'AITA for dancing with my ex at a wedding after my wife danced with a guy?' UPDATED

"AITA for dancing with my high school ex at a wedding after my wife danced with a guy?"

So to give some background"

My wife (28F) and I (29M) have been married for 2 years now. I love my wife. We have had a great relationship so far. All in all, I couldn’t be happier.

Last year, my wife and I were invited to her best friend’s wedding. It was a pretty luxurious wedding, with dances, feasts, drinks, grandeur, you get the gist. During one of the dances, when my wife and I were sitting at the side, a random man asked my wife for a dance.

Now this guy was an objectively good lucking dude, and my wife appeared flustered when he asked her for a dance. She looked over at me, and I told her to go ahead, why not. We were all having fun, there’s no harm in my wife having fun too. It wouldn’t hurt me. Except it did hurt me internally.

I’m not the type to be normally bothered by such trivial matters, but in this instance it did, but I tried not to outwardly show it. My wife and this guy were clearly enjoying themselves, I could see my wife was still flustered when they were dancing, I had never seen her blush this much in a long time. I mean, I get it. This guy was objectively good looking, and my feelings were irrational.

Well anyways, over the following days, my wife sensed that I was not myself, and she apologized for the incident. I told her she had nothing to apologize about, and that was the end of that. We still loved each other, and I realized I probably had to internally work through my own insecurities, which I did, and I was back to normal in a couple of days.

Well fast forward a year, and my wife and I were now invited to my best friend’s wedding. This was my best friend from high school and I expected I’d see some of my old high school mates. The wedding was a blast. I caught up with a lot of my high school friends including my ex from high school. I’m not going to lie, she looked stunning.

During the dances, I asked my wife if I could dance with my ex, and she gave me the go-ahead. Well I asked my ex for a dance, she agreed, and we danced. She complimented me a lot physically which made me feel things, I complimented her too.

There was a lot of close physical contact, especially during the slow dances, which was probably inappropriate, but at that moment, I was justifying it internally because of my wife’s dance last year. Well we danced for quite some time, and I finally called it at off when it went way too overboard.

My ex wanted to continue on, but I somehow found restraint to stop it. By that time, I think the damage had been done, and my wife wanted to go home. We left home early and my wife straight up cried when we reached home. This hurt me a lot, and she’s never hidden her emotions from me, and I apologized.

She told me I had no reason to apologize, but I told her I did because what I did was completely inappropriate. I’ve been making it up to her the past week, by taking her out on dates. She cried some days and I comforted her. I think we’re finally back to normal now. Was I the AH for dancing with my high school ex at a wedding?

The post was locked for comments, but OP jumped back on to post an update the next day.

I am the AH, I get it. I hurt my wife massively. I was also a bit drunk, it doesn't excuse what I did that day, but I lost some inhibitions. Looking back, what I did that day was far worse than what I typed in my original post, I was completely inappropriate with her.

I am go to start looking for therapy to work through my insecurity issues. I would like to somehow erase that day from memory. I just don't know what got over me that day, I would never do that in a million years. My ex and I exchanged numbers that day, but I have now cut off all contact from my ex, and blocked her.

People had a lot of comments and questions.

mi_nombre_es_ricardo wrote:

Bro you really need to explain what do you mean by "inappropriate."

standdownplease wrote:

Imagine if you were actually a man and told your wife "I don't feel comfortable with you dancing with another man" instead of stewing in your insecurity and letting it all out at once as you dry humped your ex in front of your wife at a wedding.

Longjumping-Click-47 wrote:

It’s just an excuse!! He would still want to dance with his ex. It gave him the opportunity to say “You did with another man so I should be able to”. He’s just trying to justify with a sh#$ty excuse.

Defiant_McPiper wrote:

Right? And also blaming it on being drunk - never said that it the original post but since he got told what an AH he is he's looking for anything to try and blame his behavior on. And he now also revealed he exchanged numbers with the ex - so it's a million times worse than what the wife did (and again I don't remember this tid bit on the OG post). But yeah, blame the booze for talking to the ex after the fact too.

Ladycougar87 wrote:

YOU GOT HER NUMBER and had to block communication? That means there was communication. WTF is wrong with you. You are a POS. What you did is 1000X worse than your wife dancing with a random person. If your wife walks, you only have yourself to blame.

indoubttoactorrest wrote:

You got her number. You're a ridiculous person.

Your wife is going to leave you because you're still trickle truthing her.

You destroyed your marriage because another man found your wife attractive.

FullGrownHip wrote:

I think #3 is the TLDR of the whole thing and should be the title. It baffles me how some people are posting updates like “look at me I did good right” after they had done irreversible damage.

Someone found this comment that seems to be from OP:

My intention wasn't to retaliate or humiliate anyone. I understand how my actions might have been perceived as inappropriate, and I take full responsibility for that. It was a lapse in judgment on my part, and I regret any discomfort it may have caused. Moving forward, I'll make sure to consider my wife's feelings and boundaries more carefully in similar situations.

linerva summed it up:

So what happened was that at a wedding, a stranger politely asked your wife to dance, you agreed it was fine. They had a dance, evidently it wasn't a particularly flirty dance or you would have told us if it was inappropriate. It ended. She checked in with you as she noticed you were quiet, and you denied your feelings and then said you moved on.

THEN at another wedding, you begged to be allowed to dance with your ex (nobody asked, you volunteered), you flirted with her, and didn't stop when you noticed that dancing with her was arousing.

You dirty danced with her, in front of your friends and your wife, and kept dancing for along time, until you took it far enough that even YOU said it was going too far (and given alcohol was probably involved, I'm guessing there was a lot of grinding and ass grabbing or groping? ) and then even when you 'somehow put an end' to it despite your ex still wanting to rub up on you like a cat in heat in front of you wife.

You then took her number, again, right in front of your f&^$%#g wife. If my husband begged to go dance with some woman, then felt her up on the dancefloor in front of me and then walked away with her number, he'd be an ex. Let alone if that woman was an ex of his.

Stop saying this is something you would never do - wake up, you f^%$&*g did it. And the only way to learn is to admit that you chose to do multiple shitty things. Yeah, no, you're disgusting. I actually hope you're a troll, because you behaved like SUCH a shitty person.

You told your wife she could dance with someone, and it's OK - but that that made you feel jealous or insecure. You SHOULD have used your grown adult to talk to your wife about your feelings afterwards and maybe agree on some boundaries about dancing with others at weddings to ensure you're both comfortable about it in the future.

Instead, you kept pretending you were OK with it and totally over it, only to basically passive aggressively disrespect your wife publicly in revenge for feeling insecure. If you had just gently danced with a stranger who didn't have a partner (after clearing it with your wife), you'd have done the equivalent thing. But what you did was in no way similar to what your wife did.

I actually cannot understand how grown adults like you are even married given you suck at communication and you hurt people to get revenge- well I guess they get divorced for cheating, so maybe that explains it.