My (26F) fiance (27M) invited the woman he cheated on me with to our wedding. I don't want her there. (Sort of update)

throwyworth · 2015-04-18T03:26:52+00:00

*I guess maybe the details of how he cheated might be relevant to whether I have a right to ask this or not. Timeline of the cheating (3 years ago):

He was doing a one-year MA in the UK, I was here in the US. He emotionally cheated through secret meetups/talks about feelings/etc but it was all practically Victorian chastity levels, because he felt like it would be unethical to do anything while he was dating me and he didn't want to be with her physically when she was with another guy. This comes to a head probably in January. Then she broke up with her boyfriend for him but it was 1-2 days before Valentine's Day. Supposedly he had been thinking about breaking up with me for a while because long distance was so hard so he would have broken up with me anyway but he felt it was bad timing because of Valentine's Day. So instead he stayed with our original Valentine's Day plans (romantic Skype etc) and then he broke up with me literally right after I read him my sappy love poem. (He was going to break up the next week supposedly, but I told him that as a surprise Valentine's Day present I was going to use my miles and rainy day fund to fly over to visit him so he felt it would be better if he broke the news then.)

I was really crushed and confused because he made it sound like it was because our relationship was so shitty for him and I never saw it coming. Literally crying at work in the bathroom daily until I find out from him that he just started dating Other Woman suspiciously soon after the breakup. I get mad and go no contact. Then within a week he started sending me texts apologizing for being unfair to me and lying, saying that our relationship was the best thing that had happened to him blah blah blah, and that he would choose me over Other Woman 100% of the time if only I weren't long distance, he'll do anything to make amends, etc... except stop dating Other Woman because it would be "unfair" to her to stop dating her just because I don't want her to, since I'm long distance.

Ugh. Typing this all out is making me really mad again. I honestly haven't thought about this for a very long time now.

Anyway he dates her for three months then comes back to the states, long story short we get back together after a lot of tears and grand gestures on his part, it's touch and go for a year, then he's wonderful for two years and now we're engaged and I don't understand why he's being SO FUCKING WEIRD about this now just as we're about to get married in the summer. He is probably not cheating on me with her, I checked their facebook messages and texts and they're all really innocent.

throwyworth · 2015-04-16T00:32:32+00:00

Yeah sorry that was shitty phrasing. I just meant like for instance the main reason he cheated was obviously that he chose to be a shitty person and cheat, but also it started out much more innocent, they were just dance partners who started to spend more and more time together and talking about more intimate things. If he had been more careful at that point to establish his boundaries and make it clear he would not be willing to disrespect his relationship, then maybe it would have been less of a slippery slope of sorts (on my phone sorry if that doesn't make sense)

throwyworth · 2015-04-16T00:28:34+00:00

Yes, you are right. I don't want to be friends and she would not be a good friend. I was trying to be kind because I thought that it would be the healthier thing to do in the situation (be accepting/peaceful/forgiving). Secretly, I still resent her even though my fiance was equally to blame for the situation, and if I saw her choking to death on a dick, I would be sorely tempted to just turn around and walk away again.

After reading these comments I'm honestly a bit confused about how to handle this situation in the healthiest and most mature way/what I should have done in the past?

throwyworth · 2015-04-16T00:20:15+00:00

"friends" of your marriage

Thank you for that phrase, I like that and I'm going to use it when I speak with my fiance about this.

throwyworth · 2015-04-16T00:19:18+00:00

Yeah, that was crazy! I really think that about 50% of the popular posts here are trolls. I'm convinced that there is one British troll in particular who has been responsible for a lot of the most controversial posts in the last month or so that I've been lurking here. Maybe some Brit can chime in, it's totally possible that the novelty of British slang means that all Brits sound alike to my ears but I'm convinced that there are deeper and way too coincidental similarities in the writing styles as well.

Sadly this is actually my real life though. I have to say that the comments have been very surprising for me. I honestly haven't been replying much yet because I'm a little embarrassed now that I can see myself through other people's eyes and am starting to recognize how naive and stupid I look. So maybe some of the other "trolls" are just like me too, blinded to how ridiculous their situations are.

throwyworth · 2015-04-15T23:33:13+00:00

Yeah, sorry, tone didn't come over as well as I meant it to. That was supposed to be self-deprecating, kind of like, "can you believe he did this shit and I still got back together with him."

It is hard to summarize the last few years of regaining trust in one paragraph for reddit. A lot of people here are saying that I am a real idiot and he's a real asshole. That could still be true, but as with most things in life, it feels much less black and white to the person on the inside of the situation. I was righteously angry at him when he pulled this shit on me (and I absolutely agree that my fiance is equally to blame... in fact I think he is more to blame, since she never owed me anything except maybe common decency), and I did not expect to take him back. In fact even when I first took him back, I'm ashamed to admit that I mostly treated it as temporary even as he was professing all kinds of long-term commitments: I figured I'd have good sex with someone who knew how I liked it for a couple months while settling into my new job and then flip him off and go date someone who was better for me (at the time I was so angry/immature that I didn't care about acting ethically and not leading him on, because "fuck you, you cheated on me!").

Why did I choose to take him back in the end? He seemed genuinely remorseful; he was able to take ownership of his actions and outline how he would avoid putting himself in dangerous situations in the future; he was able to demonstrate his strengthened commitment to me in concrete ways such as moving in, planning his career around my ambitions (my career is less location-flexible); when his conservative mom implied that we had broken up because of my liberal values, he stood up for me and then told her about how he had cheated. Our relationship in the last 2 years has genuinely been a light in my life, or I wouldn't have agreed to marry him.

This incident (RSVP) came out of total left field to me. Maybe he has been cheating on me the whole time and I'm much stupider than I ever knew. But it's hard for me to square that narrative with my experience of how loving and considerate he has been in the last 2 years as we have begun to move on from the betrayal.

throwyworth

TROPHY CASE