Don't want to attend best friend's wedding...

[FrogInAHat23]

My best friend (we’ll call her F) of 25 years has decided to get romantically involved with the guy who is my boss and old school friend (we’ll call him M).
I tried to warn F initially about M – he’s got a strong (what I believe to be) narcissistic streak where he refuses to take responsibility or accountability when he’s in the wrong. He also needs to be seen as the smartest guy in the room. I’d butted up against this at work, and so had my colleagues, so much so that people had been talking to their union reps about him. He has a dictatorial management style and insists he knows best, and has made some really crappy decisions we have to live with. As you might expect, his behaviour at work put a huge strain on our friendship outside of it but I wasn’t surprised, since I’d seen this side of him before. I never wanted him involved in my work life – he took the position without me even knowing (I worked at the firm first).

F and M are about 2 years into their relationship now. M and I are no longer on good terms since he’s caused such chaos at work, but I did try and repair this rupture since F and I are friends. M and I ended up having an email exchange where he just blame-shifted, deflected, and essentially made me out to be the problem. I wasn’t surprised by this, unfortunately.

(This was ChatGPT’s assessment of his email:
"He is presenting himself as reasonable, willing, even patient while subtly painting you as the one who is overly critical, withholding, or unreasonable. It’s clever positioning — his words look conciliatory on the surface, but the subtext is that the problem lies with you and how you’re approaching him. He’s not meeting you in the middle, he’s more concerned with protecting his self-image than with genuinely understanding your perspective. There’s a thread of defensiveness and blame-shifting throughout.")

F really wants me at her small, intimate wedding. They’re not engaged yet, but she wants to get married and she's desperate for him to propose. She was bridesmaid at mine, and she wants me to be maid of honour; I’m her closest friend. I want her to be happy, and I have to trust she’s making the right decisions for herself romantically.

I know it’s only a day, but I’m not sure I can stomach it.

AIBU?

Well you'll have to decide whether your feelings are the most important thing if and when this happens.

If you're desperate not to fuck up your relationship with your friend, then you need to attend the hypothetical wedding.

It’s not about you. It’s about her. You support her as a friend. You don’t judge or be negative etc at her wedding. You help make it the best day you can for her. That’s what friends do. Literally grin and bear it for her, deep breath big smile. Enjoy the day. If it happens.

They aren’t even engaged so why is this an issue? You all sound very dramatic.

I’d make finding a new job a priority mostly because life is too short to work for a toxic twat. Added bonus that it will be then be easier to separate your relationship with your best friend from it all because you will only have to deal with the guy in small doses and not every day at work. But also your friend isn’t even engaged. You’re both jumping the gun. If/when the situation actually materialises then you deal with it then.

Oh what a horrible situation. I’d want to be there for my friend and maybe look for another job.

Why do you have to consider your feelings? It’s not your day. Go to the wedding, tell her you won’t be making a speech, smile, eat, drink, go home. They’ll either be happy or they won’t. You’re overthinking this.

Thank you! Yes, this is why I checked his email - because I knew it felt off, I was struggling to put language to it and AI helped me with that.

Given what you've said, she might not be 'allowed' to invite you anyway.

I think your role in their wedding will become a problem between them long before you get to hear about it.

If it does come to it though, I'd probably go to support my friend. Keep the focus on her.

Until she’s actually engaged i wouldn’t worry. If it was actually imminent then they would be setting dates for the wedding, nobody plans engagements months ahead surely, you are either engaged or not???

He doesn’t sound very nice but it’s not possible to like everyone. Does he treat her well? Is he a drinker, cheater or a gambler? A Farage supporter? These things are more important than a personality clash.

You’re fine, I think the people who criticise the use of AI just don’t know how to use it themselves.

I think I would go if the wedding eventuates but start to keep a distance.

No meet ups with him or going to her home when he’s there.

What a daft situation your friend is in - thinking and wishing and hoping that a 'proposal may be imminent' like she's waiting to be picked off a shelf instead of having a conversation with him about their relationship. It says a lot about the dynamics in their relationship. He may be on a totally different page to her

I have a lot of sympathy for you. My best friend married a twat years ago and it was hard. But yes I'm afraid you do have to suck it up. It's shit, but she's making her choice, and it's her decision not yours. If this wedding ever happens, you will need to plaster a smile on and go with it while cringeing inside. But the pair of you may well be jumping the gun anyway

I think: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Go to the wedding. Be the bigger person. Be lovely to the groom. Support your friend. I think it’ll be worth it in the long run. If it happens

I would be fully involved and be the greatest MOH ever, purely to annoy the twat husband. Don't let him drive a wedge between you and your friend - there's nothing he'd like better.

At this point there is no wedding, she is not even engaged. She can imagine all she likes, but if she isn’t engaged and hasn’t got a wedding booked, there isn’t one. You have made a post about a potential problem at an event that doesn’t even exist.

Of course the OP could, and clearly did, read the post for herself and come to a conclusion. What ChatGPT did was summarise the tone of the email in a reasonably objective way, so that the OP could get an assessment of whether or not her opinion was fair or was biased by her dislike of this man. Lots of organisations use AI to evaluate writing and even to assess the sex of the writer. It makes sense to me to reflect on one’s own judgment in circumstances like this.

Quoting ChatGPT on here means that we can read that assessment without the OP pasting in the email, which she clearly should not do, so that she doesn’t get a load of posters querying whether or not she’s reading too much into his email etc etc

OP the part you have missed in all of this is how does he treat your friend? Is she happy? He may just be an asshole at work.

You have made this all about you.

Another example of ChatGPT bias.

Put it back in pretending you are M and ask for a critique on your communication. You don’t need to share here but this is not something you should be using ChatGPT for, biased, validation.

Just because she thinks a proposal is coming soon doesn’t mean there is one.

Im going to sound like an absolute bitch, but sometimes when they are really desperate to get married, they tend to see ‘signs’ that aren’t really there.

Unless they have had a conversation that they are getting engaged at some stage this year, you maybe getting a bit ahead of yourself.
Also he sounds like a bit of a douche, maybe look for another job.

She's butted up against this aspect of his personality, too, and they nearly broke up over it, but his friends were able to coach him through it and advise him on how to reply to her and keep the relationship intact. He definitely has issues at work (he is fiercely defensive of his self-image) more than in other areas of his life, but he's always been that guy who needs to be the smartest in the room. She says things are "stable" now, so I guess she's happy enough.

Is your friend aware of his behaviour at work?

Have you asked her if he displays any of this behaviour towards her?

Sorry if I have missed it but could you not go the the wedding but decline matron of honour duties as your heart isn't in it and you have serious concerns about her future happiness?

Well if I refused to attend the weddings of all my friends who married tossers, I would have barely gone to any

If she's your best friend then you should suck it up and stick a smile on your face. It's only 1 day, she's not asking you to move in with them

I did do this, actually - and I put my emails in too, pretending they were from someone else to me. Unfortunately it is the case that he is the asshole, here.

The AI derailment by people is tedious. How did they meet, OP?