Last night my family came over for dinner to celebrate the end of lockdown. My parents had seen me during lockdown (thanks to loopholes in the rules) but hadn’t seen my partner in 5 months so they were excited to see us both. Unfortunately however my partner’s last childhood pet died yesterday and in very traumatic circumstances. He received the news only an hour before our guests were due to arrive and in his (expected) heartbroken state, I told him he could sit dinner out if he needed to - he and I are big animal lovers so I knew this would hurt him like he’d lost a blood relative. He ended up leaving to go for a walk before everyone arrived and didn’t return until they left because he needed time to himself to process everything and grieve.
At the time, I explained everything to the family and they seemed very understanding. This morning however when speaking with my mother, she told me that they all felt disrespected because my partner didn’t greet them and/or explain the situation himself.
I was mortified that they were so compassionate last night and had reversed their position which replaced empathy with anger. I explained to my mother that while her feelings were valid, I couldn’t assist her with them nor would I apologize as I did not think he was in the wrong.
Later this morning I had to drop stuff off to their house and met with my dad as my mum was out. He gave me the same spiel as my mother and told me that they all felt disrespected by my partner time and time again because he never comes over and they may as well forbid him from their home (even though I’ve explained to them numerous times that no, when I go to their home to watch a tv series with my mum and sister he doesn’t need to come, and that no he’s also not used to seeing my family as much as I see them and I won’t expect him to come with me every single time).
To top it off, dad sprung it on me that apparently he and my mother were going to tell us last night that they planned to throw us a celebration party for our wedding about 1 month after our wedding for all the people who can’t come (we had to downsize our 160 person wedding to 38 people). I told him that we want nothing to do with it because we never wanted to do anything like that and because it was not ok for them to start making plans for this sort of event in our honor without actually consulting us and asking if we were ok with it.
Im so emotionally wrecked at the moment and I’m just at a loss what to do. I love my family dearly but I can’t deal with their behavior any more and they won’t listen to any reason. Help.
