My husband (30m) used to be my boss. About 9 years ago I started working as his assistant. We spent about 2.5 years ignoring our mutual attraction until we gave in. We then went to HR, who reassigned me, and the whole thing was strictly above board from the time we began dating.
I got pregnant about a year later, and my husband and I decided to just get married. While we’d only really been dating for about 1.5 years, we knew each other completely, loved each other, lived together, and there was a baby on the way.
We knew how it would look, but I had to leave the company anyway due to problems with my new boss, so we didn’t anticipate this causing any issues, except with my parents.
They (62m/57f) have always been overprotective, so I knew they wouldn’t like me dating my boss, and hadn’t told them, but I had to tell them if I wanted them at my wedding. We decided to be mostly honest with them, about how it was strictly professional until it wasn’t, how the second it got unprofessional we went to HR, how he had never taken advantage of me, but now we wanted to get married and we wanted them there.
We did not mention the baby, because I felt that giving them that information in addition to the rest all at once would just break them. I was only about 4 months along when the wedding happened, so the bump was easily hidden by a flowy dress.
The wedding itself went off without a hitch, and apart from my mother pulling me into the bathroom shortly before the ceremony to ask if I was sure about this, which I said I was, my parents seemed to take it well.
The ceremony and reception were at 2 different venues, and we had to travel from one to the other, and my parents never arrived at the reception. I called them and got ignored, and then my brother called them and they told him that they were going home.
I don’t remember the exact reason they gave but it amounted to them being tired and uncomfortable. I tried contacting them after the wedding, but found that I was blocked on everything except email, which I used to send them a long letter essentially saying that I’m an adult who made an adult choice and I hope they can respect that.
5 years later, I have not heard from my parents since my wedding. My husband and I are not big on social media in general but I recently posted something for our 5th anniversary in which I mentioned our 2 kids and third on the way.
Within a month of making this post, my parents left a voicemail saying they saw the post, and, having had no idea that they had grandchildren previously, now want to meet them. I haven’t responded and there have been a few follow ups since then asking why I haven’t.
I don’t know what to do, but my gut instinct is that 5 years is too long, and it’s about the kids, not about them respecting my choices or relationship. However, I can’t help but feel that I’m being unfair, and my brother agrees, because I told them in my email that if they could learn to respect my choice and my marriage eventually, then we could talk, and now I’m retroactively applying a time limit.
Edit: can’t find a way to work this in organically but my husband is not white. I am, as are my parents. I don’t think this is a race thing or that my parents are racist, and neither does my husband, and we don’t understand why they would want to meet our mixed race children if they were racist, but this element is still gnawing at me.
Should I reach out to them? If I did, how would we go about rebuilding the relationship?
UPDATE:
I asked to talk yesterday. We were on zoom within an hour. It was my parents and me and my husband. They asked to see the kids, and I said they could see them eventually, dependant on them earning our trust and convincing us they were going to be positive additions to the kids’ lives.
They asked to start by reading me a letter that they claimed to have written on my wedding day. It said that they were uncomfortable with me marrying my former boss as they thought he took advantage of me, so they left between the wedding and reception to avoid a scene, but they wanted me to know they were here for me despite their issues with him.
They added that they would have sent this to me the morning after my wedding, but then I sent my email about them needing to respect my choices, and they were so ashamed they couldn’t bring themselves to send theirs.
Seeing my anniversary post made them realise how much they’ve missed in 5 years and they really don’t want to miss any more.
I had some questions, like what the big deal was with me marrying my former boss, and they said that it just wasn’t what they had in mind for my wedding day and my future spouse. I asked why they even came to the wedding at all if they didn’t support the marriage, and my dad responded that he wanted to walk his daughter down the aisle as it was the only chance he’d get.
The way it was phrased implied that they had intentionally only come to the wedding so he could give me away, and always planned to leave halfway, and because he said “my daughter”, and didn’t talk to me directly, it was pretty clear he was thinking about my older sister, who passed away.
My husband caught that, too, and said that if they were talking about me, they should address me directly, then added that if they had planned to leave they should have told us as we wouldn’t have invited them, and the fact they waited 5 years to reach out was going to take more reasons than shame as, as a father, he didn’t understand how they could ignore their daughter for years, or only get back in touch when we had kids.
