My cousin is older than me and I have always enjoyed a close relationship with her children, despite not living nearby. Her daughter was my bridesmaid, and after we emigrated when she was a teenager I became a distant mentor – cheering on her ambitions and inviting her to spend a post-uni gap year using our home as a base. She has a great independent streak and quickly found her feet, and became close with my own children, some of whom now live near her in the UK. We all get together regularly when I visit each summer. She’s always had access to our holiday cottage, and we let her stay rent-free in our daughter’s university flat while she was saving for a mortgage.
I was delighted when she got engaged, but heard nothing for months apart from a note from her mum to say they were looking forward to the wedding. It later transpired that she had decided to have an intimate affair. I was sad, of course, but as they didn’t have a big budget I understood, and watched the date come and go.
I thought I was OK about it, but then she sent me photos showing all the trimmings of a “proper” wedding, with a gushing account of her wonderful day with “family and close friends”. I felt absolutely bereft.
I have been trying to rationalise my emotional response. I feel foolish for investing time, effort and goodwill in someone who doesn’t “appreciate” it enough to include me in their life’s key moments. I don’t feel as if I was ever transactional in being there for her, and she has voiced her appreciation, but something about it has deeply hurt and upset me.
I had to edit your longer letter so some of the softer edges are missing. Weddings, more than any other gathering, seem to bring out something in people, perhaps because it’s a union of two people and that can seem quite excluding as they go into their new life. Maybe you worry you won’t be so important to your cousin’s daughter now?
You said it wasn’t transactional, but I wonder if you’re being totally honest with yourself? I too have been very generous with extended family and I too have been left upset and disappointed. For me, these younger members didn’t seem to “get” family the way I felt they should. It made me miss my parents and the way things were. It made me feel taken for granted and invisible, and it made me realise how I’d taken older members of the family for granted too. I wonder if any of this chimes with you? Not being invited seems to have triggered feelings of real loss.
I went to psychotherapist Chris Mills, who said: “One of the hardest things is to find that values we believed we shared with someone turn out not to be – or they are expressed in a different way.” I think this is key: we don’t always get back what we give – or at least from the same people. “It can feel like a punishing rejection, a betrayal,” said Mills.
I don’t think your younger cousin was excluding you; she just didn’t invite you. She could have handled it better and been more upfront, but she may have worried about your reaction – with good reason, it seems.
“I’m guessing,” said Mills, “that your cousin’s daughter would have invited you to her wedding if she and her husband had opted for a big all-inclusive party. For their own reasons, they didn’t. But she took pains to send you photos and to include you in her enthusiasm. She clearly values her relationship with you, and probably sees it as far more than something symbolised just by what happened on one day.”
Mills also said: “You now know your cousin’s daughter better in a certain way than you did before. If all this could lead to you having a no less loving and supportive, but perhaps more equal adult relationship with her in the future, it would probably be the best outcome for you both, as well as the best balm for your hurt.”
You are entitled to feel as you feel. Families take work. We don’t all get on all the time, and not everyone has the same rulebook. But there are still lots of occasions ahead where she may surprise you and be more like the person you hoped she would be.
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