[relationshipa1]

good day my name is Jonathan and i would like to get your insight to a rather disturbing situation. My girl friend and i have been together for the last 6 years. These years have been trying at times and our relationship has been on and off but i love her, i honestly do. I would like to marry her in the not to far future but we had a major falling out within the last month which snowballed into even more arguments.
I will now begin to explain the incident that started this.
Her best friend was getting married and this was to take place over a two day period. My two best friends birthdays were also on that weekend, but i told her yes i would go to the wedding. On the second day of her best friend’s wedding i asked her to leave a little early (early being 11pm) and this is what started the whole mayhem. Apparently her friend ( the one who just got married) did not want her to leave and wanted her to stay for support and to lime with.
I told my girl friend that i was leaving and she said she would stay because her friend needed her (yes the one that just got married). Her friend told her i was insensitive, her mother told her i should have stayed by her side and support her while she support the bride (until 4 in the morning, yes that is what time she returned home).

Was i wrong in asking her to leave, was i unreasonable?
I would appreciate a third party’s perspective, one that either of us has any relation to. Your advice and ideas on this matter would help me better understand how to approach and deal with the situation.
I thank you for you time and patience in this matter and look forward to your reply

[April Masini]

Sorry, but a wedding trumps a birthday. Especially if it’s your future fiance’s best friend’s wedding. Weddings are usually once in a lifetime. Birthdays are annual. The math should spell it out for you.

Sadly, this whole thing could have been avoided if you’d asked her in advance if she minded if you took off at 10 p.m. on the second night of the wedding party to celebrate your friends’ birthdays. I’m guessing you didn’t ask her in advance because you knew she’d say no. Leaving her at the last minute was not the most graceful move on your part. It probably left her embarrassed and disappointed and angry and sad. If you’d made it known you were leaving early in advance, she could have at least saved face with her friends by giving the impression that the two of you had made a deal and were on the same page in the relationship. By leaving her suddenly, her relationship with you was suddenly up for judgment by everyone who saw her surprise and hurt feelings. 😕 The impression your behavior created was that you didn’t respect her or her best friend’s big day.

Relationships require compromises and this was one where with some advance planning and bargaining (another great tool in relationships), you could avoided this heartache. Think about what will happen if another situation like this comes up where you two may be married, and she wants the two of you (and possibly your children) to spend Christmas with her family and you would rather you two spend it with your family. How will you handle this situation? Think about all the possible conflicts down the line and decide if you’re willing to compromise and sometimes “lose”. If you are, then you’re ready to move forward in this relationship. If you always need to get your way, at any cost, then you’re not.

Advance planning can show respect in the relationship, as well. If you had come up with a plan in advance of the wedding — even if neither one of you was one hundred percent happy with the decision — you could have shown a united front to her friends and avoided their judgment which seems to be plaguing her and you, now

I hope that helps!

Please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter. 😀

[jonathanr]

i did ask in advance earlier in the night if that counts.
i asked her at maybe say 8ish if we could leave a bit early.
when i did ask her she said no problem, at 11 when i was ready she was going to tell her friend.
her friend had problem with that and asked her to stay and lime with her.
mind you at 11 in the night i was not leaving the wedding to go celebrate anyone’s bday.
i had to go to the airport the following day and she knew this a month in advance.
knowing this would you say that i should have stayed and be more understanding?

[jonathanr]

i guess you thought your answer was sufficient enough as you did not reply to me other post.
thanks anyways

[jonathanr]

ohh yeah another question is
on your wedding night would you want to be with your best husband or best friend?
who would you want to support you?

[April Masini]

Sorry, I thought you were leaving the wedding for YOUR best friends’ birthday celebrations. I can see now that you just wanted to leave early — because you had a flight to catch in the morning, but by early, you meant 11 p.m. which isn’t really early the same way 7:30 or 8 p.m. are early. It’s a pretty reasonable time for a two day ordeal.

