Married Kid’s Lover Not Invited for Thanksgiving
Where is the author writing from? Portland, of course!
DEAR AMY: I have always considered myself open to diversity and open to people in general.
I have a good, strong relationship with my daughter. But she has thrown one at me that I am having trouble negotiating.
Two years ago she married a man whom I adore for accepting her and loving her the way she is, and for adopting her two children who were fatherless. The children are both doing much better with him in their lives, and so is she.
Last May, however, she and her husband announced to me that they were both gay. They were planning to remain in the marriage, and each of them would be free to have a significant other on the side.
Her husband already had someone. Not only did they want me to accept this, but to celebrate it.
I told them I could do the first, but not the second.
Now the holidays are arriving. My daughter asked if she could include her new girlfriend at Thanksgiving, because, she said, she’s proud of me and wants her girlfriend to know me. She knows that in the past I have always been open to including others at the Thanksgiving table.
I told her I like “Amanda” just fine (I’ve met her), but that I didn’t feel right including this big, happy extended “family” at the table as if everything were OK, partly because I feel that the whole thing has not played out and that it is endangering her marriage.
I told her that maybe in the future I can manage it better, but just now I’m not up to it.
I know this is not the end of the discussion.
Any words of wisdom for me? – Stymied in Portland, Ore.