding day is not the place to extend an olive branch.
NTA: Don’t let her come. I was a meth addict for 13 years. During my addiction, I was completely unreliable, and my family had barely any contact with me. I found out my sister got married from a Facebook post. I was crushed, but I completely understood why she hadn’t invited me (or even told me she was getting married). To this day, I only feel sadness that I \*chose\* to miss these moments by choosing my addiction over my family. Now, 11 years clean, I have the most amazing relationship with my family, and my sister is my best friend. I can honestly say I probably would have ruined her wedding and caused her massive stress. It’s up to your mom to heal herself.
NTA – Your wedding, your rule. This is a tough decision, but it is for your own peace of mind. You deserve to enjoy your wedding without worrying about your mom suddenly ruining it.
NTA. A wedding is just a day, you can uninvite her from this and still work towards a relationship down the line when she is able to commit to seeing her faults too.
That said, know that this boundary setting may make things worse. However, I would encourage you to think about the consequences of not uninviting her.
When you draw the boundary, I would be careful to make sure she understands that just because she isn’t invited to the day, this is not an ending of the relationship. I think you already know you have to protect yourself during this already emotional day.
I’d also want her to know that you hope the two of you can work towards a better relationship going forward.
When you do eventually sit down, I recommend trying Motivational Interviewing – so that you end up with a productive conversation vs an emotional one.
Best of luck!
*edited for autocorrect errors
You don’t want an alcoholic at your wedding, regardless of who they are. They ruin them – I’ve seen it firsthand – and you’ll be stressed all day knowing that the ruination is coming.
NTA- my therapist specialized in substance abuse, not my personal problem, but she had a lot of experience. There are other types of behaviors that can have codependencies and enabling relationships, besides those with substance abuse. Anyway, my point is my therapist uses the term “detach with love”. You don’t have to stop caring for the person, but you have to keep them at arms length and put up a barrier so that they can’t continue to hurt you. I really think that this describes what you need to do with your mother. Detach with love. You can still care about her as a person, you can still acknowledge that she is your mother, and you can love her for that. But that doesn’t negate the pain and suffering that she’s caused you and you don’t have to tolerated it, your wedding should be a special day just for you and your partner. It should be a celebration of your love. Having her there is going to cause drama, it’s going to bring negative attention and negative feelings. It’s best to keep her away until she can start to heal herself. Because honestly, she’s the only one that can fix this.