My fiance and I started dating over a year ago ling distance. He visited me and met my family and we soon after got engaged. I had been planning to move close to him and we would get married there.(He lives half the world away from my family and home).
I got a gob 2hrs away from him in his hime country and moved here 2 months ago. He told me about his mother being an unkind women and a heavy drinker. Besides that and a little language barrier, as I am only currently and intermediate level in his native language, fiancé speaks English, there was no other concern.
I had told my fiancé that I wanted to meet his parents, met only dad on short video call. She finally responded and asked us to come to their farm. They have a small part of a family farm that they go to every weekend.
We went and started a simple lunch. They asked him questions assuming I don’t speak anything. In conversation, my fiancé said we had just come from church. My fiancé did not grow up religious but he became curious about my christian religion and converted a few months prior. When his parents found out he had joined my church, they immediately were shocked. FMIL was polite outwardly to me but it was obvious she thought I stole her son and made him join a cult.
Important info before I continue: it is common to live with parents in his culture until marriage partly due to housing costs. He also changed to a temp job to make more money but his mom said she would pay him more each month to move back hime for a few months which would help us better prepare for the wedding and our housing.
After I met his parents, they told him to get out. FMIL told him that he was dead to her and that he hurt her more than when his younger brother un-alived himself.
This made me pissed and in one week he found a new job close to me and moved his and my things(from moving to a new country) out of his parents house.
So FMIL kicked my fiancé out and said he is dead to her. That this is worse than losing her other son to suicide.
We have been discussing when to have the wedding and due to current housing contracts ending at the end of the year, decided on spring(in 10 months). However, my fiancé keeps saying maybe we should change the wedding date out another year.
He says that would give more time for his parents and maybe they would come to the wedding. He says he doesn’t care if they come but feels bad to my family if his parents aren’t at the wedding. My family supports us and my dad offered to help pay for our wedding.
Recently, my fiance told my that as my FMIL was also kicking him out, she said I am super fat.(I am overweight and am starting to get back in routine to lose weight before the wedding for my own health and goals). I assume FMIL said this just to add to more insults as he told me she keeps insulting him for changing his job to temp higher paying job until he finds a new programing job.
However, he only recently told me about her calling me fat after we had arguments about how I can lose weight. I mentioned I want to lose weight and he had been pushing me to eat better. We decided to plan the wedding for April 2026, but he says he wants his parents there as he feels bad to my family if his parents don’t come. However, he has brought up the idea of changing the date a year out even after we saw venues. Then he told me about his mom mentioning his job and my weight. He said he agrees we should get married in 20 months but that waiting a year past that would give more time for him to find a new, more permanent, job and for me to lose weight.. and if we did that, then maybe his parents will come to the wedding. He also said that he hates his mom saying anything bad about me and saying things about my weight.
When I am with him, I feel sexy and more slim than I am. He really supports my mental and physical health but I have felt like he hasn’t understood how hard weight loss is for me as I have PCOS.
I’ve been thinking about the situation a bit and not sure what to do. Should we even try to invite his parents to the wedding? Would it be better to push the wedding back a year or is he looking for acceptance from his mother which he will likely never have but wants to push back our wedding and starting out life together just for her to maybe accept him and me?
What advice do you have?
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Call her bluff and take her at her word. If he’s dead to her, then she should not be attending his wedding, so you have no reason to move the date.
So, your fiancé is not being honest (perhaps even with himself) when he says he only feels bad for your family if his family doesn’t attend. He wants his family to attend; he wants their approval and acceptance. This is likely also behind his recent campaign to make you lose weight. He is telling himself if you become more acceptable to his mom, she might come back into his life. Subconsciously, he knows she will never change, so he is hoping if the situation changes then she will approve.
I would also delay the wedding and tell him you want pre-martial counseling and for him to commit to individual counseling either on his own or of the therapist recommends it. He needs to heal from the trauma he experienced with his parents and he needs to accept who she is and understand she won’t change. He needs to know that if he wants a life with you, he will have to choose that life and actively work on it. He needs to be ready to let go of the fantasy of a loving and accepting mom.
Because she can’t be that. She was less hurt by her child’s death because she can still control his memory that way. She wants control over your partner back and that is what she really loves. I imagine that hurts him deeply but if he can’t process it and heal, he will always be trying to get you to become what she wants.
I’m sorry but I’m seeing major red flags in this relationship. Get engaged so soon after being long distance did not give you a chance to really get to know each other before getting engaged. It seems some true colors and feelings are starting to show with your fiance.
In my opinion this wedding needs to be called off until further notice not just because of his family, but his treatment of you. First he didn’t seem to mind your weight and now you guys are arguing about you losing weight and it seems he believes you’re not doing a good enough job because his mom said something to him. I’m a firm believer your spouse should never fight with you regarding your weight unless you are being unsafe (anorexic, binge eating, not eating, massively obese, etc). He is letting his mothers abusive words effect how he sees you and treats you and now he’s putting it on to you to get his parents to change. That if YOU do all these things then they’ll be different. That’s not the case. You could be in the best shape of your life and she won’t like you because what she wants is control of her child.
>as my FMIL was also kicking him out, she said I am super fat.
So as a last minute added insult she said that. Before that, she said:
>FMIL told him that he was dead to her and that he hurt her more than when his younger brother un-alived himself.
And he thinks she act better and come to the wedding if you lose weight?? I feel a little bad for him because he wants their approval but it is very very wrong for him to try to pressure you to do ANYTHING to make this better. You can fix this by losing weight or doing any other thing. The problem is his mother’s behavior and words.
He’s wrong to think it would help, he’s wrong to ask you to lose weight, and he’s wrong to combine the two together. Good grief.
I would not plan a wedding when he thinks he can get them to love him based on your weight, or when he’s saying he wants them there for your parents’ sake, etc. He has some issues to work out and he needs to be honest with what he’s feeling, what he wants, and how he thinks he can make things better with his parents. And then he needs to be called out on the parts of that that aren’t true or possible.