Bride disowns brother for ditching father's funeral and her wedding; 'now I'm getting called petty.' AITA?
"AITA for not wanting to include my brother or his wife in any family-related events after they ditched a funeral and a wedding?"
LilBluSky87
I'm sorry for the long post, but there's a lot of background information necessary. I (37F) am taking a lot of flack from my brother and other family members for not including my SIL, Jennifer (34F) in any family events that my husband and I host. I am upset because I feel like I shouldn't invite people who clearly don't care or want to be there anyway.
Firstly, I'd like to give some context on the dynamic of my family. I come from a huge family. My mom is the oldest of 6 siblings (who all have 3+ kids) and my dad is the youngest son of 10 siblings (who all also have betweed 2 and 6 kids themselves).
I have one set of living grandparents on dad's side and lots of great-aunties and uncles still alive on my mom's side. I myself am the oldest of 9 and we are all approximately 10-18 months apart in age.
I have 5 sisters and 3 brothers... I am close with and get along with all of them (for the most part outside of normal sibling squabbles), with the exception of one sister (Sara, 28F) who has chosen a life of drugs over her own children.
7 of my siblings have children and families of their own, and we get together frequently, taking turns on who is hosting events for various holidays, birthdays, and other celebrations.
Last year, was both incredible and very sad. My dad (56M) passed away suddenly (under some tragic and horrible circumstances that left our family shaken and devastated) a mere 6 weeks before my wedding.
I was my dad's POA while he was hospitalized and I'm the one who had to sign the paperwork to take him off of life support. My paternal grandparents both walked me down the aisle on my wedding day in my dad's place. The day was bittersweet but overall lovely.
This issue is about my brother, Troy (35M) and his wife Jennifer (34F). They're generally very quiet and introverted, and do not host gatherings unless it involves their daughter 4F) specifically (the baby shower, her birth and birthdays, etc).
This is fine and we don't usually make a fuss over this because that's sort of just the way Troy is and always has been, but he usually attends the events that they're not hosting, but I've noticed a pattern and I'm really upset by this.
When our dad passed, Troy left the service immediately after he did the viewing, and Jennifer did not come into the funeral home at all. She sat in the car and texted him so often that our grandmother actually got upset and asked if he could please set his phone on vibrate, our of respect for everyone else in attendance.
He refused, and obnoxiously kept texting his wife throughout the first few minutes of the service, until he was finally asked to step outside to take the call so as to not distrupt the eulogy that our grandfather was making.
Troy sort of shrugged his shoulders, hugged our Mother, and then left. Like he literally went home, and he was supposed to be a pallbearer with our other brothers, uncle, grandpa and his nephew (our dad's eldest grandson), but he literally just left and went home. I understood this, and so did the rest of our family because we figured that it was just too overwhelming for him and he HAD to leave.
Now onto the wedding.
I'd like to note that the ONLY reason why my husband and I didn't postpone was because my dad would have been incredibly upset with us for postponing on his account (we actually took an anonymous vote with my family on this exact subject).
So we went ahead, and honored dad by having our officiant talk about him before the ceremony. When my husband and I got engaged, I asked most of my sisters and Jennifer to be bridesmaids and was going to have my "chosen sister" (aka my bestie) to be my MOH.
I then asked Jennifer and Troy if their daughter (Cindy, 4F) could be my flower girl. Everyone gladly accepted. Troy and Jennifer were over the moon with excitement about their little girl being a flower girl and all was well... Or so it seemed. About 3 months before the wedding, during our 2nd first dress fitting, Troy suddenly texted me and said that Jennifer didn't want to be a bridesmaid.
That she never wanted to be one in the first place, and that she didn't know how to say "no" to me when I first asked, and that she really hated the idea of doing "bridesmaid crap" and that she absolutely refused to wear the dress (that SHE picked out HERSELF). She then said that she might not even attend, and that she was even thinking about not allowing Cindy to be my flower girl.
I was crushed because my husband and I had paid for all of the wedding expenses ourselves, including the entire wedding party's dresses and suits. Thankfully, my parents convinced them (bribed them with a large sum of money) to still allow Cindy to be in the wedding party.
The day of the wedding, Jennifer refused to allow our hair dresser to do Cindy's hair and did it herself (she just threw my niece's hair in a ponytail) and refused all offers for help and then she allowed my niece to go barefoot during the aisle walk.
As soon as Cindy's part was "finished" (as in, as soon as she got to the front of the Chapel) and before the officiant even began speaking... Troy scooped Cindy up and left, with Jennifer following closely behind. She even took the flower girl basket with her.
I didn't notice until after the ceremony and it was time for pictures, when my Grandma told me that she saw my brother "take Cindy to the potty". I called Troy, asking where Cindy was because it was time for the photoshoot.
