Dear Prudence: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something trivial

[cereta]

Dear Prudence,
Our family has been close, seeing each other every week. My children are all in their 20s and have their own homes. Our only daughter got married earlier this year and we adore our son-in-law. Our son got engaged about three months before our daughter’s wedding. Our daughter was vocally angry that her brother got engaged before her wedding. When the newly engaged couple were looking for wedding venues, I (mistakenly) recommended the place my daughter planned her reception. It is a lovely location and I was thinking it would be a good fit. Unfortunately, they decided to book this same venue for their wedding scheduled a year later. Now my daughter is furious. She is demanding they move the reception somewhere else even though it will mean losing the substantial deposit. This has created a great deal of anxiety, especially for me, because I mourn the loss of our close-knit family. I don’t know what to do. We have even offered to pay the deposit and that angers her too. She says they have to pay the cost (I guess as a form of punishment). This is tearing our family apart. Please help.

—Something Borrowed

I fail to see how your daughter has been harmed in any way. Her ability to spin offense out of the thinnest strands of “thunder-stealing” rivals Rumpelstiltskin’s ability to spin straw into gold. Don’t think of this as losing your tightknit family. Part of what makes a family tightknit is the ability to handle conflict. Your daughter is throwing a tantrum and the best thing you can do for her (and yourself) is to refuse to humor her. She’s denying herself the opportunity to celebrate her brother’s wedding (and trying to manipulate him into giving up a substantial security deposit!) because she thinks the love and celebration that children deserve is a zero-sum game. It isn’t. Her brother proposing to his fiancé did not make her any less engaged to her own; her brother hosting his reception in the same building she once had hers does not diminish the uniqueness of her marriage. I hope very much this is an unusual lapse in grace for her. Tell her that she is being unreasonable and churlish, and that you look forward to her being able to put aside this imagined slight in time to celebrate her brother’s wedding. It’s going to be a lot of fun. She should try to have some.

Comments

[vass]

I think LW's daughter is being a butthead, but I don't think "You're being unreasonable and churlish, and I look forward to your being able to putt aside this imagined slight in time to celebrate your brother's wedding. It's going to be a lot of fun. You should try to have some," is going to help matters. Tactically speaking, I mean.

Honestly, I don't know what I'd advise LW. Except, I suppose, that just as their son's engagement is not something he was doing TO their daughter and which she should take so personally, neither is their daughter's offense at her brother something directed AT the LW and their desire for a close-knit family.

You can't make a family close-knit by wishing it so, or by demanding a performance of closeness or lack of conflict.

Or, really, by personally knitting up every relationship you think isn't tight enough or conflict-free enough. You can provide opportunities for your children to spend time together, you can bring them up to treat each other well and teach family closeness to them as a value and also teach the skills on how to maintain relationships, and give them nudges to remember to do the emotional labour of maintaining a connection. But ultimately, you can't make your children like each other or get along, and if they don't like each other, that is their relationship and is about them, not you.

And that's a hard thing, particularly if you were socialised to believe that it is your job and responsibility to maintain everyone else's relationships, that if you don't do this then their relationships and health and lives will fall apart and it'll be your fault and you'll be socially condemned, and this is a role you will pass down to your daughter, and that the quality of the relationships of your children and male relatives is a reflection of your own worth.

If you have in fact received social condemnation for (for example) your husband's failure to call his mother on her birthday. (LW's gender is not stated, but I have a strong suspicion.)

I guess, yeah, I'd advise LW to be quiet and non-committal to their daughter, to say "I'm sorry I recommended the venue, I didn't know it would bother you, I'll bear that in mind in the future," and then, as much as possible, stay out of this conflict. Don't require Daughter to be happy about it, don't require Son to change the venue, be kind and warm to both parties and keep calling and talking to them, but firmly change the subject of Daughter vs Son every time it comes up. Maybe explicitly tell Son and his fiance that they'll keep helping them with other aspects of the wedding planning (since that might be ambiguous and a huge stressor for Son and Fiance if not articulated), but that they don't want to discuss that particular part of it, and this isn't personal, they are Switzerland and will not be discussing it with Daughter either.

And then to do something nice that has nothing to do with Son or Daughter or the wedding or family responsibilities -- get a massage, go hiking, see a movie, go out for drinks with friends, a date night with their spouse, throw a pot, plant tomatoes, whatever makes them feel good and is not all about being the emotional nerve centre of the family.

I don't know if any of this would work -- it's way outside my experience -- but that's what my advice would be.

[kiezh]

I think this is much better advice than the original answer. It wasn't the daughter or the son who wrote in, it was the frazzled parent who feels a duty to Keep Family Harmony Intact. Given who actually wrote the letter, disapproving of the daughter's actions*, which is the focus of Prudence's advice, is beside the point; what can LW do?

I think vass pretty much covered it. Practice self-care, try not to get completely tangled up in issues that are actually between other adults that they will have to resolve, not you. Don't burn family bridges that you don't want to burn, but there's space between approving of someone's actions and shoving them out of your life. Work on finding somewhere livable in that space.

*Which are pretty terrible, but not her parent's job to handle or smooth over. When she was 12, sure, if she threw a public fit at her brother it would be Parent's problem to solve, but not in her 20s. Someone who knows them both as adults and isn't as personally involved would make a better mediator, if there's any peace to be made.

[azurelunatic]

Who wants to bet that if Son stays at this venue for his wedding, and a subsequent family member picks *another* venue for *their* wedding, Daughter would be Displeased because "But that's where our family gets married!!!!"