r/MarkNarrations

One of my bridesmaids has been one of my closest friends for years.

The problem is that over the last few months, her boyfriend has made several jokes about my wedding being " too expensive" and how my fiancé and I are wasting for "one day". I ignored it because everyone is entitled to their opinion and I didn't want unnecessary drama.
Last weekend we were all together and he started again. This time he joked that he was mostly for the free food and alcohol and said he'd probably leave early because weddings are boring anyway.

I laughed awkwardly at first, but then he kept going and asked how much we were spending. When I refused to tell him, he said something like, " Whatever it is, you'll probably regret it when you could've used that money for something useful."

That one actually hurt.

My fiancé and I have been saving for this ourselves. We haven't asked anyone to pay for our wedding and we've spent months planning something that means a lot to us.

Later, I told my friend privately that I didn't really feel comfortable having him there anymore. I said I still absolutely wanted her there, but I didn't want to spend our wedding day wondering if someone sitting there was secretly mocking everything we had worked.

She got really upset and said I was basically forcing her to choose between being my bridesmaid and her boyfriend. She said his comments were just jokes and that I was taking them personally because I'm stressed about the wedding.

Now she's considering dropping out completely.

That honestly devastated me. I never wanted to lose a close friend over this, and part of me wonder if I should just tolerate him for one day to keep the peace.

But another part of me feels like I've spent months ignoring disrespect just because I didn't want to be seen as difficult bride.

AITA for taking away his invitation ?

TL;DR: My bridesmaid's boyfriend repeatedly mocks our wedding and how much we're spending on it. After he said we'd probably regret wasting the money, I told my friend I no longer felt comfortable having him there. She now says she may drop out of the wedding.

Hey Waffles, it's been a minute. You have all given such good advice and I'm back again for some guidance.

If you need the backstory on my relationship with my father, please read my post history. But a tldr on our relationship is: I am No contact, and he's a POS.

Anyway, I am very excited to be 5 and a half months pregnant! After trying for many years, everything is looking great (fingers crossed).

My question to you is, would I be the AH if I never told him? Does a grandparent have a right to know they have a grandchild?

Being NC with my father, I am being pressured from all sides (except my husband who is very strongly against the idea) to let him know.

My husband supports me completely, but the guilt-tripping from other family members is getting exhausting.

Do toxic parents automatically earn the right to be grandparents just because of shared DNA? AITAH for keeping this from him entirely?

[supprimé]

Hey Mark! I’ve been watching for some time now and wanted to get the sub’s opinion and maybe even yours if you come across. The friendships themselves are over, so the results don’t really matter. This is a sanity check because I feel crazy even though my other friends and therapist say I’m in the right.

About a month ago, my friend Robin (23F) was having a rough day and started having a mental breakdown over text. All events happened over text. Myself and our other friend Danelle (20F) were trying to talk her through it. Robin brought up smoking to help in this situation. That concerned me, so I tried to encourage a different coping mechanism, saying they could reach out to a mental health hotline or talk to a trusted person in their family. What I didn’t know at the time was that smoking weed helps with this mental health condition and that Robin was prescribed weed. Robin ended up snapping at me over my suggestion saying not to argue with them. Danelle just sat there and watched this happen.

Now Danelle has in the past just watched as other people insulted and verbally attacked me without doing anything or even sometimes making jokes like texting cough or whistling. She apologized for it earlier, but it happened again. I brought it up to her in dms and she insisted that it no one was being rude to me and it was my fault for not knowing weed can help with mental health conditions. I argued that it’s not my job to know what helps Robin with her mental health and that her having a mental breakdown wasn’t an excuse to attack me and that Danelle needs to stop just watching someone takes their aggression out on me. I understand Robin was having a breakdown. But in my eyes you’re responsible for you mental health. It’s not your fault you have it, but you are responsible for the things you say and do even when you’re struggling.

Danelle stopped responding to the messages two weeks ago. I asked Robin what was wrong because I was genuinely worried. Robin ended up chewing me out, calling me an uncaring friend for not knowing weed helps with their condition and told me to ask my therapist about narcissistic personality disorder because I was upset that they took their aggression out on me. I didn’t even finish reading their messages because I found it to be insanely disrespectful that they’re diagnosing me just for 1. trying to help them with the limited information I had 2. not knowing something about their illness and 3. not enjoying being yelled at for trying to help when they came to me and Danelle for support.

Again, the friendship is over no matter what. One friend won’t talk to me and is giving me the cold shoulder and the other is throwing insults and jumping to conclusion. But for peace of mind and to learn for the future, I want to know if I’m the asshole in this situation. Perhaps there really is something I’m missing here.

(Rather not reveal the mental health condition specifically for respect for personal privacy)

Just wanted to let you know there was an Update on a 50 min video u did about sisters renting out OP's holiday home, that started with him dodging his niece n nephew who then went into the pool.

https://www.reddit.com/user/Scared-Weakness-6250/

Pre warning- it’s long and it’s chaotic and probably such a mess to read!!

