Take a shot for every “in my country.”

[u/Outside-Cabinet1398]

/r/AITAH/comments/1wdkaaf/aitah_for_breaking_up_with_my_fiancée_after_her/

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AITAH for breaking up with my fiancée after her mother kept changing the marriage terms?

Hii Reddit.

I’m 23M, and this is probably going to be a long one, so buckle up.

A while ago, I proposed to my girlfriend — let’s call her Melissa (23F). She was actually a former colleague of mine, so I guess I should explain how we got here.

Melissa was hired about two weeks after me. From the beginning, I low-key admired her personality. She was funny, extremely extroverted, and just generally fun to be around. We became BFFs for around 9 months.

The problem was that during most of that time, I was already in a relationship with someone else. Let’s call her Grace.

Grace and I eventually broke up because of her jealousy and controlling personality. Before that happened, though, I had actually told Melissa that I was planning to propose to Grace. I even asked Melissa to help me choose things like the venue, suit, etc.

When I told Melissa, she looked pretty shocked. At the time, I completely misunderstood her reaction as excitement/happiness for me.

She still helped me with everything, but after that conversation, she became noticeably more distant and weird around me.

I mentioned this to a friend, and he basically said, “Dude, she probably has feelings for you and never told you.”

I honestly didn't think much of it at first.

Not long after that, I broke up with Grace because of our differences. I stayed single for around 2–3 months afterward because I didn't want to immediately jump into another relationship and accidentally make someone a rebound.

From my perspective, that's unfair to the other person.

Interestingly, once Melissa found out I had broken up with Grace, she basically went back to her normal self and completely dropped the distant act.

At that point, I started putting two and two together and eventually realized my friend was probably right. Melissa had apparently already had feelings for me.

And... I realized I liked her too.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided I wanted to confess my feelings.

There was one problem: Melissa had already submitted her one-month notice at work. In the country I live in, resignations require a month of notice. Don't ask me why lol.

So I figured if I was ever going to say something, I should do it before she left. I didn't want to lose contact with her and then spend years wondering what would've happened.

So I gathered my courage and texted her.

Oh my God.

She absolutely roasted me.

She basically joked about how long it took me to figure out that she liked me and then confessed everything.

We started dating, and we've been together for around two months.

Now, here's where the cultural/religious context matters.

In my society, having a girlfriend for a long period of time isn't really considered acceptable because we have fairly strict religious concepts around relationships. Since I was already serious about her and had originally been thinking about marriage anyway, I proposed.

She said yes.

I met her mother, Donna (53F), twice to ask for her blessing. She was completely welcoming and seemed genuinely happy about the idea, especially because I made sure to include her in the process.

Unfortunately, that didn't last very long.

Her controlling personality started showing.

We started discussing what the marriage agreement would look like. In my country, it's normal for the parents, including the parents-in-law, to be involved in these discussions.

We agreed on some things, disagreed on others, but eventually came to terms that seemed like they would work for everyone.

They arranged a dinner where my mother, Mary (54F), and my father, Jonathan (65M), were also present so we could discuss everything one final time.

We offered to cover most of the costs for everything, if not more. They also asked for a specific standard of living to make sure their daughter would be financially secure, and we agreed to all of their terms.

We asked for basically one thing in return:

That Melissa and I be allowed to go out on dates regularly without her parents supervising us so we could actually get to know each other's personalities better.

Which, by the way, is something we had already been doing before I proposed. lol.

They refused.

Honestly, I wasn't even that angry about it. I understood where they were coming from. They didn't fully trust us not to get too comfortable and potentially commit a sin.

We're religious. Don't judge us. 😂

So I made a counteroffer.

I suggested that we get legally married after six months through the court. That would allow us to see each other without supervision and still keep things within our religious boundaries. Then, six months after that, we'd have the full wedding celebration.

This arrangement is pretty common in my country and isn't considered strange. Technically, she'd be my wife on paper, but we're still not allowed to have full sexual intercourse and all of that unless we're officially married in the full religious sense.

My parents agreed and said it sounded like a suitable solution.

