This 25-Year-Old Is Considering Uninviting Her Mom From Her Wedding After She Talked Sh*t About Her Fiancé

This post is an advice column and shares the author's personal views.

Hi BF Community! My name's Ashley Holt, and this is Dear Ashley — a lovingly honest, shady, and safe corner of the internet where BuzzFeed readers like you can submit your relationship issues to me for advice.

Today’s issue is between a 25-year-old woman who wrote to me about her mother.

"My parents are emotionally manipulative and unsupportive of my relationship. My mother has always been the kind of person who claims that real friends don't exist and that she doesn't need any friends, so I've been an emotional crutch for her since I was a kid. She has openly told me that I'm the only person she can talk to because nobody else understands her point of view, including my father, who she is still married to and living with."

"It's always felt like I wasn't allowed to have hobbies or relationships outside of her. For example, if I were ever reading a book for fun, she would come into my room to interrupt me and ask if I wanted to watch a show or movie that SHE wanted to watch."

"You may say that she just wanted to spend time with me, but no, she would put on the movie, watch the first 20 minutes of it with me, and either fall asleep, go do something in the kitchen, or just leave the room entirely so I would be the only one who would actually finish what we were watching 'together.' This was when I was a minor."

"Now that I'm in my 20s and living with my fiancé, if I fall asleep to a movie when visiting her, she gets angry and tells me to go home instead. This is normally after spending an entire Saturday at her house. It's never felt like she wants me around because she misses me. It feels like she wants to be able to control how I spend my time."

"I normally go over to her house every Saturday, but I haven't been able to the past three weeks because there was Valentine's Day, and then my fiancé's car broke down, so I was helping them fix it over the weekend. When I was finally able to go back and visit her, she proclaimed that I would be buying her boba because 'I owed her for not coming over.' She was 100% serious."

"With all of this in mind, I feel like she's never warmed up to my fiancé because she feels he stole me from her or I chose him over her. Even though every weekend for the past three years I have made every effort to go see her, she says I've distanced myself from her and makes accusations about how my whole world is my fiancé, and there's no room for anybody else."

"Mind you, I commute an hour one way to work every single day, and when I get home, I have to get laundry started and make dinner, and by the time I finally have time to breathe, it's 8 p.m. I don't have time for myself or to go on real dates with my fiancé. I've been giving it all to her, and it's still not enough."

"Whenever I'm unable to go over, she starts throwing shade at my fiancé about how he emotionally or financially manipulates me, and I'm just too naive to see it. Very truly, my fiancé and I work together, and everybody thinks highly of him. He's one of the hardest-working employees and a sweet person overall. I'm not exaggerating when I say that literally, every single other person that we've announced our engagement to has been more excited than my parents were."

"My awkward boss jumped up from his chair and hugged us both (none of us are huggers). Most of our older female colleagues squealed like schoolgirls. They've pretty much been rooting for us since we started working here. And to have to compare it to my parent's very stoic reactions is so disheartening. When I got my driver's license, my mother jumped in the air and screamed joyfully in a government parking lot."

"I'm at the end of my rope and am not sure how to navigate this anymore. We've been working on the guest list for our wedding together, and the absolute dread I felt as I reluctantly marked my parents as 'yes' to invite them truly cannot be understated. I don't want them there because I know they'll sour the mood. It's suffocating. What should I do?"

Hey friend, let me first say that you sound like the most amazing daughter, and your parents are blessed to have birthed someone who put up with this for so long. But I have to acknowledge that it's a tough transition for parents when we go from being their kids to their adult offspring. However, families who successfully make the transition often understand that the relationships are very different.

While your parents have (presumably) supported and loved you for your entire life, my hot take is that it doesn't mean you OWE them for the rest of your life. Once you become an adult, your relationship with your parents is a choice. You all get to choose what it looks like and raise concerns if you feel it doesn't serve you, or harms you or your future marriage.

It sounds like you don't think having an adult conversation with your mother would be productive because you didn't mention trying to have one. But I think you should at least give her a chance to surprise you. Tell her how it makes you feel when she feels entitled to your time and speaks poorly about your fiancé. You should also share with her how it makes you question whether they would even want to attend or appreciate being present at your wedding.

A conversation with your mom is crucial because, as crazy as this sounds, she may not recognize that what she's doing is a big deal because she's always done it. She hasn't changed since your childhood, but YOU have. Lay everything out. Make it plain, and leave space for her to have human emotions about it. That's a lot to take in from your child. This may take more than one conversation.

Now, I will be honest and say that I have heard about positive and negative outcomes after a mother/daughter conversation like this. There is no PERFECT response, BUT what you need to hear is that what's important to her is that you're happy. Any variation of that is a good start, and now you've opened up a crucial line of communication. But, if her response is about her feelings and yours never cross her mind, then your next conversation needs to be with a therapist about how to draw boundaries to reduce your mother's role in your life for the sake of your sanity and future marriage.

While I can't, in good faith, say you shouldn't invite your parents to your wedding, you need to clearly state your concern to them and tell them you would only like them to attend if they are happy for you and supportive of your fiancé being in your life. That way if they show up, they're communicating to you that they're agreeing to that. You also need some ride-or-die cousins, siblings, or friends that your parents like to sit with them at the reception to keep them in good spirits *cough, cough* (and keep them in check).

Listen, friend, we can love our parents DEEP, but that doesn't mean we have to tolerate their behavior or lead the charge on their healing. Every grown adult is responsible for their own happiness. That means you AND them. Love, Ashley.

What do you think she should do? Let us know in the comments.

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The submission has been edited for length/clarity.