'I told my fiancée that I don't really want to marry her anymore.' UPDATED
"I told my fiancée that I don't really want to marry her anymore."
We were visiting a botanical garden yesterday when Sarah pointed out a flower called the "Arabian Jasmine," a little white flower with a nice scent. She said that her cousin Stephanie had those at her wedding.
I asked if it was the same Stephanie that would be in attendance with her husband at our wedding, and she said it was. Sarah and Stephanie are apparently pretty close, and she started telling me about Stephanie and her husband.
At one point, she told me that Stephanie had actually cheated on her husband twice before they got married, and that the second time was a couple of months before the actual wedding. Her husband never found out.
I asked her why she never told Stephanie's husband what happened, and she responded by saying that it "wasn't [her] circus, wasn't [her] monkeys" and that it's not that big of a deal anyway since they weren't married at the time.
I've been thinking about what she said ever since. I consider cheating the ultimate, worst betrayal in a relationship. Clearly, my fiancée doesn't think so since she said her cousin cheating "wasn't that big of a deal since they weren't married." Would this mean that she thinks cheating on me right now wouldn't be that big of a deal since we aren't married yet?
As a man, if I got cheated on by my partner, I hope someone who knew about it would tell me. I would heavily judge anyone who knew about it, didn't tell me, let me go on to marry the person that cheated on me, and attended my wedding as if nothing was wrong. Like my fiancée did to her cousin's husband.
About an hour ago, I texted my fiancée "I'm not sure if I can go forward with getting married. Let's talk in person later tonight." She's been blowing up my phone with texts and missed calls ever since. I'm just going to tell her what I've said in this post when I see her.
Before we give you OP's update, let's read some top comments:
Well I can see where you are coming from, and I would agree with it, since this difference in values is a dealbreaker to me as well, but the way you communicated with her was totally wrong.
explosky writes:
As relationships grow (even after marriage), values shift and change. They are not rigid. You learn empathy for other peoples' values by discussing them, not just saying, "well, we don't have the same values, so I guess we can't be together anymore".
I am similar to OP in that cheating is the biggest betrayal in a relationship. If I were cheated on, that would be the end of it. My husband doesn't necessarily understand this viewpoint, and he has expressed that he would still want to try and make it work if he was cheated on; at the same time agrees that cheating is wrong, and he wouldn't do it to me.
We don't have to agree on the severity of cheating to agree that we wouldn't do that to one another. People in relationships are still individuals, and they can respect one another without having the exact same values 100% of the time.
[deleted]
You're not wrong to be worried about that and I'm sorry but there's really no need to text your fiance - anyone, really - something that upsetting and vague and then ghost them for hours.
Its definitely a conversation you should have but honestly, texting her that and then dropping out of contact for several hours is a real a&^%ole move.
Update:
I had a conversation with my fiancée Sarah. We've decided to think things over on our own for a couple weeks and decide what we'll do next. If we do get married, we'll probably end up postponing the wedding.
I found out from Sarah that her cousin Stephanie's husband, "Lars," is an attending musculoskeletal radiologist at a local hospital. I texted Lars over the weekend, introduced myself as Sarah's fiancée, and asked if I could have a conversation with him on phone.
We called a couple of times between Monday and yesterday. I let him know that I wasn't telling him what to do, and that I did not have any receipts, but that I just felt an obligation as a human being to inform him of something that I felt he should know. I told him what Sarah told me: about his now-wife cheating two months before his wedding, and the name of who she did it with.
When he found out, Lars went quiet for a little while and said he was "shocked and devastated." It turns out that who Stephanie cheated with is a coworker of hers that Lars had met, and that they've attended work and dinner parties together in the past.
Throughout our conversation, he kept asking for details on what happened: where it occurred, why she did it, who else knew, and so forth. I u, unfortunately,Markidn't have answers to most of his questions, but he still thanked me profusely for telling him what happened when no one else did.
Part of why I sympathize with Lars is personal. Lars is originally from Denmark and came here for college after high school. My own Scandinavian father came here from Norway for undergrad and ended up becoming a lawyer here.
He married my mom, an American woman, had me and my siblings, and provided us with the best life any husband and father could possibly provide his family. I couldn't imagine Lars doing the same for a woman who cheated on him and kept it a secret for years.
I have no regrets. My fiancée, her cousin, and their family were the only family that Lars had in this country. I couldn't imagine him coming to this country for opportunity and working hard for 13 years to become a physician only to marry a disloyal wife and be deceived and betrayed by the very people he thought he could trust. I couldn't imagine living a lie like that for years, no matter how blissful the lie.
Lars had a right to make an informed decision as to whether or not he wants to stay in his marriage. If Lars and Stephanie get divorced now, it would be Lars rightfully ending his own marriage based on the information he now knows, not me ending it of my own volition.
Marking ONGOING as OOP did not update on the aftermath. Hopefully we get more information later on!