Throwaway because if my family finds this, I will have to fake my own death and move to the moon. I’ve changed everyone’s names because I would like to remain anonymous, but unfortunately I cannot change the fact that my family has apparently been auditioning for a reality TV show for the last decade.

Different abbreviations because I’m British 😆 Holiday = Vacation, Post code = Zip code, Football = Soccer.

Hey everyone! I’m completely new to this whole writing-on-Reddit thing and would absolutely love some advice, opinions, or just confirmation that I am not, in fact, completely losing the plot.

So, where do I even begin?

My biological dad used to be incredibly involved in mine and my sister’s lives. We saw him every Monday and Thursday, stayed over Friday nights and then spent pretty much the entire Saturday watching him play football. That was just our normal. Monday, Thursday, Friday sleepover, Saturday football. Repeat. We knew his friends, his friends knew us, he knew what was going on in our lives and we knew what was going on in his.
We were his girls.

Then, when I was 12, Dad got together with his now-wife, who I’ll call Rachel.
I was old enough to remember exactly what my relationship with my dad had been like before Rachel came along, and I was old enough to notice when things started changing. It wasn’t like she came into my life when I was a tiny child and I don’t remember anything before her. I had already spent years having this really close relationship with my dad.
When Dad and Rachel first got together, there was actually another woman he had been in a relationship with in Ireland, who I’ll call Sophie. We met Sophie and I LUVED Sophie. There was also Laura, another one of his exes who is still on my social media, and honestly Laura is the only woman who gets to keep the title of stepmum. Position permanently occupied. Applications closed.

But anyway, over the years it started to feel like Dad had moved into a completely different family life. It became Dad, Rachel and their children, and then there was me and my sister somewhere on the outside of that.
I want to make it very clear that I am NOT putting all of this on Rachel. My dad is a grown man. Nobody has a remote control shoved up his trousers forcing him to make these decisions. He has made his own choices too, and I think that is important to say because this is about the whole situation, not just blaming one person.

It wasn’t that we expected everything to stay exactly the same forever. Obviously life changes. People get married, have more children, move house, have different responsibilities and priorities. We understand that. But there is a massive difference between your family growing and feeling like part of the original family has quietly been moved into the “other” category.
We were there first. We came as a package deal.
And then the missed things started adding up.

Birthdays. Achievements. Important moments. Family memories. Things that, individually, probably sound small, but over around ten years they become a LOT. You could practically go through puberty, learn another language, get a degree and develop a concerning emotional attachment to IKEA meatballs in the amount of time we’ve been watching this relationship change.

The holidays were another big one.
Dad and Rachel would go away with their children year after year, and me and my sister weren’t invited. We both work, we both make our own money and we would have happily paid for ourselves just to be included and make memories with Dad and our younger siblings. Nobody was expecting the Maldives. We weren’t demanding a luxury holiday with matching bathrobes and someone feeding us grapes.
It was more the fact that we wanted to feel thought about.
Even just being asked would have meant something.
And then there was THE WEDDING.
My sister was not invited to her own father’s wedding.
She came anyway.

And somehow, despite supposedly not being invited, her name was on the table plan. So she was simultaneously not invited but invited enough to have a place setting. Make it make sense.
Even better, both mine and my sister’s names were written using our aunt’s married surname instead of the surname we actually share with our dad. We were also seated at the furthest table away from Dad, basically in another postcode.
At that point I genuinely expected someone to come over and ask if we had wandered into the wrong wedding.

And despite my sister supposedly not being invited, she was somehow blamed for issues with food and the general mess surrounding everything.
I still cannot work out what she was allegedly doing. Did she sneak into the kitchen? Secretly run the catering? Rearrange the seating plan? Put on a fake moustache and whisper, “Put them at the back”?
The whole thing became so ridiculous that if it had happened to someone else, I would probably assume they were exaggerating.

Then there is my mum.

My parents obviously aren’t together, but for years they actually had a pretty friendly relationship. They could communicate, be civil, attend things together and generally co-parent without everything turning into some sort of diplomatic crisis.
That changed too.

Rachel became involved in things, tensions grew, and suddenly something that had previously been relatively functional became another part of the wider family fallout.
Even my grandmother’s funeral somehow became surrounded by family politics and Rachel making it all about her and what she wants including who is allowed and not allowed to be carrying my nans coffin.
I mean, HIS OWN MOTHERS, HIS CHILDREN’S GRANDMOTHER’S FUNERAL.

At one point it genuinely felt less like a funeral and more like Parliament had been relocated to a church.
There were disagreements, sides being taken, people falling out and relationships breaking down. Dad even lost his relationship with his own sister.

His own mum didn’t like Rachel, and even some of his friends noticed how distant he had become.
People still ask me, “How’s your dad?”
And I genuinely never know what to say.
Because what am I supposed to say?
“We don’t really speak anymore, but thanks for asking”? 😂
Dad and I haven’t properly spoken for over a year now.

I did eventually tell him how I felt. I told him that I thought he had changed and explained the things that had hurt me and my sister. I wasn’t asking him to leave Rachel. I wasn’t asking him to choose between his wife and his children. I wasn’t asking him to undo his entire life.
I just wanted to have an honest conversation about what had happened to our relationship.
Instead, he withdrew.
And that is probably the hardest part of all of this.

