We’re Paying for Our Daughter’s Spring Wedding. But She’s Just Revealed Who She’s Keeping Off the Guest List. Yikes.

Dear Prudence I’m trapped between my daughter and my wife. Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Jenée Desmond-Harris? Sept 22, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by grinvalds/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. Dear Prudence, My daughter “Elise” is getting married in the spring to a wonderful man. The problem is that my in-laws spend every waking moment bickering, and Elise is worried that they will embarrass her at her wedding. When my brother-in-law and his wife celebrated their 30th anniversary, my mother-in-law threw a drink on my father-in-law and called him the R-word, so her fears are valid. I have asked my wife to speak to her parents about getting a handle on their incessant arguing, but she says they’ve been doing it for as long as she can remember and they won’t change. Elise is now saying she doesn’t want to invite them if they can’t control themselves; my wife’s response has been to guilt her by saying it would be “cruel” and that Elise can forget about us paying for the wedding if she’s going to exclude her grandparents. I think my daughter has a right to a wedding that isn’t marred because two people in their mid-70s can’t behave like adults for a few hours. Can I just tell my wife it’s Elise’s wedding and she can invite who she wants? —Infantile In-Laws Dear Infantile In-Laws, Whether you can say that to your wife and enforce it is really a question about your marital finances and who will control whether Elise gets the wedding cash. But I definitely think your stance is the correct one! Unless something different is negotiated before planning begins, parents paying for a wedding should mean that they hand the money over and then enjoy the experience with the same rights as any other guest. Whatever you give should be thought of as a gift, not a way of buying a stake in the planning. It’s clearer and healthier that way. If I were writing to Elise, I would encourage her, as I encourage everyone who’s worried about embarrassing relatives, not to worry so much. Weddings involve large groups of people with all their personality defects and emotional issues. Everyone has family members who sometimes behave badly. A guest who observes a conflict doesn’t forget about the beautiful ceremony, and the marriage isn’t annulled if there’s some intense bickering, or even a tossed drink. Now, your mother-in-law using the R-word here does make this situation more concerning, because a person who’s prone to spewing slurs runs the risk of really hurting a guest, and you don’t want that. But if her outbursts normally don’t involve targeted insults against people with disabilities or any other group, I don’t think she represents a serious threat. All that said, decisions about the guest list are hers and her husband’s, and you should work to get your wife on board with this idea. Your daughter clearly wants a peaceful day, and it would be in both of your interests to avoid behaving like the kind of person she wants to avoid. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Prudence, Our neighbors, who are in their mid-80s, are driving my household crazy! We moved in at the same time, which was 12 years ago. They have their good days and their bad days. Some days they’re super nice to us, and some days, they are very rude. The wife constantly comments on my Facebook posts, saying “Oh, it must be nice” and “Thanks for the invite” when she sees we’ve been to an event or had a party. I have invited her to multiple events over the years, and she says that she doesn’t feel like coming or that something came up and she can’t come anymore. The husband just gripes about everything. He gets mad if we get our yard mowed when he doesn’t think we need to. We have a yard service that does most of the yards on the street, and he has been fired from using the service because of his attitude. Obviously, they’re both retired and have nothing else to do. My husband is the president of the Homeowners Association, and they were very upset last week because, at the top of our street, which is not part of our HOA, they are building tiny homes. The husband is livid. He wants the HOA to have this stopped, even though we’ve explained to him that there’s nothing we can do. Our neighbors’ grown kids have apologized to us for having to live next door to their grouchy parents. Recently, I’ve had to block both of them from Facebook because I’m so sick of the comments. Now I’m getting a text from the wife telling me that the husband had knee surgery. I did not respond to the text, and now she sent another follow-up message, saying, “Did I not tell you that he had knee surgery? Why haven’t you checked on us?” I do not know what to say or do anymore. I am so over their behavior. Also, they are super racist and get very upset when a house goes up for sale, and complain that my husband has not vetted the buyers! I don’t want to be a complete jerk about this situation, but I don’t know what to do! Please help! —The OVER It Neighbor Dear the OVER It Neighbor, Nobody wants to be a complete jerk, but if the options are being a complete jerk or letting someone else be a complete jerk to me to the extent that it’s driving