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?

The Attempted Reconciliation

Six weeks after the canceled wedding I was in my new apartment on a Saturday morning making breakfast when someone knocked on my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone and I was still in pajamas so I checked the peephole before opening it.

Alex stood in the hallway holding a coffee cup and looking nervous. He was dressed better than he’d been at our coffee meeting weeks ago, wearing actual jeans and a nice shirt instead of the rumpled clothes he’d had on before.

I stood there for a minute trying to decide if I should open the door then finally unlocked it and let him in. He apologized for showing up without calling first and said he’d been working up the courage to come by for days.

I gestured for him to sit on my couch and I took the chair across from him keeping physical distance between us. He set the coffee on my table and started talking about therapy.

He said he’d been going twice a week for the past month, working specifically on his relationship with his mother and learning to set boundaries. He talked about how his therapist had helped him see patterns in his behavior, how he’d always prioritized his mother’s feelings over everyone else’s including his own.

He said he finally understood what I’d been trying to tell him at the rehearsal dinner about choosing between being a husband and being his mother’s son. Alex spent almost an hour telling me about the work he’d been doing.

He’d made a list of all the times his mother had interfered in his life and relationships. He’d practiced saying no to her in therapy sessions. He’d even confronted her about the prenup ambush and told her it was unacceptable.

He said his mother hadn’t taken it well and they’d had a huge fight where she accused him of being brainwashed by therapy and ungrateful for everything she’d done for him. But he’d held firm and told her he wouldn’t have a relationship with her unless she apologized to me and respected his choices going forward.

The part that really got my attention was when he said they hadn’t spoken in 2 weeks. He told me this was the longest he’d ever gone without talking to his mother and it was hard but also necessary.

He looked at me with this hopeful expression and asked if there was any chance we could try again, not jump back into being engaged but maybe start over with dating and rebuilding trust. He said he genuinely believed he’d changed and he understood now what had been wrong before.

I could see he meant it, that he really did think he’d made progress and fixed the problems that broke us up. I told him I needed time to think about it, which was true.

But even as I said it I was noticing things about his story that bothered me. All his talk about setting boundaries was about what he’d told his mother, not about what he’d actually done to restructure his life.

He was still working at the family business, still financially dependent on his trust fund that she controlled, still living in an apartment his parents owned. He hadn’t made any concrete changes that would make his boundaries sustainable long term.

It felt like he’d made emotional progress in understanding the problem but he hadn’t made practical progress in solving it. After Alex left I sat on my couch for a while just processing everything he’d said.

Then I called Talia because I needed to talk it through with someone who knew me well enough to ask hard questions. She came over that evening with Thai food and wine and I told her about Alex’s visit and his request to try again.

She listened carefully while I explained all the therapy work he’d been doing and how he seemed genuinely different. Then she asked me the question I’d been avoiding asking myself.

She said I needed to figure out if I actually wanted to get back together with him or if I just missed having a partner and felt guilty about his pain. I didn’t have a good answer for her, which probably was an answer itself.

I told her I needed more time to think before making any decisions. Talia said that was smart and reminded me that I didn’t owe Alex anything just because he was working on himself.

She pointed out that him doing therapy was great for him regardless of whether we got back together and I shouldn’t feel pressured to give him another chance just because he was making changes he should have made years ago. We spent the rest of the evening watching bad movies and not talking about Alex, which was exactly what I needed.