I (33f) was engaged to a guy named “Matthew” (33m) who’s ultimately a great guy and I’m not gonna pretend that I’m sad for ending things or that I part of me wants him back, but there’s just something too big between us in the relationship.
What is it? is deceased wife “Carrie.” Carrie was his childhood sweetheart who tragically passed away 12 years ago. Matthew was understandably heartbroken and is clearly still grieving. Carrie was a huge part of Matthew’s life and his family still make great effort in preserving her memory. They still have pictures of her in their house, still celebrate her birthday, and mourn on the anniversary of her passing.
That alone was initially weird for me but I was able to tolerate it because I understand that Matthew had a life before me and I don’t get to dictate how others feel or act. I figured that with enough time in a new relationship Matthew would start to mourn her less and less, but I was an optimistic idiot.
My first red flag was when Matthew and I moved in together and he put a huge collection of pictures of Carrie throughout the house. I was not okay with that. If Matthew and Carrie had any children together I could see it but they didn’t and when I voiced how upset I was Matthew got defensive and said that me getting an art room instead of him getting a Man Cave and not showing any pictures of him with Carrie was his way of compromising. We fought and made up, and Matthew agreed to go to therapy but not before he went and told his family about what we fought about.
His family were still welcoming and polite but I could tell that there was a shift in there treatment of me and they began to make subtle jabs at me being insecure. It was rough but I stuck it out and thought I had finally made progress when Matthew proposed.
I created a group chat with his mother, sisters and a female cousin, along with some of my friends and female relatives for wedding related stuff, and during one of our conversations Matthew mother made a joke about something I was freaking out over not being able to big deal to her as she had already experienced with Carrie and talked about how great it was and the women in Matthew’s family agreed.
I was hurt and embarrassed and when I spoke to Matthew about it he just shrugged and said that his mom just made a poor joke and that it wasn’t a big deal and that just made me cry. I slept in the guest room and FaceTimed my best friend who essentially told me if I married Matthew then I would be signing up for a life time of feeling like this and that I should just cut my losses now if I wanted something better for myself. I mentioned about talking to Matthew about this again and my friend pointed out how I’ve already talked to Matthew about my feelings several times and that I was the one with the problem if I was still expecting anything to be different. I couldn’t argue with that.
I carried on as usual while secretly seeing a therapist and I ultimately came to the conclusion that I don’t want to spend my life feeling like I’ll be a consolation prize and decided to leave Matthew. It took a few weeks but I left while Matthew was out of town, left a short note with the ring, and blocked him on social media
Matthew has been crying and begging me to come back. Asking me to come back but I don’t want to say what’s wrong because I can’t think of anyway to verbalize it without sounding like an insecure and jealous b—h. AITAH?
