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Dear Pay Dirt,
My late wife had an unhappy first marriage to a wealthier older man. She kept much of the expensive jewelry he gave her but rarely wore anything.
We adopted “Lisa” as a toddler, but I lost my wife soon after. When Lisa was seven, I married my second wife, who had a daughter the same age, “Nora.” Together we had two more children.
Nora has been competitive all her life. She is very driven but a sore loser. She can get particularly vicious when her interests overlap with Lisa’s. When Lisa got into the college Nora wanted to go to, she accused her sister of sleeping with the recruiter, and so on.
Nora and Lisa are both adults now, and both engaged. They are paying for everything themselves. Lisa inherited her mother’s jewelry when she turned 21. She put everything in a lockbox at her bank, except a rather large diamond ring. She is using that as her engagement ring. Her reasoning is it was wasteful to have her partner spend money on a ring rather than save for the wedding.
Nora has been openly snide and critical of Lisa’s ring, saying it wasn’t “real” if her partner didn’t pay or propose with it, Lisa was deliberately showing off, and it most likely would “curse” her marriage since her “fake mother” had a bad first marriage.
Lisa had been holding her tongue because she didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. Nora usually burns herself out after a while, but the fake mother comment set her off. She posted on social media about what a jealous bitch Nora was. Nora responded nastily. Lisa told her she was disinvited to the wedding.
Lisa and her partner are sticking to their guns. My wife is very distraught over this and fears it’s made a permanent rift in our family. I have told her there wasn’t anything we could do but keep out of it. The girls are adults and Nora knew exactly what she was doing.
My wife makes excuses for Nora about how hard this is on her and it isn’t fair Lisa is using her mother’s jewelry to rub it in her face. She has asked me to get Lisa to “give” back a few pieces and we could use the stones for Nora’s new ring. I think this is bonkers and will just backfire on us. Help?
—It’s Not About The Ring, Right?
Dear Not About The Ring,
It is absolutely not about the ring, it’s about Nora’s jealousy, which she needs to get under control. There’s also some incredible hubris in Nora insisting that she get some of your late wife’s jewelry after disrespectfully suggesting that she wasn’t a real mother to Lisa simply because Lisa was adopted. I’m an adoptee myself, and I would have been just as enraged as Lisa was, not just for myself but for how insulting that would be to my adoptive mother.
At any rate, you are correct that they are adults and this is not your problem, but if you’re inclined to get involved, you should set some boundaries with Nora. Tell her no, regarding Lisa’s jewelry, and make it clear that it is indeed Lisa’s jewelry. Nora had no relationship with your late wife, and it is completely unreasonable for her to behave as if she’s entitled to it. (It’s also oddly hypocritical—she’s suggesting Lisa’s ring isn’t “real” because her partner didn’t pay for it, but is proposing that she should also be given some stones her partner isn’t going to pay for.)
I completely understand why Lisa disinviting Nora to her wedding would create anxiety for your wife. No one wants this kind of conflict in their family. But given the behavior you’ve described, it seems reasonable that Lisa would not want her at her wedding, and she is allowed to set boundaries, too.
If you’re both determined to try to intervene and fix this, I think you are going to have to tell Nora that her behavior is unacceptable, and she will no doubt accuse you of taking a side. But sometimes, you do have to take a side, and here you have one daughter who’s behaving terribly and the other who, with the exception of the social media comment, has been behaving pretty reasonably.
And your wife is being unreasonable in suggesting that Lisa’s utilization of her mother’s jewelry is somehow rubbing it in Nora’s face. Lisa is allowed to enjoy the gift she was given, which is probably meaningful to her because it came from her mother. That Nora and your wife think that a very natural response to a gift from a loved one is somehow about making Nora feel bad says more about them than it does about Lisa.
—Elizabeth
https://slate.com/business/2022/05/advice-for-an-estranged-child-on-getting-help-paying-for-college.html
My late wife had an unhappy first marriage to a wealthier older man. She kept much of the expensive jewelry he gave her but rarely wore anything.
We adopted “Lisa” as a toddler, but I lost my wife soon after. When Lisa was seven, I married my second wife, who had a daughter the same age, “Nora.” Together we had two more children.
Nora has been competitive all her life. She is very driven but a sore loser. She can get particularly vicious when her interests overlap with Lisa’s. When Lisa got into the college Nora wanted to go to, she accused her sister of sleeping with the recruiter, and so on.
Nora and Lisa are both adults now, and both engaged. They are paying for everything themselves. Lisa inherited her mother’s jewelry when she turned 21. She put everything in a lockbox at her bank, except a rather large diamond ring. She is using that as her engagement ring. Her reasoning is it was wasteful to have her partner spend money on a ring rather than save for the wedding.
Nora has been openly snide and critical of Lisa’s ring, saying it wasn’t “real” if her partner didn’t pay or propose with it, Lisa was deliberately showing off, and it most likely would “curse” her marriage since her “fake mother” had a bad first marriage.
