My Future Mil Handed Me A 60-page Prenup At Our Rehearsal Dinner. It Forbade Me From Gaining 20 Lbs Or I’d Lose My Future Kids. I Walked Out, But Should I Have Fought For Him?

Starting Over

My brother drove me back to our parents’ house and helped me carry everything up to my childhood bedroom where it barely fit between my old furniture. I spent that night crying into the same pillow I’d used in high school, the one with the faded floral pattern that my mom had bought me for my 13th birthday.

I woke up the next morning and had to face the reality that I needed to find a new apartment and rebuild my entire life from nothing. Work on Monday was awful because several of my co-workers had been invited to the wedding and everyone knew it got canceled.

People kept giving me these sympathetic looks in the hallway or the break room then quickly looking away when I made eye contact like they didn’t want to make things worse by acknowledging what happened. Roheit stopped by my desk mid-morning with coffee and said he was sorry things fell apart the way they did.

I appreciated that he didn’t ask for details or offer advice about relationships or tell me everything happens for a reason. He just said if I needed anything at all even just someone to vent to or help with a project to distract myself I should let him know.

I thanked him and meant it because his simple kindness without prying felt like the first normal human interaction I’d had since the rehearsal dinner disaster. I threw myself into a big analysis project I’d been putting off, spending 8 hours building spreadsheets and running reports because focusing on work kept me from thinking about my personal life falling apart.

My boss stopped by around 3:00 to check in and said she’d heard about the wedding cancellation and wanted me to know I could take some personal time if I needed it. I told her I’d rather work because sitting at home just made everything worse, and she nodded like she understood and said to let her know if that changed.

Judith called my phone directly on Tuesday afternoon while I was in a meeting. I sent it to voicemail and tried to focus on the presentation my coworker was giving about third-quarter projections.

When the meeting ended I saw she’d left a message and I almost deleted it without listening. Something made me hit play though, maybe just needing to know what she’d say after everything she’d done.

Her voicemail managed to be both an apology and an accusation in the same breath. She said she was sorry I took her prenup suggestion so personally and she was only trying to protect her son from making a mistake.

She said clearly I was too immature to understand a mother’s love and the lengths a parent would go to keep their child safe. She hoped someday when I had children of my own I’d look back and realize she was just doing what any good mother would do.

The message made me so angry I had to grab my keys and go sit in my car in the parking garage for 20 minutes just to calm down enough to go back to work. I played the message three more times, getting angrier each time at her complete inability to see that she’d done anything wrong.

She was apologizing for my reaction to her behavior, not for the behavior itself, which wasn’t actually an apology at all. My dad suggested that evening that I should talk to a lawyer about whether Judith’s actions caused me any recoverable damages.

He pointed out that I’d paid for most of the wedding myself, almost $40,000 between the dress and the venue deposit and the photographer and a hundred other expenses. If we could prove Judith deliberately sabotaged the wedding to cause me financial harm, maybe I could recover some of that money.

I made an appointment with a lawyer for Thursday afternoon and spent 2 hours going through all my wedding expenses and emails and text messages to document everything. The lawyer was a woman in her 50s with kind eyes who listened to my whole story without interrupting.

When I finished she explained that while Judith’s behavior was horrible and cruel, I probably didn’t have much legal standing for a lawsuit. I’d have to prove she intentionally sabotaged the wedding specifically to cause me financial harm, not just that her behavior led to the cancellation.

Since I was the one who technically called off the wedding by walking out, it would be hard to argue that Judith caused my damages rather than my own choice causing them. The consultation cost me $300 I didn’t really have right now with all my wedding expenses already draining my savings, which just added to my anger and frustration about the whole situation.

That weekend Talia picked me up in her car and we drove around looking at apartments I could actually afford on my own. The first place had mold in the bathroom and a landlord who kept staring at my chest while he showed us around.

The second place was nice but wanted first month, last month, security deposit, and a pet deposit even though I don’t have pets, which added up to more than I had in my checking account. The third place was a one-bedroom on the second floor of an older building with carpet that had seen better days and a kitchen the size of a closet, but the rent was $800 a month and the landlord seemed normal.

I filled out the application right there while Talia looked in the cabinets and tested the water pressure. The landlord called my references that same afternoon and by Monday I had approval to move in on the 1st of next month.

I signed the lease in his office and handed over a check for the security deposit that my parents had transferred into my account that morning. And when I walked out with my copy of the lease I felt like I might throw up.

This was real now. This was my apartment, just mine—proof that the life I’d planned with Alex was actually over and I was starting from scratch.

Talia took me out for ice cream after and told me this was a good thing, even though it didn’t feel good yet, that having my own place meant I could build exactly the life I wanted without compromising. I wanted to believe her but mostly I just felt sad and scared about living alone for the first time in 3 years.