UPDATE - Is my (24F) mother (56F) overreacting about me wanting to spend Christmas as a newlywed with just my husband (27M), or am I in the wrong?

Original TL;DR - It’s always been my new husband and I’s plan to spend our first Christmas Day just us - my mother initially had no issues, but recently has become annoyed about the situation and is suggesting that we’re alienating ourselves and no longer see ourselves as part of the family owing to this and our previous decision to elope. Who is in the right?

Original post here.

So Christmas has been and gone, and there was a bit more drama than I wanted. After my original post I contacted my mother to reaffirm to her the reasons we wanted to spend Christmas Day itself on our own, and she said that she understood, and said she looked forward to seeing us on Boxing Day. However, a few hours later I got a call from my father asking why my mother was crying and saying that I’d rung her up screaming and shouting about her interfering with our life. I said that nothing like that happened, and that it hurt that she was accusing me of that when I was just trying to be mature about the situation. My father sympathised, and said he’d try to talk to her about it.

I checked in frequently in the days up to Christmas, but my mother read and ignored my messages. Whenever I spoke to my father he said that she was telling him I hadn’t been in contact and she was waiting for me to apologise, but he had seen that I was in her call and text history. He advised that visiting on Boxing Day might not be the best idea, but if it got to that stage he would visit us alone since none of this was our doing.

We had our own private Christmas Day, during which we found out that I was pregnant! We had started trying for our first child in secret a few months ago, but didn’t suspect anything until I felt sick at the smell of turkey! We’re going to keep this our little secret for the next few weeks at least with everyone, my husband’s family included. I texted my mother to wish her a Happy Christmas in the morning, and sent another text in the evening asking if she still wanted us to go up to visit tomorrow - I got a one word reply, ‘no’. We took my mother at her word and we didn’t visit the following day - I think she was expecting me to grovel at her feet begging for forgiveness, but that’s not going to happen anymore. I called my father and told him that she had decided that we weren’t visiting and it definitely wasn’t on our end. He visited in the afternoon and brought the dog, and we all went for a walk instead of worry about what my mother was doing or saying to other people about it. Apparently a horde of her friends have been told that I shredded her Christmas card and posted it back to them among other things, but I’m done worrying about what my mother says. I’m not at this stage going to completely cut her off or say she can’t see her future grandchild, but our relationship is definitely strained.

TL;DR - Mother tried to act like I was cutting her out when in reality she shut down and ignored me before telling me not to visit on the expected day. Had our own Christmas, and unexpectedly found out we were expecting our first child instead of sitting through an awkward day.

Submitted December 28, 2018 at 02:35AM by 8987600 http://bit.ly/2CDAxa0