Lisa had been holding her tongue because she didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. Nora usually burns herself out after a while, but the fake mother comment set her off. She posted on social media about what a jealous bitch Nora was. Nora responded nastily. Lisa told her she was disinvited to the wedding.
Lisa and her partner are sticking to their guns. My wife is very distraught over this and fears it’s made a permanent rift in our family. I have told her there wasn’t anything we could do but keep out of it. The girls are adults and Nora knew exactly what she was doing.
My wife makes excuses for Nora about how hard this is on her and it isn’t fair Lisa is using her mother’s jewelry to rub it in her face. She has asked me to get Lisa to “give” back a few pieces and we could use the stones for Nora’s new ring. I think this is bonkers and will just backfire on us. Help?
—It’s Not About The Ring, Right?
Dear Not About The Ring,
It is absolutely not about the ring, it’s about Nora’s jealousy, which she needs to get under control. There’s also some incredible hubris in Nora insisting that she get some of your late wife’s jewelry after disrespectfully suggesting that she wasn’t a real mother to Lisa simply because Lisa was adopted. I’m an adoptee myself, and I would have been just as enraged as Lisa was, not just for myself but for how insulting that would be to my adoptive mother.
At any rate, you are correct that they are adults and this is not your problem, but if you’re inclined to get involved, you should set some boundaries with Nora. Tell her no, regarding Lisa’s jewelry, and make it clear that it is indeed Lisa’s jewelry. Nora had no relationship with your late wife, and it is completely unreasonable for her to behave as if she’s entitled to it. (It’s also oddly hypocritical—she’s suggesting Lisa’s ring isn’t “real” because her partner didn’t pay for it, but is proposing that she should also be given some stones her partner isn’t going to pay for.)
I completely understand why Lisa disinviting Nora to her wedding would create anxiety for your wife. No one wants this kind of conflict in their family. But given the behavior you’ve described, it seems reasonable that Lisa would not want her at her wedding, and she is allowed to set boundaries, too.
If you’re both determined to try to intervene and fix this, I think you are going to have to tell Nora that her behavior is unacceptable, and she will no doubt accuse you of taking a side. But sometimes, you do have to take a side, and here you have one daughter who’s behaving terribly and the other who, with the exception of the social media comment, has been behaving pretty reasonably.
And your wife is being unreasonable in suggesting that Lisa’s utilization of her mother’s jewelry is somehow rubbing it in Nora’s face. Lisa is allowed to enjoy the gift she was given, which is probably meaningful to her because it came from her mother. That Nora and your wife think that a very natural response to a gift from a loved one is somehow about making Nora feel bad says more about them than it does about Lisa.
—Elizabeth
https://slate.com/business/2022/05/advice-for-an-estranged-child-on-getting-help-paying-for-college.html
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But she didn't get the parenting she needed, and neither did Lisa, for that matter. If there's a rift in the family, it boils down to the decision made when these children were younger to excuse and explain away Nora's spiteful, jealous behavior rather than dealing with it.
I really hope Nora figures out whatever's going on with her and causing her to act this way, for her own sake, but in the meantime it's perfectly reasonable for Lisa not to invite her to the wedding. Does she even want to be there? Doesn't sound like she loves her stepsister that much.
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Sounds like Lisa has been holding that comment in for a while, and the "fake mother" comment is the straw that broke the camel's back.
That said, I do wonder how secure the family has been for Nora; it wouldn't excuse shitty behaviour, but that jealousy and anger may have come from somewhere. I'd be interested in hearing her take on the situation and what her last straw was before the "fake mother" comment (which is probably worse than Lisa posting about her being a "jealous bitch", but we don't really get the context for that). LW is very careful to highlight how Lisa is holding her tongue and not adding fuel to the fire, etc... but we have multiple layers of potential spin here (does LW believe Nora when she says things? is Lisa telling 100% the truth? do we take LW at face value?).
I've been enjoying a Guardian feature that comes up in my newsfeed every so often, where it shows the two sides of a story and then has people vote. It's very instructive on how people can spin a situation to make themselves sound reasonable, and then the other person does the same and flips everything on its head. Makes me miss the other side more in this type of situation, now!
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It seems to be a well established pattern? Unless Lisa is a VERY secret mean girl who actually did sleep with a recruiter to show up her stepsister (not something I heard of during even the height of the college recruiting scandals). Stepmom saying, “Oh, she should just give some of her dead mom’s jewelry to my completely unrelated daughter to make her feel better,” does make this sound much more like a parental indulgence problem than a “Lisa is mean” problem.
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I agree! But that does assume we trust LW and Lisa's accounts here, and that we have all the information. I admit I'm probably overthinking it due to personal experience with a situation that shares a couple of features, and it is amazing how one party can spin a story to make their preferred child the victim, is all I can say about that!
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And? So? Nora has been sowing this rift for years. Lisa is perfectly within her rights to set boundaries over this. Be prepared for “Christmas Eve with one, Christmas Day with the other,” or whatever other holiday arrangements you’ll need to make. Lisa is a grown woman starting her own family, and her parents can respect her boundaries or not see her. Their choice.
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