‘You deserved your divorce’: Woman Uninvites Family From Wedding After Overhearing Them Slander Her Past Relationship

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Briana Viser • Writer and Editor
Sep 3, 2024 1:00 PM EDT

Welcome back internet enthusiasts. Humans have a myriad of needs that go far beyond physical wellbeing. Everyone knows about food, water, and shelter, but what people don't talk about is the emotional needs we all share. From community support to romantic partnerships and personal friendships, we all need this kind of love from people around us. When we feel like this is lacking in our lives, it can create internal warfare; we may seek out this feeling of love and acceptance elsewhere. 

This brings us to the Reddit piece. This is about a woman who's in competition with her beautiful cousin her whole life. They went on similar trajectories, to end up in marriages, then divorced, then both remarried in a similar time period. The announcement of her cousin's wedding was met with praise and admiration, but her mother refuses to announce hers…why? Because the family looks down on her. So she decides not to invite them to her wedding. 

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  • 01
    r/AITAH 7 mo. ago ThrowAwaympi AITAH for not inviting my family to my wedding because of something I overheard them say?
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 02
    Update for anyone who cares, we took the advice of some of the comments here and eloped last week. We called up a couple of friends, and took them along with some of my husbands family, and we all took a trip to a little resort town a few states over. We did a small courthouse ceremony and spent the rest of the time just
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 03
    hanging out and enjoying each other's company. It was perfect, it felt really good to share the moment with our found family rather than just making the whole thing about ourselves. I started secretly moving my things out of my parents house a few weeks ago and I'm planning on going.
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 04
    no contact, at least for the time being. I left my contact info with a trusted family friend in case anything important happens like my parents getting sick or there's some emergency so that I can choose to make myself available to them in the future.
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 05
    I wanted to take a second to answer a couple of questions I got asked, and provide a bit more context.
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 06
    Why was I even spending time with them to begin with, and why did I think things would be any different now than in the past? Well, when I left my ex husband the pandemic had just started, but it had not yet become the massive life changing thing that it eventually did. I needed a place
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 07
    for my child and I to stay while we figured out something else, but my industry was majorly affected by the lockdowns and it never really recovered. So I stayed here. Midway through all of that my grandma got sick and it was clear she wouldn't be here much longer. At the end of
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 08
    2020/beginning of 2021 I committed to staying with her in my parent's home because I still wasn't working like before, so I helped her and spent time with her in between her home health team being with her. My grandmother was not the nicest person, but she had grown up in
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 09
    a war torn country and witnessed a genocide that took her loved ones from her, and mental healthcare was still so stigmatized then, I guess I never blamed her for the way she was, and I know she regretted a lot of decisions she had made in her life. No use being mad at a dying old lady, I
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 10
    thought. I know she meant well, and she just wanted the family to get along. The rest of the family would visit her at our house and they were never overly kind to me, but they seemed cordial enough and so much time had passed that I thought maybe the way they viewed me had changed. It had not, and now I
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 11
    realize that they just didn't want to cause grandma any extra stress in her final days by being cruel to me in front of her. I'm thankful they did that for her, even with everything else that happened and was said.
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 12
    Finally, I know a lot of people felt like it was obvious that I wasn't really in the wrong here, but when you grow up a certain way it's hard to remember that some things that seem normal to you are not normal to everyone else.
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 13
    Thanks everyone for your kind words. I appreciated them all. I am going to start with some info that I believe is important for context, I will try to keep it as short and simple as possible.
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 14
    My mom is one of 14 children and she moved here (to the USA near a major city) with her family when she was about 7/8. They're from what is known to be a fairly conservative place in the world, and they have always followed a very conservative religion, to the point that most of my aunts and uncles only married people who
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 15
    were from the same country and/or people from the same church. Out of all of us in my generation of the family, my cousin, let's call her Marie, and I are the only girls. She's about 2 years older than me, and I have a lot of fond memories of us as children, I felt that when we were younger we were both doted on
