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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Choice_Evidence1983 on 2024-08-24 04:02:06+00:00.
I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/poetrysonnets
Originally posted to r/AITAH
AITAH for not telling my fiancée that my late partner was a man?
Thanks to u/soayherder + u/Direct-Caterpillar77 for suggesting this BoRU
Trigger Warnings: death of a loved one, biphobia
Original Post: August 15, 2024
I (29M) lost my fiancé four years ago in a car accident. He and I were both 25 at the time and had been together since we were 19. If soulmates are real, he was mine. He was stubborn, he preferred a way earlier bedtime than I did, and was a major homebody, and I loved all of it. He would stay up with me until he was sure I fell asleep and weekly movie theater outings (planned by him) became a thing like a month into us meeting. I am a fundamentally different person both because I met him and because of my grief. I was shown what real love and effort and care feels like. I also don’t talk about him.
I go to therapy once a week. Otherwise, it’s silence on that topic from me.
He lives on in me in the ways I try to emulate him. I practice the patience he had that I always struggled to find. I go after career related opportunities that scare me because I know he would encourage me to. Sometimes I let myself stay in bed because I know he’d be gentle with me and let me do that too. But I don’t talk about him and I probably never will. I’ll make the occasional “Oh, X would’ve loved this,” comment when I’m with friends who knew him well. With strangers, nothing. My friends and family respect that, as well.
I’m engaged again. My fiancée (31F) obviously knows I was engaged before. I pretty much told her “My last partner passed away and I don’t talk about it.” I don’t use social media in really any capacity anymore but she happened to stumble upon an old instagram profile of mine recently and saw him heavily featured. This led to her accusing me of purposefully keeping this from her. I don’t really see why his gender matters and I told her so. She said I’ve broken her trust.
Times like these are when I long for the life I was living before. But grief fucked up my brain so I’m not sure if I’m being insensitive.
EDIT: She knew I am bisexual. The only thing she didn’t know was that my fiancé was a man.
AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP received mixed reactions
Relevant Comments
Character-Tell4893: You kept the fact he was a man a secret because YOU KNEW it would be an issue.
YTA
OOP: I live in a very liberal area and I’ve never heard my fiancée express any bigoted views— I wouldn’t be in this relationship if I had. I wrongly assumed that it was a complete non-issue.
Edit: she knows I’m bisexual and has known for our entire relationship.
DragonflyFuture4638: Even worse. So if your partner would not be ok with you being bisexual then you’d qualify her as bigoted? You’re full of yourself, get help and if you care about her, get away and don’t hurt her more.
OOP: She is okay with me being bisexual. The only thing she wasn’t aware of was that my late fiancé was a man.
But to answer your question, yes. I do think not dating someone simply on the grounds of their orientation is bigoted. But it does usually save me trouble when dating, because it helps weed people out. The STD argument lets me know they’re ignorant and the “now I have to worry about girls AND guys” shows insecurity or some kind of inherent lack of trust.
ElkWidowMom: Oof, some of these comments are rough…
Here’s my perspective as a widow. You need to talk to your therapist about this. Not reddit. Most people have no idea what it’s like to lose so much and just how much that loss shapes you.
But also, It’s concerning to me that he sounds like such a big part of your internal life, but you’ve never even mentioned him with your current partner. Before you get married, you need to dig into why you’ve compartmentalized this to such an intense degree. Why are you hiding him? What are you afraid of?
If I’m being generous, I think seeing that your late fiancé was a man shocked your fiancée into realizing that she knows absolutely nothing about this major part of you.
OOP: I really appreciate your comment. Thank you. It’s very thoughtful.
I don’t think there’s anything I’m necessarily scared of, but I am very protective of his memory. Sharing him with someone he didn’t choose to share his story with kind of freaks me out in a way? I don’t know. I’m aware that’s irrational.
Then there’s the risk that the new partner would get tired of hearing about him or otherwise insecure about it, and that makes me really uncomfortable to think about too. So I guess I just keep him safe in me and my mind, and it protects me too.
On if the fiancée was having an issue with the previous partner’s gender
OOP: Because the gender issue is all she has fixated on, at least during our conversation.
Also, it makes me uncomfortable to be with someone who is okay with my bisexuality in theory but not in practice. If the thought of me having sex or being romantic with a man in the past makes the other person insecure, I’m not really down for that. I come out to any potential romantic partners early on so I thought I had already done my due diligence in that regard.
I probably should have been more open. But I didn’t anticipate that I needed to have a second “coming out” where I admit that me saying I’m bisexual actually means I’m bisexual. Like, not just in the ‘I like kissing dudes in bars’ kind of way but in the ‘romantic morning sex six years into a relationship’ way.
Update: August 17, 2024
I figured I’d go ahead and post an update before I return to my all-lurk, no post/comment reddit life.
Yesterday, I had an emergency therapy session because I was spiraling and didn’t feel prepared to tackle the upcoming conversation with my fiancée without one. It was hard but necessary as I was finally honest about just how much I was compartmentalizing my grief. It laid the foundation for where I’d like to go moving forward. Now I have to put in the leg work.
The few hours between my therapy appointment and my fiancée getting off work was evidence of just how avoidant I’ve become. It was a conversation we needed, but definitely not one I wanted. When we finally sat down to talk, I asked her to start us off by telling me exactly what was bothering her about the whole situation. She said because I had come out to her in a casual way (the way I come out to anyone, by mentioning it early on when it seems natural to bring up), she didn’t realize how “serious” I was and this made her look at me differently. She apologized for that and suggested that if I told her more about him now, it might be an easier pill for her to swallow.
I tried, but there was this knot in my stomach the entire time I tried to pick a place to start. And maybe this is me being cruel, not giving her the benefit of the doubt, but it just didn’t feel right. She hadn’t come and said, “I was shocked because I realized how little I know about this time in your life. Would you be open to talking about it now?” Instead it felt like, “tell me what you saw in him so I can attempt to rationalize your orientation.” I told her I needed some time, so she went to stay elsewhere for the weekend.
A longtime good friend of mine came over this morning. I think the combination of anonymously talking more openly about my partner here as well as being more open with my therapist helped remind me of how joyous and cathartic it could be. I don’t know the exact catalyst, but I do know I spilled my guts. We talked for hours about things I haven’t told anyone in years. I expressed how nervous I was about possibly living alone again and I was told that I didn’t ever have to worry about that — that an SOS text message would be all it took for me to have company if I needed it. (Same goes for all my friends and family. I’m so lucky I have an incredible support system.)
Five minutes into that hours long conversation, I already knew. The trust, security, and love I felt made room for this newfound openness. The absence of any one of those marks a relationship DOA, and is why I felt physically ill trying to share his memory with her.
I truly wish her the best. I think going our separate ways will be good for both of us. We weren’t getting what we needed from each other. She’s supposed to be coming back tomorrow, so we’ll have the talk then. I have lots of work to do but for tonight, I get to be reminded of what safety feels like.
EDIT: Please see this comment where I elaborate on the conversation she and I had. There seems to be this misunderstanding where I blame her for everything because she didn’t perfectly respond to the si…
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