Her Brother-in-Law Told Her Not to Come to His Wedding—Until Her Mother-in-Law Blamed Her for Missing It
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Dealing with in-laws can be a challenge for many reasons, including the fact that every family comes off as abrasive and you already think they don’t like you.
What would you do if you got the feeling that your brother-in-law didn’t want you at his wedding across the country, but when you didn’t show up, his family seemed upset about it and began saying passive-aggressive things to you?
That is what happened to the woman in this story, and she isn’t sure how to handle it. They aren’t being directly mean, and her partner seems to think nothing is wrong, but she is stressing out over it.
Personally, I think she needs to get her partner to talk about this more, and also accept that the family might just have unpleasant personalities. The fact that they are across the country helps to minimize the impact, but is this something she wants to deal with forever?
Read through the full story and see what you think.
Shamed for not attending a wedding that I wasn’t invited to
I (26F) have never been close with my BF’s (26M) family.
It is always difficult when you don’t get along with your in-laws.
We met online, and despite living together for a few years now, I don’t often see his family because they live across the country. Prior to this, I THOUGHT I got along alright with his parents, but I’ve never liked his brother, J.
He seems like a really unpleasant, borderline violent guy from everything I’ve seen and heard, and I didn’t think he liked me either.
Some people don’t send out official invitations.
J got married last summer. The scheduled week of his wedding coincided with a really busy period of work and school for me, plus the cost of travel in order to attend the wedding was putting me under some financial stress. Still though, I was willing to go not so much for the family’s sake but to keep my BF company.
Two months before the wedding, we had still not received an invite in the mail. I asked BF what was up with that, and he said J had invited us, just over the phone as opposed to via a formal invite.
Is this the way he normally talks? Kind of rude.
I asked BF if J had explicitly said he could bring a plus one and my BF shrugged and said he had assumed so, but would double check.
The next time BF and J called, I was in an adjacent room, and I heard BF ask his brother point blank if I could come along. I heard J groan over the phone and say “bring her don’t bring her I don’t care.”
She is handling this really well.
Yes, I know this is petty but that pretty much removed any lingering incentive I had to go. It was already going to be a financial strain and no one in his whole family had the courtesy to shoot me a text about the wedding.
I told my BF that I would have to respectfully decline the “invitation”, and I tried to be very cordial about it. I sent J’s fiance a text apologizing for not being able to make it and explained that I couldn’t make it due to work conflicts, which was mostly true. I also bought a fairly expensive gift off of the couple’s Zola wedding registry.
What exactly is his mother saying?
The wedding itself seemed to go well. BF sent me a ton of pictures on the day and seemed to have a wonderful time hanging out with the family. I was happy for him.
The day after the wedding, I wake up to a ton of texts from him mom. She sent me like 30+ pictures from the day, which I thought was nice at first, until I realized that these pictures with interspersed with passive aggressive commentary.
It is easy to see where ‘J’ gets his bad attitude from.
She would send me a cute picture of the cake or something and then text me like “Cake was so yummy! Too bad you didn’t want to be here to celebrate with us!”
I just thanked her for the pictures and left it at that. We’ve texted one or two times since last summer and that’s about it.
They do seem passive-aggressive, but that might just be how the family is.
On her annual “end of year family recap” on Facebook for 2025, I was noticeably absent from the caption and the pictures. BF’s new SIL has also stopped talking to me (thought it’s not like we were good friends before).
I asked BF if anyone seemed mad that I wasn’t at the wedding, but he swears up and down that no one said anything.
Her boyfriend might not see it because he is used to that behavior.
Obviously, to BF’s family, I crossed some kind of line by not attending, and BF seems totally oblivious for some reason.
Luckily, it’s not really a big deal to me since they live across the country and I didn’t have much of a relationship with them before, but I just think it’s a ridiculous situation.
It can be hard to get used to the way different families interact, especially when it comes off as very abrasive like this. The fact that they live across the country, however, might make it easier to ignore.
Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.
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She really needs to address this with her boyfriend.
This commenter isn’t wrong.
Here is someone who says she might want to get out of the relationship.
The family does come off as pretty awful. It is hard to adjust to people like this.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about siblings who don’t think they should have to give up their own sports’ seasons to help with their younger siblings.
This commenter says to get passive-aggressive right back with the family.
His family is abrasive, and she needs to either get used to it, get to the bottom of it, or end the relationship. Confrontation is scary, but also necessary.
Her first step should be talking to her partner about it.
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