The extra information you’ve added since your original post fleshes out the story a little more… I’m surprised that your girlfriend said it was okay for you to leave early when you asked her at 8 p.m., but then changed her mind at 11 p.m. I’m thinking that this snowballing problem has nothing to do with the actual wedding and leaving early. In fact, I’m sure it has to do with some underlying tension. 😮

The way your later posts tell it, your girlfriend felt pressured by her best friend to stay and rather then supporting you and the agreement you’d both made earlier in the night, she sided with her girlfriend. 😕 Now I can see why you’re upset. Your girlfriend took her friend’s side and not her boyfriend’s. And to add insult to injury, she’s angry at you. However….sometimes it’s a lot easier to not win a battle, but win a war.

[i]What is it you really want? Is it to be right? Or to end the fight.[/i] ❓

If it’s strictly to be right, you may lose her. It sounds like there’s been tension brewing under the surface for some time now and this fight may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. If it’s the latter, you may be wise to drop this argument. I’m not sure how old you both are, but she may be upset about not being engaged and watching her friend get married after she’s committed six years to your relationship. Just a guess… If she’s shown signs of disloyalty in the past, then perhaps you need to rethink the relationship, but the way you tell it, this isn’t an ongoing problem where she puts her friends ahead of you.

I hope that helps.

[katdawg]

“but she may be upset about not being engaged and watching her friend get married after she’s committed six years to your relationship. Just a guess… “

i think you nailed it in the head with that line there, April. six years is a LONG time to wait for a man to decide whether or not this is for life or not. people date to find a life partner. when you make someone your girlfriend/boyfriend you are saying, “okay, i think this might be the one. let’s see if we’re made for each other.” four years tops it. even that is too long. if you didn’t know by four years what are you still doing in the relationship.

i can see why you would be upset with her -you did reach an agreement to leave early, but by the end of the night she didn’t want “the fairy tale” evening to end. even if it is vicariously through her friend. 😕 “when a man wants to be your husband…he act’s like a husband would act.” on the other hand…i agree with April. a wedding is once in a lifetime for a couple (if we prayed hard enough) and birthdays are every year. a husband would understand that.

if your best man wanted to skip your wedding to go to his girlfriend’s friend’s birthday party and the FUN was just beginning…??? you would be okay with that?

[jonathanr]

am katdawg didnt you see the part where i said i wasnt going to meet my friends to celebrate his birthday i was just leaving the wedding to go home!!!!

i am 27 six years together is a long time but before i get married i wanted us to live together for a little while. i am in the process of building my house right now and should be completed at the end of the year.
i asked her to stay with me a couple of months to just experience life as a true married couple.
the reason being for this is that i have seen too many couples get married and then divorced after 6 months or a year reason being the transition between couple life and married life is a big step when at the end of the day you both goto your respective houses (parents house).
i dont know if she feels that i am not committed enough or wants more at then end of 6 years but that is what i am working towards.
right now she wants me to go couple counselling or have nothing to do with her.
i dont think i will be going and she is to stubborn to call.
thanks for your insight i was starting to second guess myself about my decision.

[April Masini]

Your plans to build a house, have her live with you for a few months….while they make sense to you, may not make sense to her. She’s asked you to go to couples counseling, and although you say you want to marry her, you’re putting your needs ahead of hers, by telling me you won’t go.

I’d ask you to reconsider the question: [i]Would you rather be right or happy? [/i]If you need to “win” the battle, you may lose the war. Clearly you’re at a standoff and not talking to her after a six year relationship. This is a turning point. If you want to marry her, warts and all, she’s not going to wait much longer. If you don’t want to marry her, then you should move on now instead of dragging this on any longer. It seems like there’s any underlying desire to sabotage this relationship without being honest about your real feelings. The two of you are fighting about surface issues like leaving a wedding or going to counseling instead of addressing the bigger elephant in the room: after six years, there’s no wedding date in site. 😕

Make a decision so you don’t waste your time, or hers.

[Author]

Posts