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 16
    by the whole family, like we were little princesses. As I got older, I started to realize Marie was the golden child of the family, she was (and is) naturally beautiful, tall and slender, she has lighter hair, eyes, and skin than me, she was a talented dancer, and she was kind and devoted to our family's religion. I had a harder
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 17
    time, I was always a bit more stubborn, and more plain than Marie. One thing I was good at was singing and my parents put me in singing classes. In those classes I made friends, and through them I got into our city's punk and scene, I even ended up singing in a punk band. For the first time in my life I was
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 18
    making friends outside of my cousins and church, and I was really having fun. I know it probably sounds very corny, but I started to change my clothes and appearance, I started dressing more alternative and I got facial piercings and lots of tattoos. I felt like I finally found a group of people who weren't constantly
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 19
    judging and criticizing my every thought and action and I loved the music scene and the people in it. Marie's dad (my uncle) started to not let her hang out with me as much and eventually not at all because he associated my style with drugs and alcohol and atheism and communism, you know all the scary things. I
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 20
    was sad when Marie couldn't spend time with me as much because of that, but it was out of my control. I never really got to talk to her again after that. After a couple of years Marie got married and she ended up having 3 kids and was living her own life. I also got married and had one child and decided that was enough for
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 21
    and decided that was enough for me. I'm sure most of you won't be surprised when I tell you that Marie and I both ended up in very abusive marriages. No one in our family had ever been divorced before, so it was a surprise when Marie told everyone about her
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 22
    abuse and that she was divorcing her husband. A year or so later, I also left my husband and started to talk about the abuse I'd been through. My mom had a weekly zoom call with her siblings at that point where they could all talk and spend time together during COVID. My mom told me one week that Marie had announced
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 23
    that she had started seeing a new man, and they had gotten engaged. I had also started seeing a man around this time, but I wanted to let Marie have her happy moment. She got married about 2 months later, and a bit after that I came to my mom and told her about my new partner thinking she would share it with
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 24
    her siblings like Marie's dad shared her new engagement. Instead, mom told me to not tell anyone about it because they might "think that I had deserved what happened to me", essentially she was saying because I looked alternative (and my familys perception of that) and had gotten divorced because
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 25
    of abuse that I might have been dishonest with my ex husband and that he was justified in the physical abuse that ended the relationship. Obviously this hurt me a lot, especially seeing how Marie was treated so well and with so much joy by our family after her divorce and subsequent relationship. I ended up
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 26
    accidentally overhearing her on her zoom call with her siblings, and they insinuated that my "alternative lifestyle" brought me to that point, that my piercings and tattoos, plus leaving the church made me inappropriately masculine, and I was essentially being punished by God when my ex husband was abusing me, that
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 27
    I was not submissive enough. My mom did not disagree or defend. me. That hurt me so deeply I cannot describe it with words. Now recently my partner and I have gotten engaged and we are planning our wedding. I have no desire to invite my family after everything they said about me.
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 28
    My mom is quite angry with me, and believes I need to forgive them and give them another chance. I told her if she and her siblings thought I deserved to be abused while being ecstatic for Marie finding a kind husband that I no longer wanted anything to do with them. They're all currently very mad at me, but I truly don't
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 29
    very mad at me, but I truly don't want anything to do with them at this point. Should I be the bigger person here and forgive them? AITAH for not including them?
    via u/ThrowAwaympi
  • 30
    b. 7mo ago Edited 7mo ago NTA. People like this never learn. They need to find anything to blame that isn't themselves. You never stopped being their scapegoat, and even if you go no contact they'll still likely find ways to blame you
    via u/b
  • 31
    for anything wrong that happens in the family system.
    via u/b
  • 32
    Fierce-Fionna ⚫ 7mo ago NTA. Definitely not at all in the wrong here. You deserve so much better than that after everything you've been through.
    via u/Fierce-Fionna
  • 33
    Save your money, do a destination wedding, only invite a handful of close friends. And if the family judges you, you say it's part of your alternative lifestyle.
    via u/Fierce-Fionna

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