Life can get a lot more complicated when you get married especially when it comes to spending time with your side of the family.

Imagine your mom inviting you to go to a family dinner with your siblings, but she doesn’t want any of the spouses or kids to come. Would you think that was perfectly acceptable, or would you insist that you want your spouse to come along?

In today’s story, one woman is in this situation, and she’s not sure whether to side with her mom or her husband.

Let’s read all the details.

AITA for excluding my spouse from a dinner my mom wants to take me and my sibs on.

All right guys, never thought I’d find myself here but honestly feeling like the jerk either way I play this and could use a hand getting other people‘s perspectives.

My (40f) mom planned and paid for a family vacation for her and me/my two siblings and our families. We are going to a town we used to vacation in when we were kids.

She wants to go to a specific restaurant we used to go to just her and me/sibs and leave the spouses home with the kids.

It’s not a fancy restaurant, but she isn’t confident the kids can behave up to her standards (and I am not either.)

How will her husband take the news?

I told her I thought the spouses would be fine with it.

But when I told my husband, he was excited to go out to eat all together, and then noticeably let down when I said she wanted him to stay home with the kids.

We’ve been married since we were 21.

There’s a whole history of mom not accepting any of her kids’ partners as “her own,” and -in our opinions- excluding them. (Her in-laws treated her as a bit of an outcast, which she disliked and resented them for.) It’s fine I guess but always seems to have hurt my husband’s feelings since he lost his parents as a teen.

She’s not sure what to do.

I know he’s a big boy and would be fine to stay home with the kids and I know my mom is lonely and really cherishes the memories of “the old days” and I feel like I should just go and enjoy it.

But now I’m thinking of 20 years of him being excluded and feeling sad and disloyal.

So AITA if I go w/o him? WIBTA if I declined to go instead?

This situation is extra complicated because her husband doesn’t really have a family, so he can’t have a similar experience on his side of the family.

Let’s see what advice Reddit has to offer.

This seems to be a pattern, and that’s not okay.

This person points out that she doesn’t know how it feels to be excluded.

Her mom’s behavior is not acceptable.

That fact that her husband is upset really matters.

Everyone seems to think she should stand up for her husband.

Her mom is being pretty rude.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.