Jennifer answered the call and said "She's with us. We left.". Again, I was absolutely crushed, but I didn't want that to ruin my day, so I made excuses, and just dropped it for the time being.
Ever since then, I've tried inviting them to other family events such as my oldest son's high school graduation party, his 18th birthday party, Thanksgiving (it was my turn to host that year), etc... and every single time, I'm left on Read or the RSVP goes unanswered and they do not attend.
To be fair, they also don't attend some of our other siblings' events either, but this feels incredibly personal because they made the effort to travel across the province to attend our youngest brother's birthday party this past June.
So now, I've decided to stop expecting them to come and have even stopped inviting them to things that I host altogether. Jennifer recently saw pictures on my Facebook and Instagram, and blew up at me.
She accused me of alienating my brother and niece from the family and that I'm being malicious by excluding them. I argued back that it seems like they don't want anything to do with me or my family anyway, and that I was saving them the time and effort of ignoring my invitations by simply not inviting them.
Now I'm getting called "petty" by some of my aunts and uncles. My grandpa even called to ask me why I'm excluding my niece from family events. So I'm now feeling incredibly guilty for not at least going through the motions of inviting team to my hosted events. My mother is on my side, as are 6 of my 8 siblings. So, AITA for refusing to include my brother and SIL to family events that I host?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
Mueryk
NTA make it very clear that their behavior is unacceptable and disrespectful to the extreme and list of those for them. If they want to be a member of the family and treated as such, they should probably act the damned part more than just on occasion.
Until such time as they do so, they will not be given a second thought by you. To hell with what Uncles and Aunts say. You have the majority of your nuclear family who deal with these people on the regular on your side.
I had to have a conversation with a close family member once and I told them the secret to being the favorite…..just show the hell up and be helpful. It isn’t hard. It isn’t magic.
If they aren’t willing to do it then they can suffer the consequences of their selfish actions. If she has issues(mental or otherwise) than she is the one isolating your brother and he is enabling her. That should stop if she is upset about it.
Responsible-End7361
Isolating the brother is right. The purpose of this fight is to get siblings of Op to take Op's side, so the siblings will stop inviting him too. Then she will find some petty fight with a family member who does still spend time with her husband. Eventually he won't have any contact with his family. I used to be married to a woman like this...
27Jarvis
NTA. Why keep inviting people who have made it clear through words and actions that they don’t care about your life events? INFO: What is Jennifer’s family history like? Was there a lot of duplicitous or abusive behavior? I get the impression that she is isolating your brother as a way of controlling him. Incessant texting during a funeral?! That is some unhinged behavior.
justalwayscurious
NTA - Honestly both Troy and Jennifer are equally responsible for their awful behaviour and if you didn't want to talk to them ever I wouldn't blame you.
It's amazing you have boundaries and keep it up but expect to receive pushback because one thing I've noticed with close and big families is they usually stay close by excusing poor behaviour from the people who tend to be selfish, greedy, manipulative etc.
My theory for this is because they know they are the ones usually more likely to cut themselves off from the rest of the family or create drama if they don't get their way. So the kind, reasonable, giving and more mature people are the ones who have to compromise their boundaries to accomodate the crappier people.
In the long-run this ends up becoming a toxic situation but it's hard to see that in the moment and people will sacrifice a lot to cling to the big happy family fantasy.
You should really be proud of yourself for being a BOUNDARY TRAILBLAZER in your family because it takes a lot of self-love, self-respect and maturity to do so. And ultimately I think it becomes a source of inspiration for others to not allow others to treat them poorly.
The OP then added:
LilBluSky87
I don't think she's come from an abusive or otherwise toxic/unhealthy family. Jennifer is from another country and is not the same race as us (We are fully indigenous Canadian and she's some sort of caucasian mix from the states).
She keeps in close contact with her family from what I have seen on her social media and from what my mom has said (Jennifer and Troy live in a fairly large house that my mother built on her large farm property).
She's constantly flying her family to Canada to visit and she and Troy regularly take Cindy fly out to her state to visit and spend time with family over there. She and Troy met during online gaming sessions and they became friends for a few years before they started catching feelings for one another.
Our whole family was excited and happy for him because his previous relationship made him very depressed once it ended. His ex is/was not really "toxic" and she never alienated him. They ended things because her family wanted Troy to convert to their religion, and he refused to.
Troy has always been somewhat of an introvert and a homebody. He preferred to stay home over going out or hosting any sort of gathering. He was painfully shy growing up and didn't really have a lot of friends until he was in highschool, so I don't think that he's changed much since before he got married.
I should also note that my parents raised us to not give two craps about what race you are... The only thing they ever cared about was if we were happy and treated well by our respective partners/spouses.
My husband is Dutch/Catholic. My kids are half Caucasian. But none of that matters to my mom and definitely didn't matter to my dad either. So I know that that is not the reason why things are the way they are with my brother and his wife.