Why Gen Z Groom Doesn’t Want His ‘Crying’ Mom at Wedding Backed

A post about a 26-year-old man questioning whether he was wrong for not inviting his mother to his upcoming wedding has gone viral on Reddit.

The post shared under the username Successful-Tank-851, which garnered 11,000 upvotes since it was shared on November 12, details the man’s childhood experiences and current conflict with his mother, who he says “ignored” him for his “whole life.”

“I’m super excited about it [the wedding],” the man said in the post, “but there’s one big issue with all the planning—my mom.”

According to the poster, his parents divorced when he was eight years old, after which his mother remarried “pretty quickly.” He says that after marrying her new husband, she shifted her focus entirely to her stepchildren, neglecting him emotionally. “She focused all her attention on [her husband] Dave and his kids,” he wrote, while he felt “invisible.”

So, when she reached out about his wedding, the poster said “I told her straight up that I didn’t want her there.” This led to an emotional response from his mom, who “started crying,” arguing that “she deserves to be there” as his mother.

Was the poster’s refusal to invite his mom to the wedding understandable? Or was he being too harsh?

Licensed marriage and family therapist Patricia Bathurst told Newsweek: “The poster is not in the wrong for not wanting to invite his mother to his wedding. She has been absent for most of his life. It is his wedding. It’s his decision regarding who he invites. It’s fair that he doesn’t want to invite her.”

The man in the Reddit post said “I’m not exaggerating when I say she treated them way better than me. They’d go on trips, she’d go to all their sports events, and they’d get everything they wanted. Meanwhile, I felt like I was invisible. She didn’t ask about my school, didn’t care about my friends, or even my mental health. I started to feel like I wasn’t even her kid anymore.”

After turning 18, the poster moved out and texted his mom once in a while. But “she’d either not respond or say she was busy with Dave and his kids,” so eventually he stopped trying to connect with her.

The poster said that his mother suddenly started reaching out “like we’re super close,” asking for details about the wedding and expressing excitement about his new chapter. Feeling this shift to be disingenuous, the poster said: “I’m not comfortable with her coming after everything that’s happened, and that if she really wants to have a relationship, we can talk about it after the wedding, but not before.”

‘A Need for Self-Preservation’

Jeanne Cross, a licensed therapist and owner of the EMDR Center of Denver, emphasized that the decision to set boundaries is a healthy one. “Childhood experiences of emotional abandonment, like the poster describes, can create deep-seated wounds, and it’s natural to seek boundaries as a means of protecting oneself from further hurt,” Cross told Newsweek.

Cross also stressed that choosing not to invite his mother might be more about self-care than resentment. “Rather than dismissing this boundary as ‘holding a grudge,’ it’s important to recognize it as an act of self-care,” she said. “The poster’s choice to exclude his mother from the wedding reflects a need for self-preservation and a desire to honor his own healing journey.”

Nicholas Schmitt, a senior director of conflict resolution and training at Community Mediation Services, advised the poster to consider whether this decision might affect him in the future. He cautioned the groom against “reacting from those emotional wounds and ensure that he is responding in a way that he can feel proud about in the future.”

Schmitt asked: “Will he like himself at the end of the wedding, a week later, a month later, a year later based on his decision?”

‘This Is Your Wedding’

Many Reddit users expressed sympathy for the poster and criticized his mother for her absence during his formative years.

User Bo_O58 commented “Childhood neglect is not something you forgive and forget for most people, especially when you’ve come to terms with not having a relationship with your parent. She doesn’t get to waltz back in to ruin what’s supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life.”

Another user, Thrwwymc, agreed, stating “This is your wedding, you’re supposed to have the people you love around you, it’s not for her or anyone else.”

User SugaryWetLips drew attention to the abrupt nature of the mother’s reappearance. “Your mom basically pulled a ‘Hey, stranger!’ like she’s an old friend sliding into your DMs after ghosting you for years,” the user wrote. “It’s wild that she thinks she can just show up now like everything’s cool.”

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment via the Reddit messaging system.

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