I want to invite my ex-boyfriend to my wedding, but my fiancé said no. What should I do?
Dear A&E,
I’m getting married in six months and I want to invite my ex-boyfriend, who is a family friend. We broke up long before I met my fiancé and I no longer have any romantic feelings towards him, but my husband-to-be has asked that he isn’t invited to the wedding.
He doesn’t think it is appropriate and I suspect he just doesn’t believe you can really be friends with an ex in an uncomplicated way. I am devastated he won’t be there and don’t know how to break the news to him.
– Dismayed
Dear Dismayed,
Normally we try to see both sides of the story to avoid bulldozing through feelings, but your letter gives us none of the nuances that inevitably inform your current predicament. It is hard to know if your relationship with your ex-boyfriend was knotty, obsessive and “on-offy”.
It is hard to know whether your family were obsessed with him. It is hard to know if he pulverised your heart. It is hard to know if your husband-to-be is controlling and unreasonable. So, seeing as we only have face-value to work with, we would ask: why are you so devastated?
If this ex is merely an old friend you were once involved with, then why can’t you keep this in perspective? If your feelings are so uncomplicated, why are your levels of distress so high? Is your emotional involvement in your ex simply too high to be healthy?
Sure, it is understandable you might be a little disappointed that he won’t watch you walk down the aisle but… devastated? Really? It is little wonder your fiancé’s instinct is to attempt to keep this level of intensity away from your wedding. Your ex-boyfriend should not be taking up this amount of oxygen.
First of all, we are assuming you have checked in with yourself and you are not still in love with this man or locked in some kind of emotional dance of death with him. Because, if you are, we have a fresh set of problems. Assuming things are fine, why are you so worried about “breaking the news”? Is he deeply fragile? Neurotic? Manipulative? Or is it that you have just done that perfectly understandable thing of hyper-fixating on a small issue when a life-changing event is in the post? Now, that, we understand.
Weddings are maddening, expensive and stressful. But there is a life lesson in here: remember that you will rarely keep everyone happy all the time. You can twist yourself out of shape for the rest of your life trying to make that happen, or you can become an effective communicator and prioritise.
Life would be grand if your future husband was unthreatened enough by whatever passed between you and your ex to say: “OK, darling, ask everyone you’ve ever slept with – this is just about us in the end.” But perhaps allow him his sensitivity. Presumably, at the ceremony he wants the only romantic connection either of you have experienced to be between the two of you. How would you feel if his former girlfriend, for whom his feelings matched the intensity of yours towards your ex-boyfriend (whatever those may be), beloved by all his family, was sitting, twinkling, in the congregation?
How do you break the news? With no drama. The wedding lens has a tendency to turn everything into a soap opera, but this is a simple conversation. Your fiancé feels uncomfortable about him being present. And that’s that. You do not need to manage his feelings; you don’t need a deep and momentous conversation. You just need to deal with this and then it is done. Anticipation is almost always the worst bit.
What if you can’t face that conversation with your ex or bear to hurt his feelings, even a little? What if you still believe that your fiancé is being irrational and perverse and depriving you of something meaningful that is crucial to your heart and happiness? Then look very carefully at the broader picture. Because if you need him to say yes to the ex, then we would ask if you are either being childish or if the man that you feel a true connection with is not the man whose name is next to yours on the invitation. This is simple, Dismayed. Unless it’s not. Only you can know.