me crazy, I know what I would choose! The good news is that limiting your contact with your neighbors doesn’t actually require being mean or rude in any way. You can decide not to engage with them due to their comments about tiny homes, requests for racially discriminatory housing policies, or guilt trips about knee surgery without yelling at them about how they’re insufferable busybody bigots who need to get a life and leave you alone. Instead, try grey rocking, which Brianne Markley, PhD explains in a piece for The Cleveland Clinic, “means disengaging from emotionally toxic interactions.” She suggests the following ways to execute the approach: Making yourself too busy with tasks and appointments to spend time with a toxic person.Participating in a conversation as little as possible. For example, limiting your responses to “yes” and “no,” or being very deliberate about what you do and don’t say. For example, you may use canned responses like, “Please don’t take that tone with me,” or “I’m not having this conversation with you.”If the person is calling, texting or messaging you, waiting to respond, blocking them, putting up a “do not disturb” or away message or or simply leaving the message with a read-receipt and no other reply.Ignoring or not responding to somebody.Limiting eye contact with the person in question and keeping your facial expressions neutral.Staying calm, cool and collected in your response, even when the other person is ratcheting up the volume or trying to pick a fight. You should do all these things, yes, even on the days your neighbors are being nice, because they have adult children in their lives, so you don’t need to feel at all responsible for them. There are plenty of other nice people in the world who aren’t also terrible a lot of the time. Prudie Wants to Hear From You! Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point Prudie makes, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each week, Prudie will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers, which will be featured on the site on Fridays for Slate Plus members. Write to us! Or submit a question here. Dear Prudence, This is a me problem. I have a hidden disability that makes most things hard. There is nothing that I do that doesn’t come with some degree of pain. I have lived with this my entire life, and I have always tried to be as independent as possible, so I never, ever ask for help, whine, or say that “I can’t.” The problem is when people whine or make excuses around me. I’m normally crabby, haven’t slept much, am hurting, and yet have got myself to work, am rocking my job, doing what I need to do, so can you please not tell me how you can’t function because you haven’t had your morning coffee or your tootsies hurt? I know, I know, they’re blissfully unaware of how I feel or, I hope, even that I struggle. Still, is there a better choice than biting my tongue or, you know, slapping someone? —No Whine Please, I’m Disabled Dear No Whine Please, You’re going to have to forgive me because, as I thought about your letter, I ran right to the self-help cliché section of my brain and couldn’t get out of it. The first word that came up for me was perspective—and the importance of having it. Yes, your problems are a lot worse than some other people’s, and some people are worse off than you. But knowing that others have it worse doesn’t really change any one person’s experience—so them knowing about your struggles wouldn’t necessarily make them feel differently about their own. Plus, other people’s whining and excuses aren’t interfering with your basic needs or making your life materially worse. The next one was gratitude—the annoying mental trick that actually makes everything a little more bearable. Is there any part of you that could feel grateful that you’ve managed to be so strong, composed, and relatively positive in the face of your pain, instead of being irritated at the weakness and negativity of others? I also thought about the idea of connectedness. Being human is hard. But you may actually have more in common with the whiners around you than you realize. Regardless of the reasons, you’re all struggling at some points to get through the day. You could all benefit from a world that’s a little easier on us and doesn’t demand so much grit and independence. And for all you know, they could also be suffering from invisible challenges, whether physical, mental, or emotional. On that topic, what’s stopping you from sharing what you’re dealing with? You don’t get a prize at the end of your life for keeping it all in, and you might find some real relief and support if you open up about the pain you’re in rather than pretending everything is fine. Classic Prudie Ten years ago, I had an affair with a co-worker, “Amir.” My marriage at the time eventually dissolved for unrelated reasons; his did not. I am now engaged, and I deeply regret my actions of a decade ago. My fiancé has trust issues because his ex tried to convince him he was the father of someone else’s baby. He had to get an official paternity test, and she slandered his name all over town. I have been honest about my past infidelity, and we are in couples’ counseling. My problem is that a recent promotion puts me back in direct contact with Amir. Advice Dear Prudence Family Weddings