'AITA for telling my fiancé that I'd like a separate room in our future home?' UPDATED 2X

"AITA for telling my fiancé that I'd like a separate room in our future home?"

I (26F) am engaged to my Fiance (29M). We'd been dating for 2 years before getting engaged. We have a fairly happy relationship and generally don't have any major disagreements or fights except for the one I'm about to mention.

We want to become homeowners before getting married, so we've been viewing properties to purchase. Both of us have always been on the same page about wanting a small cozy house instead of a massive one. For the most part, we've never had any disagreements about our dream home.

A couple of nights ago, I saw him going through 2 bedroom apartments listed online, and asked him to look for 3 bedroom apartments instead. He laughed and asked me if I had changed my mind about wanting one child and wanted two instead. I told him that I'd like it if we had a spare bedroom for when we needed space - or just wanted to spend a night or two apart from eachother.

Upon hearing this, he got super offended and asked me why I was suddenly being negative about our relationship. I told him that I wasn't being negative, and that I was being practical. People can be madly in love and stil need some time away from eachother even if nothing is wrong between them.

He was extremely taken aback by this and said I was being unreasonable and made no sense. He started giving me the example of his parents who share an extremely happy relationship and how they never needed a separate room.

I reminded him that we had a conversation regarding this (1 year into our relationship), and that I'd told him in an elaborate conversation that I liked the idea of having separate rooms. He flat out said that he didn't remember have that conversation with me.

As per him, I already am being too weird about sharing space with him by not sharing the same washroom as him. For context: we don't live together. (We live in a South Asian country where moving in before getting married isn't quite a norm - however, we do live very close)

So when I'm spending the night at his place, I use a spare washroom in his apartment since I don't like the idea of sharing washroom with anyone. This kind of pissed me off because before this he NEVER complained about me not wanting to share the washroom. In fact, he even said on several occasions how he found it extremely silly but cute.

So him bringing it up now and complaining about it felt very off. A spare room is something he's absolutely not comfortable with, and now he's wondering if there's a crack in our relationship. I just find the idea of a spare room healthy, and I think that two people who love and trust eachother shouldn't feel insecure about something as trivial as an extra room.

My Fiancé has been giving me the cold shoulder ever since. Our families now know about this "demand" of mine (their words), and think I'm being an @$$hole for asking something like this off of him. I'm starting to feel extremely horrible and stressed out about this situation. AITA?

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

mamaMoonlight21 said:

NTA. For what it's worth, my husband and I have separate rooms. Yes, we have an active romantic life and are very close, and we almost never fight. Our arrangement isn't traditional but it works great for us. So it can be done.

Obvious-Arm9379 said:

"about something as trivial as an extra room" It's not trivial because he's reading this as you declaring "I'm not sleeping with you after marriage." Also, it may not be trivial in cost, as larger apartments cost more money. He may be offended at having to waste his money on this spare room for you to sue to avoid having sex with him.

And Aware_Economics4980 said:

Leaning towards YTA most couples that are looking for a new home aren’t worried about having an extra room for times where they “might need to spend time away from each other” are you sure this the person you want to marry? Doesn’t sound like it.

Three days later, she shared this first update:

"It's 5:00am and I (26F) just received a call from my drunk fiancé (29M) saying that he doesn't want to marry me anymore."

Our wedding's supposed to be in 4 months, but now I'm not sure if it'll be happening anymore. A little over a week ago, we had a heated argument over a disagreement regarding our future home. I wanted a spare room for when either of us needed space, and he was not at all okay with that idea.

We went back and forth about why I wanted the spare room, and what my reasoning behind it was. Despite my attempt to explain my perceptive: that the reason for the room was not to create a barrier between us, but rather to have a healthy space. We just couldn't see eye to eye about it.

The disagreement turned into an argument, which then resulted in him brining up issues he's had with me in the past (issues that were never mentioned until that day) I tried to de-escalate the situation but failed horribly. Ever since the fight, he started giving me a cold shoulder - and I'd been trying to make amends ever since, because all of this is so silly. It's such a stupid reason to have such a massive fight over.

