'AITA for cutting off a long-time friend because of the way she ate my husband’s olives?' FINAL UPDATE
"AITA for cutting off a long-time friend because of the way she ate my husband’s olives?"
Bear with me, this is a long read. My husband Mitchell (26m) and I (26f) have this group of friends we hang out with. I knew them before I met my husband. It’s a group of 6 (excluding us). 5 males and 1 female. A few of them are siblings but we’re all close in age (24-28).
The members are Dalton m24, Jack m24, Lucas m27, Cole m26, Derek m28, and Ari f26 I first met Dalton and Jack 8 or so years ago when we worked together at a fast food place in a small town we all lived in. They invited me over to hang one night and the rest was history, we all became best friends.
When I started dating Mitchell, I introduced him to the group and he fit right in. Throughout the years we still hung out sometimes it was months in between but we still kept in touch through texts.
Anyways a few months ago Derek invited us over for DnD and we’ve been playing a few days a week, every week since. Since Ari and I are the only two girls in the group, we like to hang out for a little together after our dnd sesh is over and gossip.
Ari is Wiccan and one night she offered to read my tarot cards. She started to give me a reading on my love life (at this point I was already married to Mitchell) while she was reading she started to choke up and get nervous.
Ari kept saying the cards were showing her a sad ending and adultery and kept saying “are you sure you want to keep going?” Anyways by the end she had me fully convinced my husband was going to cheat on me and divorce me.
I brushed it off bc we’ve always been good, it’ll be 7 years together and he’s amazing at communicating and sorting our issues out while being civil. Anyways fast forward two weeks later and it’s Jack’s birthday...
...We go out bar hopping, we’re all about 3/4 drinks and a few shots deep. Mitchell finishes his drink, so I go to the bar to order him and myself another. I notice while I’m up ordering Ari is talking and laughing with Mitchell, which doesn’t bother me bc we’ve all been so close for so long, and I trust them both. It’s taking me a while to get our drinks as the bar is packed.
I just keep hearing Ari giggling. I’m getting excited like let’s get these drinks going bc I want to know what’s so funny! Finally I get the drinks I got Mitchell a vodka tonic w extra olives, his fave. When I get to them, silence, they stop giggling.
No big deal I give Mitchell his drink and head to the bathroom bc I had to pee, I come back, they’re giggling again, Ari puts her hand on Mitchell’s hand on the drink glass and uses her other hand to grab the stick full of olives out of Mitchell’s drink, looks him in the eyes and seductively eats them.
I felt my face burn red hot. I’m really comfortable in our relationship so it usually takes a lot for me to get jealous but the liquor made me feel some type of way. I told Mitchell I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to head out.
So we went home and I brought up how her actions, and him not stopping them made me uncomfortable. And he just brushed it off like it wasn’t a big deal. The next day I vented to my sister Jamie about it and she said that it seems like the olive incident and the tarot card incident do not seem to be coincidental.
Since she said that I’ve been looking back on all the weird things I’ve over looked the past few years, (Ari always sitting next to him in dnd, their characters always departing from the group and going off on side quests together, always going out to smoke when mitchell does, etc) so here we are 6 months later and I’ve completely stopped all communication to Ari and the guys.
A few of them have reached out asking to hangout but I lied and said we’re just super busy. Mitchell and I were planning a party and he suggested we invite Ari. It put me off. I asked why? He replied well she’s your good friend. I told him I haven’t talked to her since the olive incident and she hasn’t tried to reach out either.
He said I’m an a&^%ole and looking too far into this. Now he’s guilt tripping me for cutting off contact. AITA?
Some info and answers to comments and questions from OP:
1. Neither use social media, so checking his phone won’t show anything. Ari also doesn’t own a phone :(
2. We’re together everyday after work so I know he’s not having sex with her, we also have life 360 so I can always see his location.
3. My husband and Ari have never acted like this before. It caught me completely off guard? I keep telling myself it was the liquor 🙃 I also don’t know how it slipped my mind but Ari and Cole are friends with benefits. He has feelings for her but she doesn’t want a relationship. Anyways he saw her sucking the olives too and I saw the hurt in his eyes. Like wtf man.
Here's what people had to say to OP:
Correction: she doesn't have a phone that you know of
My dude. She wants your husband. I dont think snooping his phone will reveal anything because I'm sure he's deleted texts to cover his a#$. Their behavior is SO telling. And poor Cole. Wtf.
wdym she doesn’t have a phone? how do you invite her places?
Ari’s brother are Lucas, Dalton, and Derek. They’re all pretty poor. They all still live at home with their mom and all work to split the bills. Derek is the one who messages us when DnD is on.
I think you need to find out what your husband is doing when you are not with him.
It's always a small, yet huge thing that gives a cheater away.
I found out when my partner was being too nice. It used to be that the smallest thing set him off. Drops of water on floor after doing dishes for example. Then something else happened and I waited for him to get frustrated and he just let it go.. In 6yrs I’d never checked his phone, but I did that night. This was 15yrs ago.
NTA...she was flirting and he wasn't shutting it down. I wonder if they have been chatting behind your back. He seemed way too eager to invite her. Did he mention the other guys too? Does he not miss them?
I would make it clear to him that your feelings matter and you don't appreciate him brushing them off when their behavior clearly wasn't appropriate. You dropped her as a friend because she was hitting on your husband. However, you need to watch your husband too. He likes her and her attention.
