'WIBTA if I told my fiancé I wouldn’t come to our wedding if he insists on inviting his friend?' + UPDATE
"WIBTA if I told my fiancé I wouldn’t come to our wedding if he insists on inviting his friend?"
Hi everyone. The situation is quite complicated but I will try to make understandable. Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my first language and sorry for the long post, I want to be as clear as possible and provide as many details as I can. All names are changed.
I (33F) have a fiancé Matt (43M), we’ve known each other for almost 10 years, ina relationship for almost 4. We are currently planning our wedding and the first problem arrived with a guests list.
Matt has this friend Julia (early 20s F) that is around 20 years younger than him. In general, most of his friends are at the age of 20-something so they basically could be his children.
I met Julia around 6 months into our relationship and the meeting didn’t really go well. I absolutely understand male-female friendships and I also have a couple of very close male friends that I have known all my life.
Every time I meet any new girlfriend of any of them I am doing everything to be respectful and tactful, so that the girl wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in my presence or threatened (e.g. I always hug them when we meet but NEVER in the presence of a girlfriend that doesn’t know me or knows me too little to fully grasp that the friendship is and always has been fully platonic).
Matt introduced me to Julia and a couple more of his friends at the festival. She jumped on him and started saying how much she missed him (they had seen each other like two weeks prior when he was in his home town) and for the whole time she was hugging his arm and trying to touch his chest while talking to anyone (including her own boyfriend - now fiancé Brad 25M).
Matt didn’t really noticed it which made me even more mad. I stuck to the nice couple and spent that time talking to the girl, not even looking at their direction but some sounds came through.
She was actively trying to flirt with Matt and do it so loud that I could hear it. We actually were set to meet with other friends so after like an hour we split with the group and went another way.
I talked with Matt about it the next day and I told him that I really didn’t like that girl and that it is unimaginable for me to behave like this when my friend introduces me to their S.O.
Knowing that he used to sleep around back in the days (not a deal breaker really, i haven’t ever been a saint myself) I asked if they ever slept together and he answered “we used to spend a lot of time together during the first year of the pandemic”. I took it as a “no” and left the topic.
MONTHS later during some other conversation he admitted that he actually lived together during Covid and they did sleep with her - and what shocked me the most in his vocabulary “spending a lot of time” means exactly this.
I. WAS. PISSED. I felt and I still feel like he lied to me about it and did it on purpose but after a looong conversation I decided to let it go. She was over 18 at that time so it’s icky but not illegal (still feels a bit predatory tho).
Another months went by and Matt slips another piece of information about their past relationship - it was a threesome with her now-fiancé. I honestly don’t remember my reaction to this revelation, I probably poured myself a drink and went to bed before blowing up.
We worked past it, what’s in the past is in the past, but I set clear boundaries that this person has no place in OUR life and in our home EVER. If he wants to meet with her I’m not there, if he wants me somewhere I’m leaving the moment she arrives. You can call it jealousy - I agree. It is. But it wouldn’t hit me that much if not for Julia’s behavior during our first interaction and Matt’s lies.
As far as I know he cut most of the contact with Julia, he is still in close contact with Brad but doesn’t talk to her or meet with her on purpose so that I wouldn’t feel bad every time he goes out with his young friends.
Fast forward to the present. We are now engaged and planning a wedding. Some time ago when we talked about it, even before the engagement we agreed on no exes. I really wanted to invite my first bf from high school as we dated for like two months at 16 and we remained great friends till this day but I didn’t want to push it - no exes means no exes.
I of course knew that he would want to invite Brad as they are really good friends but we also had the conversation maaany months ago that he would not be invited with Julia. But here comes Matt’s list and there they are: Brad + Julia.
I told him that the list itself is okay but please cross out the exes from this list as we agreed and Matt told me that she is NOT THE EX because they were not IN A RELATIONSHIP. DUDE! Being smash-friends falls into the agreed terms, I believe!
I stood there speechless and decided not to blow up but to sleep on it and come back to the topic later as I had on my list some people marked as “invite them if the budget allows” so we will have to go through it again anyway.
The more I think about it, the more I want to say that if Matt wants Julia there so much, I would not come to our wedding and he can marry her for all I care. I really don’t feel that way.
Apart from this topic we really don’t have major long-lasting issues and our relationship is happy and I would say healthy. BUT THIS ONE THING. So would I be the a-hole if I told him I wouldn’t be there if she is?
PS. Please don’t tell me to leave him, we really do love each other and want to spend the rest of our lives together.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
NTA. But if you marry him he will continue the same behavior and let her disrespect you.
Ewwww. He's so old. And this feels predatory. If you marry him I think your marriage will be crowded always with young women. This is the life you want? Really?