This is very unlike us. Two days ago I texted him to ask him if we could have dinner together. I was so exhausted of this entire ordeal that I thought "screw it. Forget the spare room." I love him more than my space, and I know he feels the same about me. Even though I was really adamant about wanting the room, I can let it go for the sake of our relationship.

So I decided to let him know I had changed my mind about it and apologize for all the drama it caused. But somehow we had a fight again, and he walked out on me mid dinner. He hasn't been home since then. I think I messed up.

I'm sitting in alone in his apartment, after receiving a call from him where he was bawling his eyes out and speaking incoherently for the most part - telling me that he loves me but he doesn't want to marry me anymore. He's not responding to my calls anymore, and I don't know what I should do. I'm panicking and shaking. We've never had such fights, so I don't know how and why it ended up getting so bad.

I don't know why this is happening right now. I don't know how to clean up this mess that I've made. I don't know what I can say or do to change what's happening. I'm scared, sad, and I can't help but hate myself right now.

A week later, she shared this second update:

A couple of hours after receiving the call from my now ex Fiancé, I tried to get in touch with his family, hoping they could act as a mediator between my ex and I. To my surprise, they were extremely reluctant about intervening, and told me that this is something him and I need to resolve on our own.

The reason this is surprising to me is because our families (specially his) have always been overly involved in our lives. That's just how parents and families are in our culture. My ex and I had to time and again remind them of our boundaries, which they'd gladly cross despite our repeated conversations about it. So you can imagine my shock when they said they'd rather stay out of something this huge.

My family (who live in another country) have been there for me through this, and are quite furious yet heartbroken about the whole thing, specially regarding my ex's family's refusal to talk to my ex about the situation.

After my conversation with my ex's parents, I sort of shut myself in. My friends visited me a couple of times to make sure i was doing okay, but apart from that I didn't really speak to anyone. These last couple of days have been extremely difficult. I went through a whirlpool of emotions to the point where I felt nothing at all. At the end of it all, I had made up my mind about my future with my ex.

Yesterday, I got a call from my ex. Calls, to be precise. He wanted to meet. He made the conversation sound more like "okay you've been wanting to talk to me, so let's meet and talk." Which I found odd because after my conversation with his parents, I didn't try to get in touch with any of them again. So it's not like I was constantly trying to get in touch with him.

We met, spoke a bit - it was mainly just small talk. I didn't ask him where he was all these days, even though it seemed like he wanted me to ask. I initiated the discussion about us, and he said "I think we can agree that these past few days have been stressful on both of us. Let's move past it."

I was so amazed by this cold response. It sounded like I was speaking to an HR. How exactly were we both going through the "same level of stress" when he just made the decision, drunk called me and told me he had made up his mind, and then disappeared on me without any further discussion?

It honestly just made me lose faith in him. When I sat and thought about the night I received his call, and how it made me feel, I couldn't help but wonder what it'd be like if he acted like this over every trivial disagreement after we got married. I told him I had taken my time to think things through, and that I didn't see us working. I gave him his ring, and walked out before he had the chance to say anything to me.

Anyone wants to guess what happened next? Well, I started getting calls from his mum. I didn't answer them. I've been receiving non-stop texts from my ex since then. A couple of hours ago my mum called me to let me know that my ex's mum called her to "talk about what's going on. "My mum, God bless her, told his mum "I think it's best we let them deal with this on their own."

There's so much I'm going to have to go through after this. From telling people that my engagement broke to answering their several inquisitive questions to the process of requesting a refund of the deposits. As dramatic as it sounds, every morning when I wake up, I feel a knot in my stomach, my heart feels heavy, and my throat feels like there's something stuck in there.

The fact that the entire trajectory of my life has changed is absolutely terrifying. At the beginning of this month, I had my life planned out for the next 3 years. Now I have no plans. I'm not sure what my next week is going to be like. It's scary.

My mum said, "Don't think that you don't have any plans. Think that you have plenty of room to make new ones." I loved what she said, but it'll take me a little while before I can see it that way. I'm happy with the decision I've made, but it's going to take some getting used to.