Imagine buying your fiancé an engagement ring, but then your mom, who has been married for 30 years, decides to buy herself a new engagement ring that’s much more expensive than your fiancé’s ring.

Would you be upset, or would you figure your mom is allowed to buy herself whatever she wants?

In this story, one man is in this exact situation, and everyone in his family thinks his mom shouldn’t have bought herself the ring. His mom thinks she did nothing wrong.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA my mother buys herself an engagement ring and shows it off to my fiancé the day after I propose?

Me (32m), fiancé (30f) decided we were going to get married (we own a house and have a child together, we always knew we would marry it was just a matter of paying for it all).

We set a date and even though we don’t have much money we are slowly paying it all off and looking forward to the big day.

My fiancé isn’t materialistic and said to save money she didn’t want an engagement ring.

He wanted to get her a ring anyway.

This however didn’t sit right with me so I started searching for the perfect ring.

However I was struggling to find what would be the perfect ring at a reasonable price point.

So I asked my mother (61f) to help me find one lo and behold she found a lovely white gold ring with a moissanite stone that was in my price range. She also showed me another ring but it was 3x the price (£1850) for a white gold ring with VS Diamonds clearly something I couldn’t afford.

Perfect so I told her I have ordered the moissanite ring and that was that.

His fiance loved the surprise!

The ring arrives on Saturday and that night I make some food for my fiancé we have a lovely evening and I give her the ring she is absolutely over the moon with it and couldn’t be happier with the surprise.

The following day Sunday we have planned a meal out with my parents, my dad popped to the house earlier in the day to pick something up and my fiancé was excited and showed him the ring. He then went home and told my mum about it.

We arrive at the restaurant car park, and my mum and dad are just parking up so I park next to them.

Why would his mom do this?

While I am parking the car, my mum has bought herself the diamond engagement ring, is wearing and is waving her hand at the windows in the car so we can all see the ring.

This immediately felt wrong to me, but I beared through it and could see my fiancé was no longer interested in showing her ring to my mother.

The whole dinner my mum was then talking about her ring and how its diamond.

Buying this ring was insanely rude and disrespectful to her husband and her soon to be daughter-in-law.

We repeatedly made jokes towards my dad asking if he had proposed.

He said no (we already knew he hadn’t they’ve been married for 30+ years).

She also said that her original engagement ring was a stupid £30 ring (it’s a gold ring with a diamond so it’s obviously not a £30 ring) so she wanted to buy herself a nicer one. (I thought this comment was really disrespectful towards my dad, as it’s not about the price of the ring it’s about the sentiment imo)

Since this I have distanced myself from my mother as I am really disappointed in her actions and she has upset me.

His mom wondered what was wrong.

The following Wednesday she calls me and asks me if something is wrong because I haven’t spoke to her as much as I usually would.

I essentially described the above and told her how it made me feel, how I think she stole the spotlight from fiancé for this once in a life time occasion and that her moment was 30+ years ago when my dad proposed, not now.

She immediately deflected and said it’s not a engagement ring.

But I told her I looked on the website and it’s specifically an engagement ring and also told her how she spent the entire dinner talking about her engagement ring and that this is the replacement, it was also worn specifically on the engagement/wedding ring fingers.

She went quiet and then accused me of attacking her and put the phone down.

How does she not understand what she did wrong?

It’s is now the next day Thursday and I went round to their house with my son (2m) so they could spend some time with him as they’re leaving for a month long holiday early the next morning.

During the 2 hours spent at their house she was acting very moody towards me, this imo makes things even worse.

And having a quick conversation with my dad as he dropped me back home, he said that she feels she has done nothing wrong.

Here’s how everyone feels about the mom’s new ring…

My opinion: she could have decided to upgrade her engagement ring at anytime during the last 30 years, for me the problem is she done it at this specific time when it’s supposed to be the moment my fiancé and I are celebrating ours.

Also the comparisons between her “proper diamond” and the moissanite ring makes it feel like a competition

My fiancé’s opinion: my mum wanted to try and share the moment, but it wasn’t the right thing to do

My dads opinion: my mum shouldn’t have bought herself an engagement

My mums opinion: she has done nothing wrong

He’s not 100% sure if he’s right or wrong.

I’m 99% sure I’m in the right but also I’m not sure if I’m stuck in the moment and trying to be the main character.

And who I am to tell a 61 year old woman what she can or can’t buy with her own money?

So AITA?

His mom’s timing was horrible. It’s like she’s jealous of her son’s fiancé getting a ring, so she decided to steal the spotlight. I don’t know how she can’t see that.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

One person shares their opinion.

Another person agrees that she’ll try to upstage the bride at the wedding.

This person seems to think it’s a bad idea to invite his mom to his wedding.

This is the truth.

It seems like his mom feels the need to be the center of attention.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.