Tell my family I'm engaged

this is becoming ridiculous. my grandma found out, because i asked her discreetly to make time to go out to lunch with my mom and i because i had something to tell both of them. she got so freaked out that she guessed every possible scenario (except pregnancy) until she figured it out. so, not she’s been sneakily (or not so sneakily) trying to help me figure out a way to tell my mother. and it’s annoying me. i told her to keep her mouth shut and that i don’t need he help…because she’s going to mess it up, and if it gets to the point where my mother finds out she didn’t know first, she’ll never forgive me.

plus the boy’s family is in town. i wanted to tell her two weeks ago, but she’s so bitchy all the time that it never seemed like the RIGHT time. so, they’re here, and they’ve known for months, but i can’t tell her…so she can’t meet them. which she doesn’t want to anyway. our relationship (my mom and i that is) has been on the rocks for a month or so, and it keeps getting worse. we got in a huge fight about (what else) money, and i don’t know what we can do because she can’t stop being controlling. i haven’t lived at home in years. i haven’t asked her for nary a thing in years either. except her support. which she has the hardest time giving me. so now she’s disrespecting me ands trying to say i’m incapable of being on my own and that i need to move in with her. like a child. she always shows me conditional love, based on me living my life how she chooses. and i’m sick of it. i don’t want to hurt her, but she is making it really hard for me to communicate with her honestly anymore. i’m so disheartened.

Once Grandma knows, everyone will know. The letter is written.

As far as my sisters, they’re the only close family who don’t know. By close I mean by blood, not by our actual relationship. I’m always the last person to find out anything that’s going on in their lives, and vice versa. It’s been over a year since I even spoke to one of my sisters. So it doesn’t really make a difference if they know or not.

She wrote me another letter, which was in my mailbox on Friday. In it, she explains that, having not heard from me, she got the nerve to call my father and ask him what was going on. She asked if there was a problem between me and my parents. He said yes. She asked if it involved a boy, and he said he guessed so. She really seemed more concerned with not wanting it to ruin her relationship with me, as my sisters, who have also I guess had some issues with our dad and my mom, never call or write or come to family reunions or anything. She really doesn’t want to lose me, and she’s not going to.

I should have told her a long time ago. If anyone in the family was going to try to understand, not judge me, and not hop on the bandwagon, it would be her. She has already shown that by telling me that she also eloped against her parents’ wishes and without their knowledge, which she has never told me before. She ended by saying that I should have a reliable form of birth control and not to use a diaphragm because that’s how my dad got here, that I should consider living with my fiance before marriage, that a lot of guys are just in it for the sex, and that hopefully he was a good guy.

I think she understands because of everyone in my family, she is the most like me and the only one who is really even a little like me. Despite my secret fear that my biological father was the milkman (I guess I should advertise that I’m engaged on milk cartons so he’ll get the message, haha), on the inside I am more like her, even if I don’t look like my dad’s side and only halfway look like my mom’s side.

I am writing a letter confirming her suspicions and letting her know everything is okay and I don’t want to just drop off the face of the Earth as far as she’s concerned.

But I’m not sure if I should tell her in a letter, and if so, how to tell her. Because “Guess what, Grandma? The reason you haven’t heard from me in forever is that I’m engaged, but it’s caused me a lot of problems with my parents, and they don’t want to talk about it, so they made me promise not to tell anyone else in our family” just doesn’t sound that great. Once I do tell her, though, I won’t have to worry about telling the rest of that side of my family, because my grandma will literally tell the entire state of New Jersey. She might as well put it on a billboard or take out an ad in the New York Times. She also thinks other people’s medical problems and various operations are dinner table conversation regardless of the gore involved, but I won’t go into that here.

I think I’ll also email my sister and tell her. She can’t say shit about his record because she’s had a DUI, which is worse than anything he’s ever been convicted of by far (in my book, DUI is attempted murder…I’m not going by what the law says as far as classes of misdemeanors and felonies). She can’t say shit about his age because she’s literally dated a man older than our father. And she probably won’t say shit about his marital status, either. The only things she’ll complain about is that I’m too young (she’s in her mid-thirties and unmarried and also VERY immature) and that he and I together fall below the poverty line (her past few boyfriends have been filthy rich). I just pray she won’t talk about it with my mom (her stepmom), because they’re a lot closer than my mom and I.

I’ve had a lot of family problems recently. Most of them started around the time my fiance and I got together, but that’s not his fault. I first began experiencing my mom’s wrath when I wrote a bad check for $4.00. Yes, $4.00, which was a mistake and not an intent to defraud and which was paid off long before it ever got turned over to the DA, although she told me to my face that I was a criminal when she is the one opening my mail, which is a federal offense, unlike negotiating a worthless instrument, which is a misdemeanor and for a check that small would be a day or two in jail, max, if I just never paid it.

So she was already mad at me for that, and then she didn’t like my fiance because he wasn’t her ideal of who I should be with. I am not her ideal of who her daughter should be. She told me in no uncertain terms not to tell anyone else in the family about him. Her, my dad, and my brother were apparently scarred enough. That and she was just too embarassed over it. I guess she thinks it’s going to just go away, because I don’t know how she’s going to hide the fact that I’m married and have children when I get to that point.

Well, last Christmas when I didn’t go see my parents (I refuse to use the phrase “come home,” because their home is NOT my home), I really freaked out both my grandmothers. One of them cried on the phone with me Christmas day asking me where I was and why wasn’t I there with them. So I told her the truth, that I’d had some family problems and was with my fiance. My mother called me back and chewed me out for telling her. My other grandmother wrote me a letter asking me what was up. I’ve been meaning to write to her but don’t know if I should tell her. I know I should, but I don’t know how. She’s the family gossip, too (not on purpose…she just can’t keep a secret), which just makes it harder.

The people who know so far are my two cousins on my mom’s side, one of aforementioned cousin’s wives, my grandmother on my mom’s side, my mom, my dad, and my brother.

The people who don’t know are my mom’s sister, my two sisters, my dad’s parents, my dad’s four sisters, and their assorted children, my cousins, of which there are many, some of whom I don’t even talk to anyway.

I just feel like I’m living a lie and that my family deserves to know and that I have a right to tell them, regardless of what my mother thinks. It’s my life, and she can’t hide this forever.

My fiance hated it that I didn’t even tell my parents about him for the longest time because I knew how judgmental and narrow-minded they were, and the fact that he’s not rich, doesn’t come from a rich family, has somewhat of a rap sheet (nothing serious, though, just stupid stuff and no worse than what some of my relatives have had), and has an estranged wife would NOT go over well. I was right. The estranged wife thing, especially. My mom acts like I’m some kind of trashy vamp who just walked right into their lives, which I’m sure she imagines as being like Leave It to Beaver, except June Cleaver was literally a crackwhore in this version, and fucked things up. She made me confess my adultery to a priest.

He, on the other hand, introduced me to both his parents the first week we were together, although he waited to tell them we were engaged because they would have flipped out over the suddenness and the fact that he just got out of a very bad marriage. They know now, though, and they’ve known for awhile. All his friends know me as his wife, and all my friends know him as my husband. His kids don’t know we’re engaged, but they know it’s pretty serious because he wouldn’t introduce just any woman to his kids. Even his (soon-to-be ex) wife knows that he and I will be married one day. But so many people I care about don’t know that, and it bothers me.

For all practical purposes we are married, and I HATE lying, or, rather, omitting. But I’m not sure I can handle my mother right now.