AITA for not inviting one of my patents partners to our wedding…
Am I the asshole for not inviting my dad’s new partner to our wedding next year?
My parents split when I was 23. We’re Australian, but my dad worked away a lot. When I went to university, my parents and brother moved to America for five years whilst myself and my sister stayed in Qld. Long story short, they moved back to Australia, separated, divorced, and now both have new partners.
My mum’s partner is an incredibly nice guy. He gets along really well with me and my fiancée and has made a real effort with us. He travels to our city for work and visits often. We talk regularly, and when he stays with us he’s respectful, helpful, and genuinely engaged.
After the divorce, my dad went back to working abroad for about four years (Batam/India). He met an Indonesian woman and they’ve been together about as long as my mum and her partner (maybe 2 years most). She doesn’t speak English and my dad doesn’t speak Indonesian. From what I can tell, they mostly just co-exist. She’s stopped working and my dad supports her and her three kids. In the four years he’s been abroad, I’ve only seen my dad for about three weeks total, and for two of those weeks she stayed with us as well. I love my dad, he’s an amazing bloke and I wish I could see him more often, but he’s worked abroad now for over 40% of my life, still I respect him a lot.
We’re having a small wedding, around 30 people. While we would love to include everyone, we honestly don’t really know her. When she stayed with us, we made genuine efforts to communicate, even using translation apps to try and have conversations, but she didn’t seem interested in engaging. She’s quite fussy with Western food and spends most of her time on her phone. When she’s around, it also feels like we lose my dad. He focuses entirely on looking after her and making sure she’s comfortable, which I understand given the language barrier and cultural differences, but it makes it hard to connect with him at all. We’ve tried to open our home and make her feel welcome, but we haven’t felt much effort in return.
Because the wedding is small and intimate, we decided to invite my dad on his own, however, we have invited my mum and her partner, as we quite like him as a person and want to share our day with him. I sent my dad a nice long message, and straight up put the ball in his court, that if attending without his partner makes him uncomfortable, I will happily ask my mums partner not to come. Mum’s partner also knows this, and is more than happy to not come if my dad chooses this.
My dad is now, honestly, much more upset than I expected, he’s usually very level headed. What makes it even harder, is my partners dad passed from cancer around 4 months ago. So watching my dad have issues with our wedding planning whilst knowing her dad would give everything to see us wed, is quite heartbreaking for her.
AITA?
