BEL MOONEY: Do I have to invite my cruel gran to my wedding? 

Dear Bel,

We are due to be married this summer, having had to reschedule three times due to Covid regulations and cut our wedding party from 100 guests to 20. With the rules changing yet again, we decided to add an extra ten guests as the venue cannot take more. The difficulty is with the guest list.

My mum is very upset because I haven’t invited her mother. My gran is a cold woman whom I’ve seen only four times in the past 15 years. When I was a child, she constantly criticised my weight or appearance, and as I got older and declined to visit, she complained — but was cruel to me when I did.

In previous years, at the Christmas dinner table, other members of the family have been so shocked by my gran’s bullying comments to me that they’ve had arguments with her. It’s particularly difficult because she is very nice to my sister and cousins.

I know Mum has always found my relationship with my gran difficult. She’d never take sides, but I’ve felt hurt if she’s suggested I’m being over-sensitive or dramatic.

I have been with my wonderful fiance for nearly ten years.

He’s met Gran three times, and on each occasion she either ignored him or was rude. He feels very strongly we should not invite her — and the wedding is now so small we’re not inviting his grandparents or aunts and uncles either.

I’m very close to my parents and cannot understand why they are so keen to have her at my wedding.

We have had a dreadful year with my fiance in intensive care, while I myself was having tests for a serious illness.

During this time, our amazing friends sent cards and gifts and called constantly, as did my immediate family.

I did not hear from my gran at all, nor have I received a birthday or Christmas card in years, while my cousins and sister all do.

Although my parents have contributed financially, most of the wedding will be paid for by us.

When it was larger, I could invite Gran as I’d barely see her among the 100 guests and wanted to keep the peace.

After such a dreadful year and so many disappointments, I’ve been so excited about seeing our wonderful friends and family, but this is putting such a dampener on everything.

I just can’t understand why, despite my explanations, my parents keep bringing it up. Am I being unreasonable?

AMY

This week Bel answers a question from a woman who is wondering whether she needs to invite her cruel grandmother to her wedding

Ah, the dreaded wedding season looms, with all the usual problems of who to invite — and all the little worms come wiggling out of the can.

I wonder how many people found last summer’s lockdown rule a blessed relief, because they could get away with a tiny wedding? The first thing I’d say to you, Amy, is that it is your wedding day and the happy moment your fiance makes you his Mrs after ten years. Therefore what you two think and feel and want should take precedence over all other claims.

Thought of the day 

To what purpose, April, do you return again? …the sun is hot on my neck as I observe 

The spikes of the crocus. 

The smell of the earth is good.

From Spring by Edna St Vincent Millay (U.S. poet, 1892–1950) 

Lockdowns have made the whole thing far more stressful than it would normally have been (and weddings arrangements can be grim at the best of times) and I don’t think you’re ‘unreasonable’ to want to choose who comes. Regular readers of this column will know I believe in the family as the bedrock of society, as well as a source of happiness — but such a blanket ‘faith’ can’t evade qualification. Family love is earned, not a given.

When a relationship breaks down within a family group, there comes a point when it’s impossible to fake it any more.

A child can be told he or she has to visit grumpy old Grandpa or nit-picking Nan, but a young person reaches the age when the feet do the voting. Yes, duty does matter — and when in doubt it’s best to take a deep breath and try to please people. But if — for whatever reason — this grandmother has always been horrid to you, then why give her precedence over a dear friend or cousin whose company you crave?

You and your beloved have a restricted number of guests. Your parents, sister and a couple of bridesmaids take up five, leaving a handful more. Naturally, you’ll want those to be the people you love most in the world.

Since your fiance isn’t inviting his grandparents, why must you? On the other hand, you could invite Gran to the ceremony, but not the reception.

That’s the only compromise I can think of — and I hope the sun shines on your happy day.

I’m not being heartless, but I don’t want to see my long-lost brother 

Dear Bel,

Before they married, my parents had a baby son. Mum was only 15, so my grandparents insisted she put the baby up for adoption. That was in 1977.

It was probably a very sensible decision. My parents married in the mid-80s. I was born in 1991.

As my Dad died of cancer in 1996, it’s been me and Mum ever since. I didn’t even know I had a ‘brother’ until two years ago, when he got in touch and Mum and Gran told me about it.

What I’m going to write next will sound very heartless, but that’s not what I am at all.

Mum was upset to learn the adoption failed and the boy was put back in care when he was five. He was shunted around care homes and foster families, finally leaving care in 1995.

I understand and sympathise that he didn’t have it easy, that he left school without qualifications and felt he had no roots. On the other hand, he has a good job, met and married somebody he loves and they have three children.

What I don’t understand is what this stranger — and he is a stranger — hopes to gain by intruding into a family he’s never been a part of.

I won’t hear my Mum call his children ‘grandchildren’ (only my children are that) or a stranger called my ‘brother’. I’m an only child. My children have no ‘uncle’ or ‘cousins.’