Because underneath all of the ridiculous wedding seating plans, arguments, holidays and family politics, there are actual relationships here that have been damaged.
There is a dad who used to spend every Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday with his daughters.
There are two daughters who grew up knowing their dad was a huge part of their lives.
There are younger siblings who have grown up in a completely different version of the family.
There is a mum who had a co-parenting relationship that eventually became complicated.
There are grandparents, aunties, uncles and friends who have ended up caught in the middle of things. My dad has lost a lot of family relationships because of his controlling, conniving wife.

And there is a marriage that has affected far more people than just the two people in it.
That is what makes the whole thing so difficult.
Nobody is completely innocent, but I also don’t think anyone is completely responsible for everything either. Everyone has their own version of events, their own feelings and their own relationships with each other.

I can understand that Dad loves Rachel.
I can understand that he has built another family and that his life has changed.
I can understand that Mum has her own feelings about everything.
I can understand that adults make mistakes and relationships become complicated.
But understanding something doesn’t automatically make the consequences disappear.

And this is where my stepdad comes into the story.
I’ll call him Mark.
I had just turned 4 when my mum and Mark got together. He has been in my life for around 17 YEARS, basically as long as I can remember.
He has been a father figure to me for the majority of my life and, honestly, I have probably done more of my life with Mark than I have with my actual dad.
I am very attached to him.

He has been there for birthdays, Christmases, family days out, holidays abroad, normal everyday life, growing up and all the little things that you don’t realise become important until you look back.
So when I say I am attached to him, I really mean it.

Then we found out that Mark had cheated on my mum.
And that completely changed how I saw things.
My mum is my best friend. Watching her go through that was horrible, especially knowing how much I care about her and how much of my life has involved the two of them together.
I was angry with him. I still am.

But at the same time, I can’t just switch off the fact that I love him and that he has been part of my life for nearly two decades.
That is probably one of the strangest parts of all of this. You can be incredibly angry with someone and still love them. You can be disappointed by someone and still have an attachment to the person they have been to you for most of your life.

And now Mum and Mark are back together and trying to work things out.
I know it is their relationship. I know Mum is an adult and gets to make her own decisions. I know that if they want to try and rebuild their relationship, that is ultimately between them.

But emotionally, I am struggling with it because everyone else seems to have moved into the “okay, we’re trying to fix things” chapter while I am still somewhere back in the “WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” chapter 😂😭
And I don’t think that makes me selfish.
I think it just means that when something affects the people you love, you don’t necessarily process it at the exact same speed as they do.

The same goes for Dad.
I don’t hate him. I don’t want him to fail. I don’t want his marriage to fall apart. I don’t want him to choose between his wife and his children.
I just wish he remembered that there was a relationship with his daughters before all of this.
We were there first.
We were his girls.
And we are still his girls.

I don’t know what happens from here.
I don’t know if Dad will ever want to properly rebuild our relationship. I don’t know if he will come to my wedding one day. I don’t know if family events will always involve working out who can sit next to whom like we’re organising an international summit.
I don’t know what happens if I have children in the future. I don’t know whether Dad will want to be involved or whether I’ll eventually have to explain to my own children why their grandad isn’t around.

And I don’t know what happens with Mum and Mark either.
I don’t know whether their relationship can be repaired. I don’t know whether things will actually be different this time. I don’t know how long it will take for everyone involved to feel okay again.

What I DO know is that I am exhausted by the fallout from adults making decisions and everyone else having to figure out how to live with the consequences.
I don’t want to be the messenger between people. I don’t want to choose sides. I don’t want to be the family therapist or the person everyone comes to when they don’t know how to communicate with someone else.

I’m their daughter.
That’s it.
And maybe that is the part I wish everyone would remember.

Because behind all the arguments and marriages and divorces and new relationships and family politics are people who actually love each other, people who have hurt each other, and people who are still trying to work out where they fit.
There has been so much loss without anyone actually dying.
No funeral. No final goodbye. No single moment where everyone says, “This is over.”
Just relationships slowly changing until one day you look around and realise the family you grew up with doesn’t really exist in the same way anymore.

And somehow everyone is still expected to carry on as normal.
If this were anyone else’s family story, I would probably be sat in the comments saying, “Girl, RUN.” 😂
But unfortunately, this is my actual life.
There is enough lore here for six seasons, three spin-offs and a reunion special, and somehow I am still waiting for someone to explain what season we’re currently on.

I don’t want anyone to choose me.
I don’t want anyone to choose Mum.
I don’t want anyone to choose Dad.
I don’t want anyone to choose Mark.
I don’t anyone to choose Rachel.
I just want everyone to remember that underneath all of these adult relationships are children, daughters, sons, siblings and family members who have had to watch everything change around them and somehow work out where they belong.

And honestly, I think that is the part that hurts the most.

So please help a 21 year old girl out and give me some advice, I’d really appreciate it 😂❤️