Bride wants to call off wedding after fiance rejects her cultural tradition. UPDATED

"I want to call off my wedding because my husband is embarrassed about my culture."

Here's the original post:

Hi! I really need some advice (I might omit some things just because a lot of my friends are here). I’m 26 years old and am getting married to my husband 28. Im from a small village, and moved to the US 5 years ago.

That’s important because in such a short amount of time, I’m not assimilated to the us culture and am still very involved in mine. When I met my husband, few weeks into us dating he told me he was going to marry me (as a joke) but I told him how marriage works in my culture and he praised how beautiful it was.

Fast forward now. We agreed on doing 2 weddings, one of my culture and the other an American wedding. In my village when you get married, both spouses get a gold bangle sort of thing it’s equivalent to a wedding ring. There is a ceremony and party for that as well. It’s molded on your wrist and can’t come off unless you use like a saw or something like that.

During my traditional wedding I received a gift of these fruits I ate back home and are truly my favorite but haven’t been able to find in the us. My hus jokes about he was not looking forward to smelling that everyday. Which is fine because I hate the smell of sausage but it’s something he loves.

I stayed back home for a week because I had missed it and my husband came home early to prepare for the American wedding. I came home Monday but didn’t see my husband since he had work and by the time he finished I was sleeping. We had dinner last night and I saw that he didn’t have his bangle and he told me he thought it was just for the party.

I explained to him again how important it is to me. And he said that I couldn’t seriously expect him to wear it all the time. I asked him why not and he told me it made him look unprofessional. I got upset with him and left,. He ended up calling me to explain how it holds no cultural significance to him so I told him.

I rebutted asking him if he was fine with me not wearing a wedding ring as it holds no cultural significance to me, he got a bit upset and gave me a lecture on how if we were in my country he’d wear it. I feel so turned off and uninterested in this relationship that I am thinking of calling off wedding.

EDIT: He did know he would have to wear it permanently. We talked about this in the early stages of us dating and several times leading up to now when I’ve had family members get married and when he proposed. Also he works from home with occasional in person meetings.

Do you think she should call off the wedding? Here's what top commenters had to say:

SwampDragons said:

We don't have context on your whole relationship so I'm not going to jump in and give a strong opinion one way or another. But I'm less concerned about the bangle itself and more concerned that he pretended to be into the idea and then changed his tune once it was "too late".

You don't seem to believe this was a misunderstanding -- if it had been, then it might be worth finding a compromise. But pretending to be on board with a thing, then pretending not to have understood that it was important to you and downplaying it, while insisting he gets his way?

That reeks of some really unhealthy conflict-resolution dynamics. Look back over your relationship and see if you can spot a pattern of this behavior -- the gaslighting, the "I didn't think it was a big deal", and especially any "well really my hurtful behavior is your fault/problem". Those are serious red flags and if there are more instances of them then I think it's worth following your instinct.

_Questionable_Ideas_ said:

As a white guy with a "bangle" from my Indian wife you can get a fairly minimal "bangle" thats appropriate for work and looks cool. I'm not sure what line of work he is in but maybe have a discussion about if there's a style he'd like that blends his own personal style with your cultures style?

When me and My SO came up with how we were going todo our wedding we wanted to intentionally have an exchange of cultures so to speak. I've got some "bangles" she's got some western style jewlrey.

We both end up a bit more blingy, with a unique artistic style and life is good. I don't know if i have any solutions for you but it may be worth while having that conversation with him again. Cross Cultural relationships are hard, differences in expectations happens all the time.

Allcapswhispers said:

I would explain to him again what his removal of the band means and tell him that is your reason for not proceeding with an American wedding. He was aware going in so he knew the consequences, but may need a reminder for why you're leaving.

And LionFranco said:

I don't understand why he didn't try and request a compromise. Like, you would wear the Bangle, he would wear the ring, so that would still symbolize your commitment in some way.

He could have worked with you on a compromise for a long time to make it where you both were happy. Instead he just completely ignored what he should have done and now acts like he did nothing wrong, even though he knew it was supposed to be permanent.

