When we’re fortunate enough to find a person who we love more than we ever dreamed possible, there’s no way we could imagine doing anything but committing to them long-term.
That said, surely none of us would ever want to hear that our partners are only settling for us, cringed the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITAH) subReddit.
That’s why when Redditor n0dramaan0n discovered that the love of his life was settling for a life with him as a ‘great guy,’ he was devastated.
So much so, that the Original Poster (OP) deeply questioned if there was any way forward in their relationship, even if it would leave his fiancée high and dry.
He asked the sub:
“WIBTAH (Would I be the a**hole) if I left my fiancée destitute?”
The OP overheard his fiancée say something devastating about him.
“I might not be in the right state of mind, but I had to get this off my chest. Two days ago, I came back from basketball, a little early.”
“I overheard my fiancee, J, tell her friend that she is settling for me. This friend just got out of a relationship.”
“I don’t know what they were talking about before, but I just heard J saying that after all the a**holes she dated, settling for me will be good for her. She then went on to describe my job and all the perks of being with me. Love is apparently not on the list.”
“Hearing this kinda broke me. I just stood in place dumbfounded. I don’t even think she even loves me.”
The OP had provided everything for J.
“For context, we live in a beach house (I bought it as a total gut job and renovated it myself) and I have several other properties that are all rented out. I work in property insurance from home and do house flips on the side. I’m satisfied with what I’ve accomplished so far in my life.”
“All of this was worth mentioning for J, but not how much I loved her. How much time we spent together. Not how I tried to be supportive of her goals and ambitions, how she wanted for nothing. I’m not going to lie, I was in a bad place. Maybe I still am.”
“I spent all of last night going through her messages. I knew her password, I just never looked.”
“Well, it’s a pretty common thing for her to say. Pretty much all her friends know what’s up. J wants a ‘nice, normal guy’ after all the a**holes she dated. She wants a drama-free life where she’ll be taken care of.”
“Every time I read what she really thought about me, it was like another needle was being jammed in my heart.”
“My first reaction was to yell at her and confront her about it. My second reaction was to make her suffer like I am.”
The OP even created a life for J in which she didn’t have to work.
“My dear J, the love of my life, I thought, doesn’t work right now. She quit to be a real estate agent. I don’t know, maybe she wanted to learn more about real estate, or maybe she thought her looks would get her by. She doesn’t work right now. At all.”
“She also lives in my house. She decorated it and certainly put her touches on everything, but my name is on the title. Just mine.”
“Her car is technically mine, too. She didn’t qualify for financing on her own, and she just HAD to have a Beamer, so I cosigned for it. I can probably make a case that it is my car.”
“We don’t have joint accounts (Thank the Almighty himself, because she did ask if we could; now I know why), but I do pay her cards right now.”
“Right now, I want to just show her the texts, throw her s**t in garbage bags, and put her out on the street.”
“WIBTAH if I did that?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
Some reassured the OP that nothing would hurt more than being with someone who settled.
“There’s no worse feeling than someone settling for you. This guy sounds kind and caring too.”
“He wants a real connection and she wants a comfortable life. If only she had really chased love, she could have found it with this guy. But if she doesn’t feel a real connection, she was going to try to leave him destitute in the future.”
“I just hope he tells her he feels like he was settling for her and she deserves more.” – cbbclick
“Tell her, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t shake the feeling that I can do so much better than this relationship and you. I’ve been going through the motions for a while, but the fact is I feel like I’m settling for less than I deserve. I think we should start making arrangements for you to move out of my house.'”
“If OP stays with her, he will absolutely be settling for less than he deserves.” – busyboobs
“He won’t even have her for long. Especially if there’s no prenup. When he financially stagnates or plateaus, it will all be over and she’ll try to grab half of it and leave.” – brett1081
“My ex wasn’t quite to this degree, I believe she loved me. She did cheat on me, leave me for the exciting guy, and didn’t want to stay with the boring settled guy.”
