Being supportive is all relative
DEAR ELLIE: My niece is getting married. Her parents are paying for most of the wedding for 85 guests.
The bride’s mother, my sister, is one of five close sisters — three of us in the same city.
We also have five brothers with whom my sister isn’t close.
We sisters have an annual weekend away together and have also taken extended vacations with all or some of us, always including the bride’s mother.
The bride also has 19 cousins on our side.
Unfortunately, my sister has a fractured relationship with her daughter, the bride.
Her husband discouraged their relationship. He’d forbid his wife to call her daughter whenever they had a motherdaughter disagreement because he didn’t want his daughter more upset.
He and his daughter discuss many issues in person and by text daily.
My sister’s excluded from many of those exchanges.
I believe the bride didn’t ask my sister for help planning the wedding, although her mother did email her some ideas on venues, etc.
Ultimately, the bride’s father told his wife that a final decision had been made, with no more discussion.
Her sisters and brothers aren’t invited, except for one brother and wife who are the bride’s godparents, and the one sister who the bride’s mom sees daily. My sister is devastated! How do we handle this? I want to tell her we understand that she’s hurt and we hurt for her.
I don’t know how her husband and daughter can be so heartless. Her family’s very important to her.
How can I/we be cordial to our brother-in-law and niece when this is how they treat my sister and her family?
— Excluded Family
ANSWER: Your sister’s experienced her husband and daughter’s closer relationship for years.
She’s also put up with them excluding her emotionally.
The wedding invitation list is their open declaration of control and distancing from your side of the family.
Perhaps it was the very numbers and intensity of close connections between sisters that put off the daughter over the years. Jealousy could even have been a factor.
Whatever the reasons, they contributed to motherdaughter tensions. These are common enough, BUT when a father steps in the middle and separates the two, the mother-daughter bond doesn’t get repaired.
Support your sister. Accept the situation, help her get through it with understanding from all her sisters, and say nothing about it to the bride, for now.
I say this because it’s her day, and she’s already been convinced by her father that she’s doing the right thing.
Someday you may have the chance to tell her how devastating this was for her mother, maybe when she’s a mom herself.
DEAR ELLIE: I always please my man with oral sex, but he never pleases me that way in return.
It only happens after weeks of fighting about it, yet that means it’s never spontaneous, like I always am with him.
What can I do about this?
— Frustrated
ANSWER: Stop fighting over sex. And stop thinking of it as an exchange of services.
If you feel intimate with him and inclined toward giving oral sex, that’s fine. But it’s not a bargaining tool.
Instead, tell him (without anger) what makes you aroused.
If, on his own, he never responds with what he knows you want, think about whether this is the relationship you wish to continue. Is it an equal partnership in any sense? Or are you alway shaving to be the one to do the “pleasing” in other ways too? If so, sex isn’t the problem.
TIP OF THE DAY
When close relatives accept stressful relationships, be supportive rather than meddle.
Ellie Tesher was born in Toronto and has been working as a journalist for 25 years. She studied sociology at the University of Toronto before landing her first job at Children’s Aid as a case worker with foster children. Email ellie@thestar.ca. Follow @ellieadvice.