u/_notablonde

I'm a Spanish national departing on a cruise in NCL from Miami. I just realised that my passport expires 5 months after the end of the voyage with NCL, and my cruise departs in two weeks. I spoke with Customs and Border Patrol, and they said that due to my nationality, they wouldn't deny me entry or boarding to the boat, but NCL is a private company with its own rules. Are they strict with the 6-month validity rule? Or should I ask for an emergency passport from my consulate?

ETA: none of the countries I'm visting have these requirements.

So I have been engaged to my fiancé [32M]for almost a year. He is a wonderful man with a huge heart, messy mind and some communication problems.

Early on in our relationship, we agreed that each of us would take care of their own family (so he deals with the communication with my F-MIL and F-FIL, while I do the same with my own parents and siblings). This has not always been the case, as sometimes I need to take the lead in order to get things done. Sometimes I get “hit by strays” because of this, as his family has labeled me sometimes as a pusher and even rude (when I push for things to get done when a deadline is coming near).

This has been particularly relevant during wedding planning, as my fiancé has a harder time with planning and deadlines than I do. Sometimes I say half truths or even white lies in order to not catch as many strays.

My F-MIL has a lot of things going on, both health-wise and in her professional life. Through the wedding planning process, I didn’t want to burden her with many things, but I did want her to feel included. I created a group with the people I wanted involved in planning, and set myself out to make it very open to their opinions. They- the people in the group- barely ever commented on anything. She gave an idea that my fiancé shut down because of how expensive it was, but didn’t talk to her about it. I had to tell her before it was too late.

She also wanted to invite a bunch of her friends, which, in the beginning, was kind of off-putting to me, but, as my fiancé’s family is small and mine is huge, I ended up going with it, only setting a limit to the overall people that we could invite, as per the venue capacity. This means, I kept out some of my friends in order to fit in some of hers, and had to ask my parents to limit the amount of friends of theirs, obviously not family, that they invited. I was never resentful of this or showed discomfort to her about this, honestly, understanding her dynamics, I understood that she considered these people her extended family and wanted them to participate in that capacity as well.

Yesterday, I was looking through the RSVPs and saw some names I didn’t recognize. I asked who they were while at her house. She said they were some guests of her, as some of the people she had invited couldn’t attend. She listed the people they were replacing and I commented on how some of them weren’t on the original list of her guests that my fiancé sent me. She repeated herself a couple of times, so I answered the same way both times, and she got cold. All of this while I was already adding to the list the new people that had RSVP’d and told her so.

That’s when I know the visit was over, and I decided to leave. Later, my fiancé texted me a rant she had sent him telling him she finds it unfair and felt like she had no say in anything regarding the wedding, and that she felt like she couldn’t even invite the people she loved to her son’s wedding. We live nearby, so I went over and apologized for making her feel that way and expressing myself wrongly. I told her that I wanted this to be a good experience for everyone involved and that I wanted her to feel included, and include the people she loved. I apologized for some stuff that had happened before, including my initial discomfort and comments regarding her list, trying to keep the peace but also standing my ground, regarding the facts of what happened and how it was never my intention to hurt her or exclude her. When she started being disrespectful towards me and telling me that I was breaking our relationship I, once again, apologized for hurting her and told her that I could see that we were getting nowhere and left. I cried hard as soon as I got home.

I then called my fiancé and told him what had happened, and asked him to confront his mother, stand up for me. He is usually very non-confrontational, but, to his credit, he did, and things seemed to calm down a bit.

Today, he swung by their place, and she was crying about what had happened the day before. This incurred in another fight, this time with my fiancé. After this fight, he told me that we needed to take an emotional distance with her, but keep going to family dinners and things like that in order to keep the peace.

I understand where he’s coming from. He stood up for me and that made him fight with his family. He is very close to his mother, as he was a single child for most of his life and has been his mother’s support system for a lot of time too, so he doesn’t want us to fight or have a bad relationship. But I feel deeply disrespected, she said some horrible stuff to me and even threw in my face some financial help she had given us for the wedding.

I seriously don’t know how to proceed. I feel like I’ve already left the ball in her court and she’s just hitting herself in the face with it, claiming foul play. I don’t want to keep the peace. I want her to apologize, at least, or be distant for some time, at least until things get less stressful. How should I proceed with this? It’s getting overwhelming and, tbh, the guilt is eating at me for setting a boundary and trying to stick to it. Am I doing things right? Is there something I might be missing?

TLDR: My F-MIL was offended by me telling her that some people she wanted invited weren’t on the original list my fiancé gave me. This ended up devolving into a one sided argument in which she disrespected me. My fiancé stood up for me, but this made them fight amongst themselves. Now, my fiancé wants me just deal with her as if nothing had happened, but keep an emotional distance.