My dad snapped that he wasn’t going to take this from a “cushi”, a slur meaning dark skinned. My mother immediately tried to run damage control but I ended the call. They have since messaged me several times trying to explain that calling my husband a racial slur wasn’t indicative of a racist attitude, and he wouldn’t have said that in front of the kids, so they should still get to meet them.
I’ve spent 5 years wondering how they were so offended by me marrying my boss that it earned no contact for half a decade. Turns out they’re just racist. It’s almost nice to find out.
If it was just the boss thing I would have sympathy for them and we might even be able to reconcile, but with this, it’s now just a question of if I’m going to knowingly expose my mixed race children to a couple of racists, which I am obviously not going to do.
Conclusion
Years of silence didn’t break her spirit, nor did the pain of parental rejection diminish her resilience. Through her journey, she learned to stand on her own, building a loving marriage and forging her own path despite the absence of her parents’ support. The story ends with an unexpected turn—a potential step toward healing and understanding. It’s a reminder that no matter how deep the wounds, sometimes time and sincerity can bridge even the widest gaps. Her story leaves us pondering: can love and perseverance heal the scars of rejection and bring families back together, or is some distance forever etched in history?
Here’s how people reacted:
The word Cushi or Kushi (Hebrew: כּוּשִׁי Hebrew pronunciation: [kuˈʃi] colloquial: [ˈkuʃi]) is generally used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to a dark-skinned person of African descent, equivalent to Greek Αἰθίοψ “Aithíops”.
Morgan Freeman: They are racist.
Nope, they’re a couple of bigots. Obviously OOP and her family don’t need that energy. I’m glad she learned the truth before exposing her kids to their nonsense.
What a rough thing to find out about your parents. I’m so sorry OOP.
“Well, that’s a complicated situation. Maybe they were very worried since marrying someone who used to be your boss is just them being overprotecti–“
***\*Reads TL;DR\****
“Oh, never mind…”
>We decided to be mostly honest with them, about how it was strictly professional until it wasn’t, how the second it got unprofessional we went to HR, how he had never taken advantage of me, but now we wanted to get married and we wanted them there.
This is over-explaining. Over-explainers often grow up in homes with parents who don’t respect their feelings or choices, and they feel like they have to justify everything—hence the over-explaining. This woman is an adult who made a choice to date someone. She was already so worried about her parents that she kept the relationship hidden from them, and then when she told them, she went into all this great detail to try and earn their approval. Maybe I’m reading waaaaay into this (hey, it’s Reddit), but I think it says a lot about them already, long before the racism came into play.
I would be worried inviting my family to a wedding if I was marrying anyone darker than ivory because of this exact shit.
So you finally get a chance to see your grandkids and all you need to do is be human and pretend to not be racist.
AND. YOU. CAN’T. EVEN. DO. THAT.
Sounds like maybe the death of their eldest child really broke them (although that doesn’t explain the racism).
All said, OOP is fortunate to have found the real ‘reason’ and now can live comfortably knowing that she (and her children) are better off without the parents.
“We don’t think they’re racist”
to
“TL;DR: They’re racist”
was just amazing.
Older sister who passed away:
>I feel the same. They talked non stop about my wedding day when I was a kid so the fact they just ghosted me on the day was so jarring. It didn’t even feel real when it happened. And then when I went to call them to tell them I was pregnant, something else they had always eagerly anticipated, I was blocked on everything. Just because my husband used to be my boss. I don’t think they would hurt my husband or kids, but I am concerned about them. I had an older sister who passed when she was very young. I never met her, but I was named after her, and that caused all the issues you would expect growing up, so if there ever was a question of them meeting my kids, particularly my daughter, who is also named after my sister, I would need to know that they were safe to be around her.
Regarding them leaving a mini rant about how they haven’t met their grandkids in the voicemail they reached out with…
>They actually mentioned that, too. Dad said something like “you had no problem emailing us after the wedding, was emailing after the birth too hard?”, so they don’t seem to think of them blocking me as actually blocking me, because emails were always there. My in laws are not the loving grandparents my kids deserve, and I have to admit that is partially factoring into my thoughts on my parents, as the in laws are not ideal, but I don’t think my parents will be any better.