▸ Column · Contemporary boardroom Metropolis — a syndicated advice column the bride wrote into.
LEX LUTHOR replies.
Replied to by Lex Luthor, with a rebuttal from Superman.
The letter
My fiancé and I marry in October here in Metropolis. My mother has announced she'll boycott the ceremony — and claw back the $8,000 she already put toward the venue — unless I uninvite Renata, my father's wife of eleven years and one of my dearest friends. The divorce was brutal, but Renata had nothing to do with it; she didn't even meet my dad until three years after the decree. I offered to seat them on opposite sides of the room. Mother called that "insulting," said it isn't about logistics but about Renata being present on "her day" (it is, notably, not her day). My fiancé says call the bluff and invite Renata anyway. I'm petrified Mother actually goes through with it and spends the rest of her life as the martyr I "abandoned." Is there a path that doesn't cost me someone I love?
Lex Luthor replies
Oh, sweetheart. No. Your mother hasn't threatened to miss a wedding — she's posted her price for a veto, and the price is eight thousand dollars she's already spent, which means she's certain she bought something. She did, frankly: eleven years of you arranging Renata's entire existence around her feelings, and now a seating chart. That deposit isn't a gift, darling. It's a leash, and you've been gripping the wrong end of it and calling it love.
Dmitri's correct that it's a bluff. But calling a bluff is theater; defusing it is strategy. Today — not after one more agonized week — one message: "Mother, Renata will be there. I'm returning your deposit this week, so you never have to feel you paid for a day you didn't approve of." Then wire it. (You'll find the money. People always do, once the alternative is a lifetime of itemized invoices.)
Then watch. If she wanted the wedding, she comes. If she only wanted the control, you've just bought that knowledge for eight grand — a bargain, considering what the installment plan was costing you. Either way, you stop renting her permission to love whom you love. How quaint, that she imagined it was ever for sale.
— Lex Luthor
Superman weighs in
Lex, you found the leash and missed the man holding the other end — and it isn't her mother. Where's her father in this whole letter? Renata is his wife. Eleven years, and he's letting his daughter fight for Renata's chair while he stays clean off the page. That's the call to make, friend — not a wire transfer. Phone your dad: "Renata's family. I need you to say that to Mom — not me." And give your mother one plain sentence, too: she's frightened she's being replaced, not auditing you. Buying back that deposit doesn't end the wound. It just turns it into a receipt.
— Superman
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