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My Son Isn't Inviting Me To His Wedding!

QUESTION: A year ago we were discussing wedding plans with our son and future daughter-in-law when they said they were going out of the country to get married and would not be inviting anyone. I said, 'We respect your decision, but if any of her family is invited then we would expect to be included also.'

After they left my son called me crying hysterically and told me to never contact him again. I've mentioned to him that I was following his request until he told me differently. Am I responding correctly by not contacting him?

A. I would say since this came out of the blue and you were in contact up to that point, I wouldn't respect that request, initially. I would pursue it. It's not completely clear what his objection was. It sounds like his objection was that you have the gall to say that if they're going to invite her parents, then you would want to be invited too. I can see why you would say that. I could imagine myself saying that. It seems like a reasonable thing to say.

My guess is that they probably were inviting her parents and A) she took it out on him in some kind of way or B) he has a lot of fragility around his autonomy, so the fact that you're making any demands around "his" wedding makes you persona non grata.

I would try to reach out to him. I would make it clear that you weren't trying to be controlling or pushy but acknowledge that it may have came across that way. Make it clear that you love him and want to be close to him. Say, "This is something that could be worked out." Don't say "should" because that's a demand.

In general, in the early period of an estrangement, you shouldn't take at face value the request unless the kid just gets inflamed when you try to reach out. A lot of parents feel damned if they do, damned if they don't. If they pursue the kid, they may get accused of stalking them. If they don't, then they get accused of neglecting them.  Your best bet is to try a range of actions and observe how the respond to them.
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About Dr. Coleman

Dr. Coleman is a psychologist in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area and a Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-partisan organization of leading sociologists, historians, psychologists and demographers dedicated to providing the press and public with the latest research and best-practice findings about American families. He has lectured at Harvard University, The University of California at Berkeley, The University of London, Cornell Weill Medical School, and blogs on parent-adult child relationships for the U.C. Berkeley publication, Greater Good Magazine.

Dr. Coleman is frequently contacted by the media for opinions and commentary about changes in the American family. He has been a frequent guest on the Today Show, NPR, and The BBC, and has also been featured on Sesame Street, 20/20, Good Morning America, America Online Coaches, PBS, and numerous news programs for FOX, ABC, CNN, and NBC television. His advice has appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Shriver Report, Fortune, Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Psychology Today, U.S. World and News Report, Parenting Magazine, The Baltimore Sun and many others.

He is the author of numerous articles and chapters and has written four books: The Marriage Makeover: Finding Happiness in Imperfect Harmony (St. Martin's Press); The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework (St. Martin's Press); When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along (HarperCollins); and Married with Twins: Life, Love and the Pursuit of Marital Harmony. His books have been translated into Chinese, Croatian, and Korean, and are also available in the U.K., Canada, and Australia.

He is the co-editor, along with historian Stephanie Coontz of seven online volumes of Unconventional Wisdom: News You Can Use, a compendium of noteworthy research on the contemporary family, gender, sexuality, poverty, and work-family issues.