My Stepson Uninvited From His Wedding—and Other Advice From the Week

Slate publishes a lot of advice each week, so we’re pulling together a selection of our favorites. Here are a few of the most compelling questions from the week and links to hours of advice reading. This week: family wedding drama, middle school group chats gone awry, and secret porn collections.

Dear Prudence

Married Into a Family Rift: My fiancé and I were engaged for a year and got married a month ago. It is a second marriage for both of us. Three months before we got married, my fiancé’s 34-year-old son got engaged, and he and his fiancée then demanded that we cancel our wedding and wait to get married until after the son’s wedding—saying that if we got married first, it would take all of the joy out of the son’s wedding. Needless to say, we went ahead with our wedding. The son and his fiancée were invited but did not attend. Nor did they return any of the numerous calls or text messages from my husband in the months before the wedding.

We received the invitation to the son’s December wedding last week and learned that only my husband is invited—not me. Just to be clear, I hardly know the son or his fiancée since he and my husband have been estranged for a while and the son aligns himself very much with his mother, who makes no secret of the fact that she believes she was entitled to more money in the divorce. I came into the picture after the divorce but the son has always been openly hostile to me and my family. Worse, he is very hostile to my husband who has given him a thriving business to run and hundreds of thousands of dollars in properties.

I have urged my husband to go to the wedding without me since his daughters will be there with their husbands and he enjoys spending time with them. I am afraid if he doesn’t go, it will cause a bigger rift and will be seen as a tit-for-tat or retribution for the fact that they did not come to our wedding. My husband, however, says he is sick and tired of being treated like a second-class citizen by his son and in a very rare conversation with his son this week, told him he wouldn’t attend the wedding unless I am invited. I am going to support my husband no matter what he decides, but what is the right thing to do in these circumstances?

Care and Feeding

My Kid Said What?: I am the mother of an introverted 11-year-old girl. She is smart, kind, beautiful, hard-working, and empathetic. This year, she started at a school in a new part of town for 5th grade and made a couple of friends from different cultural backgrounds—cultures that highly value education and academic achievement.

However, she started a group chat on her phone that got all the girls in trouble. They were having conversations that included words about private parts of the body and topics about sexuality. The conversations were clearly juvenile and did not indicate anything scary; it looked like natural curiosity from hitting puberty. They were also cussing, especially my kid—again, in a very juvenile way. I received an uncomfortable phone call from one of the other moms with screenshots showing parts of the group chat I missed. The other families took it as my daughter influencing their daughters in immoral ways. They have banned their daughters from playing with mine, and they are not allowed to see her outside of school.

I talked to my daughter about internet safety and her digital footprint, and we are having ongoing conversations about sexuality so that she can ask me questions and I can explain things to her without any shameful stigma. She has also been putting a lot more effort into a group project they have all been working on at school to try to make amends because they made it known they don’t like their daughters interacting with her anymore. To me, that is evidence of her good heart. But she has already been stigmatized. I think part of it is cultural because they are both immigrant families from more conservative cultures. I honestly had never interacted with anyone from these cultures before moving here, but I am trying to be open-minded, learn as much as I can, and be culturally sensitive in navigating this. I just can’t tell if this is cultural, or if this is just stuck-up rich people being jerks to my not-rich daughter and me, a single mom.

I have apologized and tried to show empathy. I have asked how I can make amends to their families and make them feel comfortable. But the reaction has mostly been anger toward my daughter and the implication that I’m a bad mother over the technology part. I could see one conversation, but this has been excessive. I feel ashamed and humiliated, and I don’t know what to do. I feel ostracized in our new community. If it’s cultural, there are key things I do not understand. If it’s the wealth gap, I don’t even know how to move forward. What do I do?

How to Do It

Married to a Stranger: I recently found out my husband of 20+ years has a secret porn collection and obsession that I don’t know if I can handle. We watch porn together about 2-3 times a month and are both pretty open sexually so I’m not bothered by porn in general. It’s the content, frequency, hiding, and secrecy that’s driving me insane.

I’ve caught him looking at racy photos on Instagram and other social media sites, which is a relatively normal thing to do. But it bothers me if he does it in front of me and my daughter (even if she’s sleeping). Recently, I went into his office and found that he’s been playing sex RPG video games a lot. A few of the games he plays have incest and young girl (teenage) themes that bother me immensely. There’s nothing illegal, but it makes me so uncomfortable especially since we have a baby girl and a few of the games are father-daughter relationships (yuck).

In my snooping I also found webcam girls he watches and a fake social media account where he looks at adult women. I’ve also caught him watching porn downstairs when I’m with the baby and watching racy videos when my daughter is asleep next to him late at night. I called him out for that and he promised he wouldn’t do it again.

I’m at an impasse. I don’t know how to talk to him about this without him blowing up and I don’t know where we go from here. The hiding and lying to my face is a dealbreaker, and I’m worried about the frequency that he’s using this media. I feel hurt, confused, and like I don’t even know who this man is that I married. I’m considering divorce as I don’t want to be a crazy snooping wife and it’s making me crazy and insecure. I understand porn habits and some kink fetishes are just fantasy but the incest stuff makes me cringe so bad, especially since we have a daughter. Am I overreacting? Any tips on how to talk about this or how to move forward?

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