Mother called ‘self-centred’ for announcing her son’s engagement online without permission
A woman says that she and her fiancé don’t want to apologise to his mom after she announced their engagement on social media after being asked not to.
Engagement announcements are becoming an increasingly tricky topic in the modern age with some couples going to extraordinary lengths to announce their happy news to the world.
Within the past year, we’ve seen engagement announcements declared during podcasts and candidly in viral social media posts. What happens, though, when someone outside of the relationship takes it upon themselves to make the announcement?
This is the exact situation one Reddit user found herself in recently after she and her fiancé got engaged, much to the delight of his mother.
The woman, who is 20, took to the infamous ‘Am I the A**hole?’ subreddit to share her conundrum online.
She said that within 4 hours of sharing the news, her fiancé’s mother had posted online about the engagement saying that she was about to become a mother-in-law.
“This was distressing to my fiancé and I as we were calling friends and family to tell them and waiting for some professional pictures from our photographer before announcing publicly,” she added.
“We were also under the impression this was proper etiquette / social understanding to not announce big things (engagement, wedding, babies, etc) ahead of the couple.”
Deciding that they needed to intervene, her partner called his mother to “ express his discontentment”. The conversation was reportedly quite “emotional” leading to the mother becoming “quite defensive” and claiming that she didn’t realise it would cause any issues.
Continuing, she said: “We got the photos from the photographer the next day or so and decided to share (since we’d finally made all our rounds).” However, the future mother-in-law caused more drama by sharing the new posts by saying: “If they’ll forgive me, I’m excited…”
“My family and our mutual friends thought it was odd and kind of self-centred to share our engagement announcement like that,” she added.
This then prompted the fiancé to call his mother again telling her: “We didn’t want conflict around our engagement [and] we believed that people would ask about that line.”
This didn’t go down well with the mother-in-law eventually who said “I just won’t share anything about you guys anymore,” in response.
She continued: “His father stepped in and essentially said she didn’t mean harm and that my fiancé should apologise for upsetting his mother. My fiancé explained that he didn’t feel like he was wrong and that he did not overreact.
“My fiancé explained that he didn’t feel like he was wrong and that he did not overreact as they claimed. An overall very heated conversation with pressure from his father to apologize and mend things as his mother was down about the conversations they’d had.
“My family and our mutual friends all lean towards that this isn’t something he should apologise for, as he wasn’t mean and was trying to stick up for us, but we wanted outside opinions. Are we the A**hole by being hurt about this and/or not apologising?”
The issue has divided Reddit, with many feeling that communication between the two parties is ultimately what led to the problems.
One person wrote: “You're definitely never the AH simply for having your feelings hurt. We don't decide when our feelings are hurt or not. As for whether you and your bf were the AH in general, I don't think so, but I also don't know how he talked to his mother on the phone. Did he get really heated? If not, then 100% the mother's the AH. She managed to make this huge news for both of you about herself. Mothers can get possessive when their children get married, but you 100% should not be apologizing if you didn't get heated or say anything out of hand. In fact, it's best to establish boundaries early on so she understands she can't insert herself into your relationship.”
Another said: “’I didn’t know’ and ‘I can’t say anything other than I’m sorry’ do not sound defensive, and do not sound like she was not listening. These things sound apologetic. After that things go to hell. This could easily have been prevented. By any one of you. She could have asked if it was okay to tell people, you could have let her know to hold off until you had made an official announcement.”
A person with experience added: “I’m a MIL [mother-in-law], and this MIL is being utterly disingenuous. Everyone knows not to tell anyone or post about their children’s engagements when they are told first. You let the engaged couple do it, then let your friends and family know later. This has been common knowledge since time immemorial.”