Gran thinks I’m right, but understands why Mum wants to meet her ‘son’. I never will.

Mum keeps bringing up that she wants to meet this ‘son’ and keeps showing me his letters. I give them back unread.

Gran and my husband have pointed out that acknowledging this man could lead to inheritance complications — quite apart from the effect it’s been having on my mental health and my relationship with my mother.

I’ve told her she might gain a ‘son’, but will definitely lose a daughter. It seems there is no way out of this situation — at least from my point of view. It’s a situation I never expected to be in. I doubt anybody will understand, but I ask your advice anyway.

CAROLYN

For a young woman adamantly denying she is ‘heartless’, I’m sorry to say you are making a pretty good job of sounding it. You refuse to believe there is any way out of this sad situation, so why write?

Because I’m afraid my sympathy is with your mother and not her jealous daughter — and since you ‘doubt anybody will understand’, you must have anticipated that reaction.

I can understand that the revelation must have been a shock, but it’s sad that you, her only daughter, are refusing to give your poor mother any support at all. That 15-year-old girl became pregnant by her first love, was made to give up the child, but went on to marry her boyfriend and make a life — until cancer took away his.

Now the people she loves are ganging up on her, raising the dark spectre of ‘inheritance’ (the cheeky stranger must want money!) and threatening to make her choose between the lost son she hasn’t seen since he was a newborn and the daughter she’s loved since 1991. Do you not think that heartless?

Since you were a little girl you felt it was you and Mum against the world. She was yours.

Sadly that alleged closeness didn’t allow her to reveal what happened when she was a teenager.

All these years she must have been wondering about her son, so to learn the truth must have been heart-breaking and fill her full of regret. If it was shame (inculcated by her parents so long ago) which made her withhold her story for so long, your cold response must be making her feel so much worse. Yet you believe you and you alone are the one suffering.

   

More from Bel Mooney for the Daily Mail…

Your letter is sprinkled with so many quotation marks it’s almost pathological. I can only guess you’re an extremely vulnerable and possessive person to believe your identity so threatened by a ‘brother’, ‘son’, ‘cousin’ and ‘uncle’ — who is indeed all those things you deny.

Many in this situation would be able to open their hearts to the stranger — out of curiosity, if nothing else.

Reunions with adopted children can end in disappointment on both sides, but how wonderful it would be for your mother if you support her in her desire to meet her son and then offer consolation if nothing more comes of it. You could take charge.

Yes, your children do have unknown cousins — who can’t possibly annex all their grandmother’s love. That is, unless you choose to keep them away from her out of pique and lack of unconditional love for the woman who gave you — and your lost brother — life.

That man who shares your genes had a terrible, sad start but overcame the damaging experiences to create a good life. He might well be a remarkable human being who could bring a new — and enlarging — dimension to your whole family.

I’m not suggesting you will feel welcoming, let alone loving. But I do believe you will feel much happier if you unbend and consider your mother’s needs. And choose kindness.

If you cling to meanness of spirit, you will be the one sullied by that destructive negativity. Why not break the pattern of all his rejections? Why not open your heart?

And finally… Cry freedom as we spread our wings! 

How strange it is to look back at last year’s Mail on April 11.

My essay for Easter Saturday was headlined, ‘They can’t lock down our hope this Easter’ — but little did any of us know that there were times when optimism would almost run out and the Queen’s powerfully uplifting promise to the nation, (‘better days will return’) sometimes felt sorely challenged.

Little did we know that neighbour would be encouraged to snitch on neighbour as fear was channelled into anger and frustration; that Covid ‘marshals’ would roam the streets; that our nation would plunge unbelievably far into terrifying debt.

That so many rainbows would be painted. And, most of all, that so many families would mourn.

Contact Bel 

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week.

Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or email [email protected].

Names are changed to protect identities.

Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.

Yet I was correct to write, ‘We put up with things for the sake of neighbours and strangers. We realise what we all share —and that it is far more important than what divides us.’

That was true, all the bad things were true, too — and yet we came through, and some of our attitudes even shifted. After all, some people welcomed the peace of empty roads and skies, while others realised they could escape from the hectic demands of commuting and find new priorities.

I tried to be optimistic: ‘We share the awareness that when it’s all over we will truly appreciate all the things we used to take for granted. Doesn’t a drink with friends in a pub garden or sauntering round the shops or taking the kids to the beach seem like the Promised Land right now?’

Well, that’s how people are feeling this week. Hooray!

Gradually we will spread our wings more and cry ‘freedom!’ I feel truly grateful that all the while brilliant scientists were beavering away to develop vaccines to make so many of us feel just that bit more secure — and hopeful, too.

The timing is perfect — since this festival is about renewal and the eternal promise that we can be ‘saved’.

So, clinging to hope, I wish you all a joyful Eastertide.