Blog Share: In-Law Story

Attention Reader: The post below was NOT written by me. This post was written by an anonymous blogger, and is being posted on my blog as part of the winter 2011 Blog Share. To read more about this Blog Share and see a full list of participating blogs to peruse, please see my previous post here, and please give a warm welcome to today's poster.

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The theme for this Blog Share is supposed to be about in-laws and families. There really is some good commiseration to be had when comparing in law stories (don’t lie, you’ve read those iVillage message boards a time or two to help you feel better about your own situation). For me, though, it’s hard to come up with a good in-law story because most of them are just tragic in their awfulness and that’s because my in-laws are truly heinous people. Like WOW, I thought ugliness like that only existed in fiction. The most *benign* example I can think of is this.

When we were planning our wedding, my fiancé invited both of his parents. His parents had split up (in an incredibly rough divorce which took TWO YEARS to finalize) years before our wedding and, while he hadn’t really spoken to his mother since his parents had split up (his father told him that a “good son” would “prove his love for his father” by totally cutting off his mother and at the time my fiancé was still desperate to prove that he loved his Dad), he still wanted her to at least see him get married.

Then he made the mistake of telling his father that he had invited his mother.

His father, in return for his son’s honesty, threatened to boycott our wedding because my fiance’s even *thinking* of inviting his own mother to his wedding proved that he didn’t love his father after all and had been lying to him all along about where his loyalty was.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “well good, nobody wants that kind of poison at a wedding.” Because that’s what I was thinking. Of course, I couldn’t say that at the time because it would have seriously upset the man I wanted to marry.

But then my fiance’s Dad went further and instead of just “well then I’m not comin’” decided that he would instead drive his RV out to our wedding site, park it in the middle of the venue’s parking lot so that nobody else could park there and then sit inside and not come out until my fiance’s Mom was gone.

“People gotta know where I stand.” Is what he told my fiancé.

Then the man decided “if you want to see me on your wedding day, you’ll just have to come into the RV and see me. If you want me to see you get married, you’ll just have to have it in the camper.”

What makes this behavior more immature is that the man had gotten remarried already and was bringing his new wife (a woman he had cheated on my fiance’s mother with) to the wedding.

Eventually it all got sorted. People got talked down. Both of my fiance’s parents came to our wedding. His mother even made a quick appearance at our reception. His father wore all black. No kidding.

My marriage was short. It was longer than Kim Kardashian’s though so that’s something.

Our divorce was finalized over the summer and it’s still hard for me. He moved on super quickly and is already dating and doing all of the things he refused to do with me with some girl he met on Match.com. I happily took back my maiden name and am making plans to move (I got our apartment in the split) but I still can’t look at what was his side of the bed without crying.

I know it will get better.

I also know that if things were to change and suddenly my ex-husband were to want to be my husband again I probably wouldn’t take him back…at least not now.

And that is because while I miss him like crazy, one of the very best things to come out of our split is that I will hopefully never. EVER. Have to deal with his crazy ass father ever again.