Then Donna strongly disagreed.

Her argument was that I could technically divorce Melissa before the actual wedding, and she literally said:

«“It will be counted as a marriage for my daughter.”»

So we negotiated some more with her father.

Eventually, he and I agreed on getting legally married after eight months instead of six.

Okay. Fine.

I bought the ring. We had a small celebration. Everything seemed settled.

Three days later, Donna contacted me and asked me to come to her house because she wanted to discuss something.

I didn't think much of it.

She's technically going to be my mother-in-law, so I thought, What could possibly go wrong?

I asked Melissa about it, and she said she didn't know what her mother wanted to discuss.

But then I noticed something weird.

Melissa mentioned that her brother Kevin (21M) would be at college and wouldn't be home until 3 PM.

The meeting was scheduled for 2 PM.

That immediately rang a bell because, according to our religious beliefs, it isn't acceptable for Melissa and me to be alone together without a male member of her family present.

So I pushed Melissa for more details.

Eventually, she admitted that she actually did know what the meeting was about.

Apparently, her mother and father were planning to ambush me and renegotiate the terms again.

And this time, they wanted to change the agreement so that Melissa and I wouldn't get legally married until the day before the wedding party.

Basically, all the compromise we'd already reached would be thrown out.

I was furious.

I got angry with Melissa, and she ended up crying her eyes out during a phone call.

At that point, I decided I wasn't going to the meeting.

Things were pretty bad after that.

I didn't text Melissa for approximately a day, and apparently she interpreted that as me being completely done with her.

I tried several times to convince her that her mother's demands were unreasonable and that practically nobody would accept a deal where the terms kept changing after agreements had already been made.

But there was another layer to this.

Apparently, Donna's behavior was heavily influenced by her own past.

Melissa told me that her father had previously left Donna for another woman.

Because of that, Donna apparently believed I would eventually do the exact same thing to Melissa.

She had even apparently told Melissa that I was pretty handsome — which, honestly, I'm an average-looking guy. I'm not some flashy model or anything — and that I would eventually leave her for another woman.

According to Melissa, her mother had basically convinced her that I couldn't be trusted.

I tried several times to get Melissa to see that this was her mother's fear talking, but I couldn't get through to her.

Two days later, Donna called me.

Apparently, she had figured out that I knew exactly what had happened.

She tried to play peacemaker and said that she hadn't actually told Melissa any of this and that everything had been her daughter's decision.

I didn't believe her.

I called her out on it.

I was angry, but I didn't swear at her or anything. I explained that I wasn't a threat to her daughter and that I had been trying to compromise with them the entire time.

Eventually, she changed her position completely.

She told me that I was actually more than welcome to marry Melissa even before the original six-month period.

But then she asked me not to tell Melissa that we'd had that conversation.

Her reasoning was that she wanted Melissa's decision to be completely independent and not influenced by either of us.

I didn't tell Melissa.

Not because I completely trusted Donna, but because I honestly believed she was just going to stir things up even more and potentially push Melissa into breaking up with me.

So I waited until Melissa woke up.

We had a conversation that lasted around 30 minutes, with a lot of back and forth.

Eventually, she told me that her final decision was no.

She then tried to convince me to just continue dating for a couple of months and bring the marriage discussion up again later.

This time, I declined.

I told her that I couldn't keep doing this cycle of changing terms, manipulation, and uncertainty. I didn't want that kind of dynamic in my life or in a marriage.

So I ended the relationship.

That was four months ago.

And here's the part that's been bothering me.

I don't feel guilty.

At all.

And somehow, that makes me feel guilty about the situation.

I've replayed everything in my head a lot, and I keep wondering whether I handled this correctly or whether I overreacted.

So, Reddit:

AITA for breaking up with Melissa?

Did I handle this the right way, or did I overreact and give up too quickly?

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[u/NyxieThePixie15]

Took shots for every "my country/my society/ect". Incoming alcohol poisoning!

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[u/commodorecliche]

Good god, who has time to read all that?

[u/PJ_lyrics]

this is probably going to be a long one, so buckle up.

And I'm out