“Now she is dealing with a toxic relationship and I am in a happy one. I hope the OP can say the same soon.” – VoVoGo
“Nope. NTA. I’m so sorry this happened to you. Fortunately… you found out before you became even more entangled or married. It seriously sucks and it’ll probably be a while before you can throw her out. You’ll probably have to evict her.”
“And a BMW? Really? She’s got expensive taste, huh? Well… guess who shouldn’t settle? You dude. You can do a whole lot better and I seriously doubt she can.” – No_Scarcity8249
Others were grateful that the OP found out before he actually married her.
“I’m sad for OP but at the same time, the timing was pretty good considering they hadn’t gotten married yet. Huge bullet dodged!” – orchidpop
“NTA. You aren’t leaving her destitute.”
“Think of it as you leaving her with exactly what she brought into the relationship.”
“You’re not married. You don’t have kids. You saw love and she saw a piggy bank.”
“She didn’t quit her job to try something else. That was her excuse so that she could get you to support her jobless a**. It’s sweet of you to encourage her to chase an interest, but we all see right through her, and the real interest was your money, not real estate.” – Status-Pattern7539
“She lives with you and doesn’t work. She has friends and family, and frankly, you should get out from under this dating situation quickly… I would tell her you know what she says to her friends about you and heard her talking to her friend.”
“Never did love come into the conversation once… That you want to break up and she must leave immediately.”
“I suggest you bring a friend while you do this, and pack her a bag and have her go to family or friends… She can’t say you hit her or said horrible things to her with a witness.”
“In the moment, she will desperately say anything out of panic and abandonment issues. You are dating and don’t need to be so generous with her. We date to choose our partner and you do not want to be hers.” – tmink0220
“I’m just waiting for the companion post to this, reading, ‘AITA for not telling my fiance I’m just with him for his money’ where she rants about how her fiance is breaking up with her for NO REASON, and she thought he was different. Thankfully, he showed his true colors before they got married, turns out he’s just like all the other a**holes she dated before, wanting crazy things in a relationship like LOVE. The audacity.” – Armamore
“OP should ask himself if his partner would stay if he lost everything. Would she step up and support if he decided to go back to school to fulfill a dream or change careers? That’s what a true partner would do and it doesn’t sound like she would.”
“For real, he should ask HER that question. Seriously, and gauge her reaction.”
“I know one thing, and that I loved my late husband beyond anything. He traveled for work, Monday through Friday, and every time he pulled out of the driveway on Monday mornings, I got teary-eyed. The biggest disagreement we ever had was me telling him that I would give up the big house in the country and live in a trailer if I could just wake up to him every morning.”
“Nine months later, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I’d gladly have stayed right by his side, even if he was severely disabled for life, if I could just have him in my life for the rest of mine. He passed three months after diagnosis, and I’ve missed him every day since.”
“Is she that person? Because life does happen.”
“To all of you, especially the OP: find someone who loves you that deeply. There is no fancy wedding or car or house that means anything more, will keep you warm at night, or hold you at your worst. Settle on that kind of love.” – definitelytheA
The OP later shared another post, including talking to his fiancée about her settling.
“Hi, everyone. Thank you to everyone for your advice and kind words. Here is the update.”
“I talked to J. I told her how I overheard her talking and how she is settling for me. I told her how that felt and what kind of mood I was in after.”
“She had tears rolling down her face as I was telling her how I felt. She didn’t say anything for a bit.”
“Then she just said, I’m sorry. It was true when we started dating. She just heard from [a mutual friend] that I was great and she thought she’d give me a chance.”
“She said, in the beginning, it was about feeling safe, and feeling like she could be supported and loved. In the beginning, it was just being with someone who had their s**t together and would be good for her. Eventually, she fell in love. She loved me dearly.”
This was no longer enough for the OP.
“This didn’t make me feel better. I then told her about the text messages. This is when she got angry. I was an a**hole for going through her messages. Violation of privacy. Betrayal of trust. How dare I?”
“I didn’t set out to get her password. She’s just extremely careless with it. She hits ‘remember password’ on everything. When she types it out, she hits ‘show password first.’ If you happened to be glancing at the screen, you’d know what it was. That’s how I found out. I’ve never thought to use it until that day.”