He hasn’t mentioned not seeing any of them since I cut contact
Then it's really odd to me that he focused on guilt tripping you about cutting her off but doesn't mention the guys, especially since you met a couple of the guys 1st. To be honest, it would create even more mistrust than I already have towards your husband. Why is he so insistent on you being friends with her again? Why can't he respect your feelings?
You went from hanging out with these people a couple times a week to stopping all contact for 6 months and he never asked about it? What did you tell him — and the other guys — about why you stopped going to DnD nights?
If you cut off the whole group cold turkey and he never brought it up, then he sounds like he’s hiding something. If you’re innocent of bad behavior, you’d question the lack of contact. If you’re guilty, you already know why and don’t need to ask.
We have 2 young kids, I told the dnd group we’re really busy with them, my husband started to not really like dnd as we all got really drunk every time and ended up not playing the session all the way thru
NTA. I don't want to jump into the bandwagon of "they're having an affair" but the fact that your husband is calling you the AH for wanting to go NC is telling. And they were giggling together.
Something is off. Either they did/are sleeping together or they are on the verge of it (maybe an flirty/ emotional affair, which is just as bad). Your gut is telling you something. Listen to it. Heck contact a lawyer and ask for advice.
The next day (yesterday) OP came back with this update:
I spoke to Mitchell about Ari. Before I get to that let me answer some questions.
•He was in the room while I was having my cards read, he just shook his head the whole time, he doesn’t believe in tarot.
• yall saying “how does she not have a phone? Everyone has a phone.” Dude we are from a pi##poor Midwest town. We are not privileged.
• I want to clarify that they’ve never been flirty before, ever. Not even a little. Ari has never even looked twice at Mitchell and he doesn’t seem to know she’s there half the time. It’s so out of the blue.
Now for the UPDATE: he said, he swears that he is absolutely not having an affair. He only mentioned Ari coming to the party bc he noticed I hadn’t been speaking to her for a while and that out of the whole group her and I seemed the closest.
He also apologized and said he did over react about me cutting her off but it was because he honestly didn’t think it was that serious. He also mentioned that he didn’t want to make a scene at the bar, because it was packed and he really didn’t think it was that big of an issue even though it seemed awkward.
I asked him how he’d feel if one of the guys did it to me and he said it’d be weird for sure. I asked about them always buddying up for smoking and dnd, he said he doesnt really notice them having more 1 on 1 time than everyone else. He said that he wished he didn’t dismiss my issues right away and gave what felt like a genuine apology.
Mitchell also suggested that I speak to Ari, and tell her how her behaviour made me feel. So I messaged Derek and said I wanted to come over and hang with Ari. So that’s where I’m going in a few hours. Literally shorting my pants as I’m not one for confrontation so I’m hoping it’ll go over well.
Today OP came back with a "final update":
Last night I went over to Ari’s house to talk to her, when I got there, Ari was out but Derek and the rest of the boys were home. Derek told me that Ari was out with their mom and would be back soon.
I sat and had a beer with the boys. I apologized to them for being a shitty friend and for not seeing them for so long. Cole (Ari’s fuck buddy who has feelings for her but she doesn’t reciprocate) asked me what was keeping me so busy. Honestly, I know he saw the aforementioned olive sucking and knew I had seen it so I figured he wanted me to come clean, and I did.
I told the guys everything that happened from the tarot reading to the olives and everything I started to think back on when having this revelation. Dalton started laughing at me, Derek put his face in his hands and said “oh my god.” And Cole said “what the fuck are you talking about?”
Honestly I was super confused by their mixed reactions and wanted to just leave. I said “I know you saw her and Mitchell in the bar for Jacks birthday. Tell me that wasn’t what I saw.” And cole said “It wasn’t like that. Ari isn’t after Mitchell.” I just got up and went to Ari’s room to wait. I was hurt they just defended Ari and didn’t try to hear me out.
I scrolled through some responses on the post until I heard Ari get home about 20 minutes later. My stomach was in knots and I wanted to cry realizing that Ari and Mitchell could’ve been fooling around behind my back this whole time. Ari was one of my best friends and thing were so solid with mitchell and I. Ari came in the room and sat next to me on the bed.
Ari almost immediately folded and said “I know you’re mad at me. The boys told me. I swear I’m not into Mitchell, it’s not like that.” So I asked her to explain what the fuck the reading and the olives and everything else was about. She just started to cry. I went from sadness to anger. I yelled at her to answer me.
This is when s^%$ got CRAZY. “I’ve felt really weird the past year or so. I’m just not into men. When we’re with the guys, it just feels so natural. I don’t know if I’m gay or something but I realized with Cole that it’s just not for me.”
She went on for a little longer about more personal things and even mentioned that she told the guys and was going to tell me but she thought one of the guys told me she was gay and i was mad at her about that and that’s why I ghosted her for 6 months???
But that still didn’t explain why she was being seductive towards mitchell and the tarot cards. She claimed that when she read my cards she read straight from the instructions in the box so there’s that, and that she was not meaning to be sexy when she ate the olives, she was just drunk and wanted them.
I sat in silence. I was so confused, how could I be so horribly wrong? Then Ari reached over and grabbed my hand, “I’d never do something like that to you.” I said “I can’t believe you’d think I’d be mad that you’re gay.” She said Cole was mostly hurt because Ari was into his SISTER. They’d been talking and that was what brought clarity into Ari’s mind about not liking boys.
So we have it yall. Anticlimactic af but I’m so glad my husband isn’t cheating on me (at least with Ari, some of you almost had me convinced tho lol)