“My BF (23) doesn’t want me (f21) to go to my best friends (f22) wedding.”
Okay I don’t know what to do cause I’m really torn and I understand where my bf is coming from. My boyfriend (Jake) and I have been together for 2 years, we met during orientation for university. Everything is great between us. He’s met my best friend, (Ella) who is getting married to her boyfriend of 4 years. They are high school sweethearts and I love the both of them.
We were all friends during high school and grew up together. They were always together and perfect for each other, I only dated one other person during high school and his name was Sam.
I really liked Sam, we dated for three years during school and spoke often about going to uni together and getting married but it was young love and when acceptance letters came around he ended up moving out of state so we broke up.
My best friend asked me to be her maid of honour and I’m so excited, we’ve been wedding planning for the past couple of months while her fiancé was finalising his groomsmen. I was surprised when she told me, Sam would be the best man.
I told my boyfriend about this and he wasn’t happy with the idea of me attending the wedding as Ella expected each of the bridesmaids and groomsmen to be paired up for activities such as walking down the aisle and the first dance as well as photos. He didn’t like the idea of me doing all those romantic things with an ex boyfriend.
I explained to him that Sam and I haven’t even seen each other for 3 years but he said he still felt uncomfortable with it. Jake is invited to the wedding so I tried to say that I would still spend most of my time with him but he said he still doesn’t want to watch me walk down the aisle and have a first dance with someone else.
Plus he didn’t want to have to be reminded of this every time we go over to Ella and her fiancés house as all the official wedding pictures would be plastered all over the place. Does anyone have any advice on what to do? I love my boyfriend and I understand where he’s coming from but I want to go to my best friends wedding.
Edit: I just wanted to clarify a few things that I’ve seen people talk about in the comments, thank you for everyone’s advice I really appreciate it all.
First of all, it wasn’t a big surprise that Sam was chosen to be Ella’s fiancés best man (I’ll also call Ella’s fiancée Luke for clarity). Luke and Sam have remained in contact over the years and are still super close but I don’t ask him about Sam too much just because I’m not super interested in what’s going on in his life, the most I ask about is “is he good?” And that’s about it.
Secondly, I didn’t make this super clear in my post but when I say Ella and Luke will have pictures of Sam and I plastered all over their house I meant that there would be pictures of the wedding party all together around the place.
As for Jake, a lot of people are saying he’s being controlling, I don’t think he is. I’m not his first girlfriend, he’s only my second other than Sam. And he doesn’t like the idea of the photos of the wedding party being around cause in the photos it would have the whole wedding party together and he wouldn’t be in the photos which to him “makes it seem like I wasn’t there.”
I’m going to talk to him tomorrow about this all and see what he says. I’ll give an update soon.
This is what people had to say to OP:
melancholypowerhour said:
My childhood best friend missed my wedding because her husband didn’t want her to go. Our relationship never really recovered.
Are you willing to damage your relationship with your best friend by pulling out on this commitment you’ve already made? If your boyfriend is this upset at watching you perform your bridesmaid duties, maybe he doesn’t go – that’s a more reasonable solution since he’s the one with the issue.
River_Song47 said:
If he’s going to be jealous of something so dumb and cause you to miss your Best Friend’s wedding, he’s not mature enough for a serious relationship. I’ve been in several weddings and nothing about walking down the aisle or even dancing with a groomsman is romantic.
You’ll be so busy with other bride’s maid duty’s that those will barely be a blip. But the fact that he thinks he can control you like this is concerning.
OP responded:
I tried to explain this to him originally and say that I would just be doing a job by walking down the aisle and dancing with Sam but he said weddings are a naturally romantic scene. I feel like he thinks us dancing together is going to be like Damon and Elena at the mystic falls thing 😭
anglflw said:
Since when is walking down the aisle and a planned dance “romantic?”
Do not forsake your friend for this drip of a guy.
And Next-Drummer-9280 said:
Honey, your relationship is NOT great. You’re dating a jealous, insecure, controlling little man who only cares about HIS feelings.
Go to the wedding. Alone. As a single woman.
Two weeks later, OP shared this update:
Okay so I wanted to give you all an update since some people were asking. I’m not sure if this is the right way to do this, I’ve never made an update before. First of all, I read everyone’s comments and wanted to say thank you, even if I didn’t respond a lot of you gave me great advice (excluding the usual reddit “BREAK UP!” advice lmao)
I talked to my boyfriend (23) about it after I made the post and read some of the comments, I took your advice as well and made sure to explain that there was nothing romantic about walking down the aisle with a guy I haven’t spoken to in years and having a dance with him. I also told him I’m going to the wedding and I’m going to be Ella’s maid of honour no matter what.
We had a bit of an argument about it and he wasn’t super excited but ended up saying he would come to the wedding because he would rather at least be there to celebrate Ella and Luke (Ella’s fiancé) and also he didn’t like the thought of me having fun without him and him being all alone.
He has a bit of anxiety about that and doesn’t like being left out of things so I understand why he didn’t want to just stay home. That conversation was two weeks ago, and since then, things went downhill. After the conversation he was initially really sweet. His usual caring self.
Then he became overly sweet, it kind of felt fine in the beginning but when he started making comments and jokes about how he wanted me to remember how amazing he was as a boyfriend it started to feel weird. It kind of felt like he was guilting me. After reading the comments I started to notice more things too.
He always asked questions about where I was going and who I was seeing, which isn’t new but i started to see it differently now. Then he started asking more questions whenever I was on my phone, asking who I was texting and what I was saying.
Then he started reading the messages over my shoulder. This wasn’t that big of a deal before since he has my password and I have his and I don’t care if he reads my texts since there isn’t anything to hide. Now it kind of feels like he’s monitoring me. After that the worst of it came.
Whenever I was going out he asked me to update him, not in a normal way. As in if I was in the shopping centre he would ask me which stores I was going to, what I was eating, he asked me for photos of the food I was having. I thought it was cause he wanted to be involved but I was dumb.
I’m kinda ashamed to say that I did send him all of those photos and all the proof he needed for a couple of days, but then I got sick of it. I asked him why does he need all of that information and he told me “just cause I want to make sure”. I asked make sure of what? He didn’t really give me an answer.
Then the final straw was about two days ago, another argument, this time about Ella. He said Ella was trying to manipulate me into getting back with Sam. That she always had a vendetta against him. I said he was being stupid because if that were true she wouldnt invite him to the damn wedding.
He said he didn’t feel comfortable with me going, he said he didn’t want me to go, and if I did I was crossing his boundaries and that I wouldn’t be his girlfriend anymore because what kind of girlfriend would purposely cross their boyfriends boundaries. So I told him that’s okay, I wouldn’t want to cross his boundaries and broke up with him.
You were all right, he was controlling me.
I don’t feel happy about it. I feel sad.
I feel like I wasted years of my life on someone I loved.
I told Ella, she didn’t celebrate, she was sad for me too. Said he was nice but I could do better and I should be with someone who helps me grow my world, not shrink it to being just them. I’m going to focus on looking forward to the wedding and helping Ella out. Thank you to everyone again.