About two weeks after her original post, she shared this update on the situation:

So, I ended up texting him that morning that I was ready to talk and he came to my hotel a few minutes later. I explained to him how I felt about him cutting off his bangle without talking to me and especially after he’d told he would wear it.

(I don’t remember if I explained this earlier but in my culture, parents cut off pieces of theirs to mold together for children. This bangle gets reshaped for my husband so it’s generations and generations that got passed down to mine that is now destroyed).

I explained if I knew he didn’t plan to wear it, we could have bought him new gold instead of using mine so I could keep it in tact and be able to give it to my children or we could have made one that can come off and such and he if he’d told me that there was no way he’d ever wear it in any occasion then we could have gone our separate ways.

He apologized and explained that he didn’t think he would have to wear it everyday and I when I reminded him that he knew this for years. And also reminded him the countless times I’ve reassured him it was fine if he didn’t want to and yet he told me he would. I’d like to note here, he got to design his and we made it really thin and small where he could wear his watches and it wouldn’t show.

I asked him to show me the bangle so we ended up going to his house. I don’t know if he person he went to was bad at his job or what. They literally melted it, it was cut in several different pieces so my original design is completely ruined. It probably doesn’t make sense to you guys but that is really upsetting to me.

I did entertain the idea of maybe he was teased or something but he assured me it wasn’t that and he just didn’t think it was that serious. I explained that he was basically divorcing me and he said that I don’t have to wear mine either. He got angry with me and kept insisting I was making a big deal out of nothing.

I explained to how the bangle aside, he lied to me about something for FOUR years and then undermined me right after we got married. He failed to communicate to me something so important and doesn’t see how hurtful that is to me.

He ended up going on a tangent about how unprofessional it looks when I reminded that he’s been in the same job this whole time and it’s something he never brought also not to mention he works from home and only has biannual in person meetings where obviously it’s formal so it wouldn’t be seen in the first place. There was a lot of back and forth.

He got angry with me and kept insisting I was making a big deal out of nothing. I ended up taking an Uber home and the same time day I went and got mine removed. I returned it to him since he bought it along with his ring and took my bangle with me.

I called my parents to see if they can make me another one(it’s not the same because I’ve had mine my whole life). my dad called husband and wanted an explanation for he’d done. I guess the conversation didn’t go well because my father immediately started mourning my marriage with my mother and agreed to send me a new one.

I told him for us to pause on the American wedding which after trying to change my mind he did give in. Because I wanted to talk more about what other things does he think aren’t serious.

I left to come back to my house (I live in a different state only 4-5 hrs away driving) he was supposed to take me, but wouldn’t respond to my texts all of the night before and since I needed to be home for work I called his friend he couldn’t get in contact with him either so he ended up buying me a ticket home and drove me to the airport next day.

He drove over to my house 2 nights ago. And he kept apologizing for everything. He told me that he would rewear it and will get it fixed. but honestly all of the designs are ruined and if he wore it now won’t really change the fact that I know how he truly feels about it so I can’t even enjoy it anymore.

I had a list of things that we talked about in the past and AGREED to and just wanted to revisit them. And I asked for full honesty and we did end up taking some things off that he agreed to in the past and admitted to not fully agreeing to. Which just didn’t make me feel better like I hoped it would because now I’m rethinking our whole relationship as if everything else has been a lie??

He has insisted that he’s not going back home until we fix this but I’m not optimistic. I feel I’ve said everything I needed to say and now I have nothing else to say. He’s staying at a hotel near by and has been coming down everyday and trying to talk but he’s not really saying anything new and just keeps repeating the same thing.

My dad posted pictures of me with my old bangle and implying that I was single. He has been sending me numbers of men he wants me to talk to. I have removed pictures of my traditional wedding from all of my social medias.

I don’t expect people to understand (since many of you had been stuck on just the bracelet alone)but I did receive some good feedback and writing this makes me feel a bit better since there isn’t really anyone I can talk about this to.

Also just like if he had a problem and waited this long and then tried to secretly remove it without talking to me. Imagine he had a big problem with me in the future and then lied to me that everything is fine only to randomly get divorced even though I didn’t know there was an issue to begin with up until then.