Husband’s Stepmother Behaviour at Civil Wedding - Need to Vent
Had my civil wedding a little over a week ago and it was the loveliest day. Everything went beautifully.
However, there was one incident with my husband’s stepmother that really bothered me and I need to vent.
Some background: my husband’s stepmother and his father started as an affair, which resulted in him leaving my MIL and my husband when he was a baby. They’ve now been together for over 25 years and have two children together. My husband is close with his stepmother and everyone has seemingly moved on, although I only recently found out about this. She has apologized to my husband for the affair but had never apologized to his mother.
For context, FIL and stepmother have also had a somewhat rocky relationship with me over the years. They initially complained to my husband that I didn’t spend enough time with them when we were long distance, FIL was rude to me on one occasion and then blamed me for it, and at one point they told my husband they didn’t want a relationship with me because of differences in our values which tie into a topical world conflict. They’ve since changed their tune and have been supportive of our relationship, which I appreciate, but I’m still somewhat uncomfortable around them because of everything that happened. To be fair to them, I also could’ve handled some things better and have reacted negatively at times which didn’t help the overall situation.
Now to the actual incident. Immediately after our wedding ceremony, while my husband and I were doing photos with the photographer, his stepmother pulled his mom aside and apologized to her for the affair in what turned out to be a long discussion. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she thought she was being discreet, but we were a very small group of 10 people, so everyone noticed what was happening. It also ended up interfering with some of the family photos.
My MIL hasn’t said anything about it and is the type of person who would never want to inconvenience anyone or draw negative attention to herself. But I could tell the conversation really shook her and I saw her looking upset afterwards. She had a lot of trauma surrounding what happened, even though she has thankfully moved on and is happily remarried now, but I don’t think her son’s wedding is where she wanted to relive this chapter of her life.
I’m honestly just baffled by the timing. They live 15 minutes away from each other. There was absolutely no reason this conversation needed to happen on our wedding day, immediately after the ceremony, in front of everyone. It bothered me not only because I hate seeing my MIL upset, but because it felt incredibly inappropriate for a wedding. This was supposed to be a happy day for everyone, and instead she chose that moment to reopen something that had nothing to do with the wedding and if anything was a really inappropriate topic given the nature of both events. It also felt particularly disrespectful given all the past drama between us. She has told my husband that she wants to start fresh with me and have a better relationship, so I would have hoped she’d be especially conscious of behaving appropriately at our wedding.
I know this ultimately isn’t my drama, and I’m not going to say anything to her because I know it would upset my husband and create even more tension. He’s very conflict-avoidant and basically just brushes me off whenever I try to talk about it, even though he agrees that the timing was inappropriate.
I guess I just needed somewhere to vent because it really bothered me that she couldn’t let our wedding day just be about celebrating with us and instead chose that moment to make something else about herself.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for letting me vent, kind Reddit strangers