All of his friends are 20 years younger than him??? Ok…I mean, u say don’t tell u to leave him and that y’all REALLY love each other. But does he love u enough to not invite his smash buddy to your wedding who is still flirty and highly disrespectful to your relationship???
What’s your hard line? Cause imma tell u, I wouldn’t put it past him to engage in another threesome with these two considering his behavior and hers. Clearly her man is ok with this. But back to your question, if u ultimately say no, and he continues to inviting this chick, what r YOU going to do about it? Dude’s already lied by omission to you about her. Twice.
Don’t issue an ultimatum that u won’t follow up is all I’m saying 🤷🏽♀️ The ball is ultimately in your court. It would be a dealbreaker for me if he were to invite his mistress-I mean his ex kiss buddy to your wedding after you two already had an agreement on this. But that’s just me. Update me!
Later the same day, the OP returned with an update.
Thank you everyone for the comments. I didn’t think it would blow up like this with hundreds of comments and even more i didn’t think I would update only after a couple of hours but here I am just minutes after the confrontation with Matt. I spoke with Matt about this Julia-Brad situation and explained to him how uncomfortable it makes me feel.
At first he kept telling me that I didn’t get to know them well enough to understand that it was in the past and there is nothing between them anymore since a while before we started dating.
I told him I didn’t care to get to know them because even hearing Julia’s name in the conversation makes me so mad that I cannot describe it (even if it’s another Julia, that might make me psychotic but it is what it is and I won’t apologize for it).
Normally I would probably back out but your comments really opened some doors in my soul that I didn’t know existed there and gave him an ultimatum: me or them. And not only at the wedding but in our life in general.
Then again, he said that when he is in his hometown he cannot control who appears at the only meeting spot there is (the beach by the see, I mentioned it in one of the comments under original post) and I agree - he cannot. But he can control not actively approaching them and cutting the interaction short.
I’m not going there with him very often as I don’t get along with his family (but that’s a story for another day. We used to be close with my future in-laws but there was a huge drama with his mother so I decided to go low contact as since one point any interactions made me very uncomfortable and ready to fight) but I think I will start at least for some time. I will deal with his mother somehow.
I also laid out (again) that him sleeping with a teenager, even legal, while being in his late 30s was predatory and I don’t appreciate it. We actually talked about it much earlier but I had to say it again.
I also used the argument “your sister’s daughter is 16, what would you do if she comes home with a male ‘friend’ over 30?” And I think it opened his eyes a bit as he was furious even thinking about it.
Anyway, Julia and Brad will NOT be invited to the wedding but we are postponing it until the time he shows me he really changed and really cares about me and about us. It can take months, it can take years. Maybe we would never tie the knot, idk and at this point I don’t want to think about it.
We were also planning on buying a house together but I told him we will not be doing it any time soon. We are living in my apartment in the city center and it will stay that way for now.
It’s not perfect as it’s at the top floor with no elevator and I have some health issues that sometimes make it difficult for me to walk but oh well, my job is understanding that sometimes I call and ask someone to bring me my work laptop and I work from home if necessary. I appreciate each and every comment, even the snarky ones - I actually feel that they did the best for me.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
I would have said .... 'So if I introduced you to an ex smash buddy and then said id had a threesome with them aaand then invited them to the wedding you'd be okay with it? Because I can do that too.'
Sadly they're always going to be around and in his life. He made the mistake of not being open and honest with you about who they were. I would be worried about prior activities happening again...but I've been cheated on in the past. Julia needs to realize she cannot jump over other people's partners. I've been here and slapped someone because of it. It's never a good thing.
There are adult men in the whole who haven't slept with literal teenagers. Have you considered marrying one of them? I think it's insane that you're banking on technicality like if it was legal, this man wouldn't have slept with a 16 year old. FFS.
It’s good that you are pumping the brakes on the wedding. In your first post you said that your relationship is great except for Julia, but what does that mean? From what you describe your finance doesn’t respect you, he minimizes your feelings and pretend you’re overreacting, and he goes to his hometown without you and does who knows what with who knows whom.
He lied to you about having sex with Julia (he lived with her for pete's sake). His friends are barely legal adults, decades younger than him. And his family went from liking you to hating you, but doesn’t sound like he’s on your side with them either.
Did he do something to get them not to like you so he could go to his hometown and mess around without you there? Since he doesn’t see his relationship with Julia as “dating” (sex and living together-whatever dude) so he ain’t going to see it as cheating when he gets with her.
Honestly he’s most likely already cheating with her (and Brad) since he’s around them without you there. And he totally knows that Julia is “flirting” with him. He likes it, and he likes that it makes you jealous. Remember, he’s mentally a teenager.