While I really do regret not asking my FIL, I have a daughter who is 22 and recently got engaged. Her fiance did not ask me.. There is some backstory though... When she got engaged, we were estranged. A big part of the reason was her now fiance. He was a complete loser who is lucky I didn't bury him after he completely disrespected my wife (her stepmom). He cussed her out up and down in a message and really crossed the line in a lot of ways... This was a few years back (they were not engaged at the time)..
He went to the military and came back a completely changed guy. In a good way. When he returned from Afghanistan he asked to meet with both myself and my wife. We went to dinner and he said that he realized that he should have never spoke to mom that way and he regretted it dearly. That over the past year he learned a lot about himself and a lot about life and wanted to make amends. Whatever it took.
While being initially skeptical, we gave him another chance and he has really come around. He didn't have any real parental guidance and grew up in a terrible family. He really didn't know how to interact with a family that cared. Since then I've helped him get a job with my brother-in-law's construction company, helped him get a place and overall we get a long much better. He was just young and dumb, and it takes a lot to approach two people like that and say, "Look. I'm really sorry, I was completely over the line, please give me another chance". He knew at the time that I wanted to attach his head to his ### and didn't know if I would accept his apology or come out swinging. That took guts. Although we get a long good now, he is still uncomfortable dealing with anyone in the family just because he's unsure of himself around people that used to hate him.
Even though they got engaged while we were not on good terms we have been planning the wedding.. I was texting him a few months ago and I asked him about this..
Me: Hey, you never asked me to marry my daughter.. wtf?
Him: Well, we weren't exactly on good terms at the time.
Me: We've been on good terms for a while....
Him: Ok.. Can I have your permission to marry your daughter?
Me: PERMISSION DENIED
My daughter called me and was laughing hysterically. He was not sure if I was joking or not and was
. She told him I was just screwing with him and not mad. It took him a minute to accept that. Hard to read context in text messages.
