There’s a good reason why whenever someone wants to talk about a stressful undertaking, they usually compare it to planning a wedding. Even when the families like each other and everyone gets along, there a million little things that can go wrong, which then add up to some big expenses.
Of course, the world isn’t even that simple because oftentimes, the stress of putting a wedding together reveals the cracks in the bonds between family members and personal stress intermingles with the financial woes.
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And as we’re about to see, this can lead couples to discover things about their future spouse that make them wonder if the relationship is even worth pursuing.
When a man asked Reddit for advice about his upcoming wedding, he revealed that he fathered a son at age 15.
Since he was 18, he’s lived as a single father and spent a long period of his life in financial strain while trying to meet his son’s needs.
However, it seems to have paid off because he now own a gym and his now 22-year-old son works there full time while going to college.
It is also worth noting that his son first came to him at the age of 14.
Over the last two years, he has also been in a relationship with a woman he is now engaged to marry.
Although she comes from a deeply religious and conservative family, she had never expressed any issues with his son nor with the boyfriend that his son has been seeing since he was 18.
However, this apparently changed recently as the fiancée has told the man that she doesn’t want the son’s boyfriend at the wedding.
She also told the man that she doesn’t want her family– and her parents in particular–to have any idea that his son is gay.
As she put it, if her family became aware of this or saw his boyfriend, “They would have a complete fit.”
As the man saw it, his fiancée was asking him to tell his son to go back in the closet.
Not only was this something the man categorically refused to do, but he could see many future problems arising if he did as his fiancée asked.
For instance, what would happen if his son got married himself? Would her family ostracize him and try to block him from any future family events?
And so, he told her that his son is his best man and it wouldn’t be fair to disallow him from bringing a plus one.
In response, she got angry and told him he was being selfish and over-dramatic. She also told him that his son would only have to do this for one day.
For her, this was all in the name of wanting the perfect wedding.
But as the man already considered, it seemed unlikely that this would only be an issue for one day.
Plus, a wedding that seeks to disallow the person he cares most about in this world from being who he truly is and loving who he truly loves can hardly be considered perfect.
At the end of this argument, his fiancée gave him the silent treatment for a day and it hasn’t been brought up since.
His brother also seems to suggest that he’s in the wrong, echoing the fiancée’s sentiments that it’s only for one day and the son likely won’t have much interaction with her family anyway.
However, as much as he loves his fiancée, the man said that his son will always come first and he doesn’t want to marry into a family that would discriminate against him.
This whole experience has him contemplating calling the wedding off and asking Reddit whether his fiancée and brother are right or whether his reservations about getting married are valid.
The responses he’s received have largely told him that he shouldn’t have to tolerate what his fiancée is proposing.
Most commenters feel that he is right to reconsider whether marrying her is a good idea and some have outright told him to “run.”
At the very least, they seemed to agree that it should be made clear that he feels strongly enough about doing right by his son that he’s willing to sacrifice his relationship if need be.
Reddit | throwaway-thewedding