“Eventually, after going on about reading her messages, she stopped and was sobbing for a minute. Finally, she just said, ‘What do you want me to say? I can’t help how I feel.'”
“I wasn’t the type she’d go for before. She’s still attracted to those types of guys. She’s just older now and knows better. That’s why she’s settled with me. She loves me and wants to spend the rest of her life with me.”
“That didn’t work for me. I told her that we had different ideas about what a relationship, especially marriage. I said the trust is broken for both of us. I went through her messages and she settled for me, even though I’m not her type.”
The OP made a tough decision.
“This is where we decided to go our separate ways. We agreed eventually that she stay with one of her friends.”
“I’ll move all her stuff to the spare bedroom. When she finds a place, I’ll help her move. She can keep the car. I was just being an a**hole about leaving her destitute.”
“She was crying from the moment we started talking to the moment we went into separate rooms. It wasn’t easy seeing her like that. I wanted to go to her and hold her, but it had to be done.”
“When I closed the door to my room, that’s when all the emotions washed over me. I was bawling the whole time. The sheets still smelled like her and I either couldn’t or didn’t want to change them just then.”
“I feel s**tty and I won’t be okay for a while. But I am pretty certain I did the right thing.”
The OP then shared one more update post with how he and his fiancée were doing now.
“It’s been like a month since I posted my story and I’ve gotten so many messages asking for an update. I appreciate everyone’s well wishes and thoughts. I’ll update everyone on what happened since, although it’s nothing dramatic.”
“My friends all came around to check on me. This went about as you would expect. Many adult beverages were consumed. Many offers to go to adult establishments were made. A group of us made plans to tailgate on the opening day of the college football season at the local university. People showed up, brought too much food and drinks. It was a blast.”
“One of them found my Reddit post and showed it to everyone else. There was maybe half an hour of, ‘Dude, are you okay?’ and ‘I’m here for you, bro,’ before the post became a source of light roasting. ‘We should let OP pick what we order for dinner, we wouldn’t want him to settle.’ All in good fun. They helped me through it, and I appreciate that I have them in my life.”
Some people were pushing back against the OP’s decision.
“J is fine, I guess. We’ve texted a little, but mostly to check on each other.”
“Some of our mutual friends say she’s pretty broken up and still doesn’t understand what it is she did wrong.”
“It all comes down to expectations. It’s all well and good to be pragmatic or to do the safe and practical thing. But you can’t do that forever.”
“If you’re sensible with your money, you live within your means, do all the right things and such, you’ll still get that itch or impulse to buy something that you don’t need but want. You can resist it for months or years, but eventually, you give in. What happens when you follow that impulse in a relationship that you’re being pragmatic about? That’s what I didn’t want.”
“Not to mention that if J or anyone is settling for financial reasons, I’m not rich by any means. I couldn’t stop working tomorrow and be set. I’m working toward that goal, but I’m not there yet.”
“Every piece of property I bought was either uninhabitable or outdated. That’s the only way I can afford it. If you want to settle for financial security, there are plenty of men who earn more than me, by easier means. If that’s the main motivator, what will happen when one of those dudes comes along?”
“There was a lot of head shaking in the comments about how immature I’m being and how real life isn’t like Romeo and Juliet. Well, maybe that’s true and I’m being unrealistic. I’m not looking for Juliet. But sticking with literature, I also don’t want a Scheherazade, spinning me tales. I definitely don’t want to be Menelaus.”
The OP decided to change his location, too.
“Finally, I decided to sell the house. The amount of upkeep, time, and money needed to maintain it is now, not worth it. The insurance was getting out of hand, too. I never considered it before, because J loved the place. But now, there is no reason not to go through with it.”
“I think that’s it. I don’t expect anything else to happen regarding J, so this might be it. Thank you to everyone who messaged me, to everyone who offered advice or encouragement.”
The subReddit was left shaking their collective head over this one, completely understanding the difference between practicality and true love.
As practical as it might be for J to seek out a kind, independent, and financially secure man, if she wasn’t upfront about those expectations, she would only be setting up a man like the OP for heartbreak.