How would you feel if you’re wife-to-be wanted to wear her dead first husband’s wedding ring on your wedding day?
This groom is struggling to decide if he has the right to feel uncomfortable about it and how to tell his fiancée.
Taking to Reddit’s popular “Am I the A**hole” page, he shares his story and asks users what they think about it.
He starts by sharing that his fiancée got married in her early 20s and that her late husband, with whom she was deeply in love, passed away suddenly in an accident five years ago.
They met two years after her husband’s death.
“Over the years, I’ve supported her through moments of grief, anniversaries, random waves of sadness. She still visits his grave on his birthday, and she keeps a box of his things in our closet. I’ve never touched it,” he shares.
“I’ve tried really hard to respect that part of her life while also building our own,” he adds.
She recently told him that she plans to wear her late husband’s wedding ring on a chain around her neck on their wedding day. Telling him that it’s a “quiet tribute” to him.
“She said she wouldn’t be where she is now without having gone through that loss, and she feels like carrying that part of her story into this new chapter is meaningful,” he continues.
When she told him this, he didn’t say much because, at the time, he didn’t know how to respond.
However, after some time, it started to bother him, and he finally told her how he felt about it.
“I said I want our wedding day to be a celebration of us, and it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of her wearing another man’s wedding ring,” he wrote.
“I told her it makes me feel like I’m sharing the most important day of my life with someone who’s not here. I said it makes me feel like second place.”
She then told him that she wasn’t “choosing” her late husband over him and that she should be allowed to honour her past while still moving forward.
“She said grief isn’t a door you close; it just becomes part of who you are,” he adds.
Even though he understood what she was saying, he still felt that his response was not unreasonable.
That it’s their special day and that it should be about the life they’re building together, not the one she lost.
“I feel like the bad guy, like I’m trying to erase someone important to her, but I’m also struggling with the idea of standing at the altar and knowing she’s literally carrying a symbol of her first marriage as she says vows to start a new one with me,” he shares.
Even though he hasn’t explicitly told her not to wear it, he has made it clear he’s not comfortable with it.
He now wants to know if he’s an a**hole for how he feels about it.
One user responded, “I think you should postpone the wedding. I don’t think your fiancée is ready.”
“As a widow, that’s weird. I’ll say the thing. My husband passed nine years ago and I couldn’t imagine doing something to honor him if I got married again,” commented another.
“Hey. Widow here. I know each person grieves differently, but I think her behavior is a signal that she’s not ready for a life that doesn’t include her late husband. It’s not just about a wedding ring,” said another Reddit user.
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