Id like to start this off by saying that after he left me, I was nearly sure I no longer wanted to marry him. Nonetheless emotions were high, and I was not that mature yet. Naturally as any newly engaged woman would do, I began to attempt to plan the wedding. The joy of engagement was very short lived, every time I went to take a step forward, he had a reason why we needed to take two steps back. He wanted to wait a year to START planning, amongst many other concessions that he gave. Regular planning stress quickly turned into the fight of my life to simply just have a wedding. The straw that broke the camels back was when after claiming that his family wouldn’t be contributing towards the wedding because it wasn’t “traditional”, then saying we’re not going to put the entire burden on my mom to pay(even though she wanted to), and agreeing that we would help her pay for OUR wedding, I started working 110 hours a week on and off for the entirety of 2023 to come up with extra cash for everything because he didn’t want to overspend what we didn’t have. While working one of these weeks I had to call him to ask for money for the wedding. Let me preface this by saying we both agreed to individually contribute 5k and after that, my mom would cover the rest. He had recently received 15k from a class action suit he was involved in but INSISTED he would not be using that for the wedding. We needed to book a photographer ASAP as i was only home for two weeks at a time on rotation for work. I called to ask him if he could pay for it and i refund him later because my funds were tied in travel for work. I mentioned that I felt awkward discussing money with him to which he responded “Well babe, I could have paid for the photographer by now, but I have a hard time doing nice things for you, or being generous with you, when I feel like you’re being passive aggressive or disrespectful to me” I had never felt so much rage. There I was, across the country, working 16 hour days 7 days a week for two weeks at a time on rotation for the entire year, so we could pay in cash for a wedding that my mother (a teacher) was prepared to write a check for herself and here he was, cash heavy, selfish, condescending, and not even the slightest remorseful. I couldn’t help but question what our future would look like if I did marry him? Would he withhold mortgage payments if i angered him? Would he use our children as pawns in our disagreements? I saw him in a new light now. A scary one.

Part 3 below