*TW: DV*
I just want to vent/have reassurance that I’m doing the right thing.
So basically, my friend (we’ll call her Britney) was friends with my fiancé’s (we’ll call him Jake) cousin’s (we’ll call him Andrew) girlfriend (we’ll call her Ashley), and Britney had always been suspicious of Andrew abusing Ashley. One day, when Britney, Ashley and Andrew were hanging out, Andrew was telling a story about how Ashley didn’t change a roll of toilet paper and he got mad and hit her, to which Britney asked Ashley what did she do and she just said that she got mad. Britney reached out to Ashley later on to make sure she was okay, and it backfired on her and now they’re no longer friends because Ashley chose to protect Andrew.
Britney reached out to me and Jake and told us what happened, and we decided we didn’t want Ashley and Andrew at our wedding. Jake isn’t close to Andrew and they haven’t even spoken in about 4 years.
I told Jake that maybe reaching out to his mom to see how to go about uninviting them would be helpful since it was her nephew and a delicate situation, but boy was I wrong.
When we called her and told her about the situation, the first thing she said was “well how do you know that’s true?”, to which we told her that Britney had no reason to lie and she showed us the text messages. Then she said, “Well maybe it was just a one time thing”, which really shocked me and to which I replied that it should never happen. I’m also a victim of DV from a past marriage, and she knows that. Then she got defensive and said, “Whatever just leave me out of it”, and we just said okay but let’s just keep it between us.
The next day, Andrew texts Jake asking what Britney had said about him and Ashley, and I was just like, uhm how does he know? So I immediately told Jake to call his mom and ask her if she said anything. Sure enough she did. She prefaced by saying, “I kept my mouth shut”, but basically she said her sister, Andrew’s mom, was talking about how Andrew and Ashley were having problems and Jake’s mom told her what Britney had told us. We were immediately shocked at her betrayal and asked her why she would do such a thing to which she just kinda yelled and deflected and I just said, “by the way, they’re still not invited” and she said, “okay then you might as well just uninvite everyone”. So that’s what I did.
Jake has a fairly large family that he doesn’t really talk to and I just really only have my parents, and his mom pushed us to do the big wedding and invite everyone which I didn’t really want in the first place (I know it was my fault for not standing my ground on that). We lost the deposit money, but I just did not want any drama on my day.
I was obviously still upset about everything that transpired, and Jake told him mom how I felt and that he thought an apology from her was in order. She flat out said she didn’t do anything wrong and that I didn’t deserve an apology, and her and Jake got into an argument and she hung up on him.
A few days later, since Jake had been ignoring her texts, she calls him and says that she’ll talk to me but I have to reach out to her and she’ll explain to me why I shouldn’t be upset. Jake is trying to explain to her that that isn’t how it works and she can’t tell me how to feel and they get into another argument, with her saying that she doesn’t know if her and his stepfather will go to the wedding and she hangs up on him again.
After much deliberation, even though I’m not fully comfortable reaching out to her and find it weird that she can’t reach out to me, I call her. I went into the conversation with a positive mindset, hoping that maybe she’d listen to me and understand, but instead, it was just her gaslighting me and deflecting and talking about Britney as if she was just gossiping about some high school rumor. I gave up about 5 minutes into the conversation, and she again stated she wasn’t going to apologize because she didn’t do anything wrong. I just accepted it and said okay. Then she said, “Well I love you” and I froze and just didn’t respond and she hung up.
I want to go NC with her. I find it so disrespectful and dismissive. Me and her have never been really close, but I don’t think this is how you treat your future DIL. She’s “forgotten” my birthday before and didn’t even bother to get me a card, while I make sure Jake and I always get them a card and a gift for special occasions, but I chose not to make a big deal out of that. And to threaten to not come to your only son’s wedding is just insane to me. But this is the hill she’s willing to die on. I told Jake he didn’t have to cut her out, but as for me, I want nothing to do with her.