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?

True, but she's already asking me about it; she's already asked me if I'd attend, and she wants me to be maid of honour.

To answer your question, punishing your friend for her choice of DP by refusing to be her bridesmaid would be a dick move. Don’t do that.

Separately, please be aware that Chat GPT is built to affirm the user. It is not neutral. It will take your side in things.

Why on earth did you bother emailing? You already know he's a narcissist and will never take responsibility for anything, so it is the biggest waste of time ever trying to get them to be reasonable. The only way to win with anyone with narcisstic tendencies is to walk away altogether. Just don't engage with him, and move him out of your life.

That means leaving her behind too, obviously. It's that or just keep tolerating a liar and narcissist in your life. Your choice.

He has talked about not attending his own wedding so OP can attend.

I think it’s valid for OP to want advice, I think the proposal will come.

That's not what I'm doing - I have no interest in punishing her, her romantic decisions are her own. He has treated me very badly (gaslighting me, dictatorial approach at work), and it's his wedding too. If she's happy I support the relationship, I just don't get on with him.

I felt I had to at least try, for my own peace if nothing else, because he's making my life difficult. I knew what the outcome would be, though, and I was proved right sadly.

You can't separate him from her. Either you tolerate his abuse, and future bad behaviour or you let her friendship go. Those are your choices I'm afraid.

Why is she clingy?
is that she can feel you pulling away already?

I have to say, I have very good friends that have made crap choices re marriage. So have I. But it has never affected our friendship. We’ve always met up wo them. Their influence stopped at the imo t they had on us as their partners. They never affected our friendship.

BUT none of them have also been a crap boss too.

So I’m wondering, is the fact you feel like walking in eggshell because you’re itching to tell her he is a twat when she is gushing about him/hoping for a proposal etc?
Why would not seeing her anymore mean you’d end up isolated? You seem to be working on the assumption everyone will rally behind her. I’m wondering why.

imo you need to start separating him from her.
You can’t stand him - fair enough
But how you feel about her? If she is tyat self centered (and created issues at your wedding), it must be showing up at other times. Agd not just with you. In which case, why would you end up isolated from all your friends?
Theres Somethimg else Gping in there you haven’t yet become aware of I feel

It's not. It's highly relevant. The nature of ChatGPT's reinforcement learning means that it is unlikely to challenge users and instead tends to validate their biases. It's worrying that people are using it to seek guidance on their relationships.

Forget about the wedding (and work) for a second. If you have a friend whose partner was abusive towards you and your friend said that the topic her partner was not up for discussion in any way shape or form, would you keep them as a friend?
I think the answer most people would have is probably/definitely not.

Your friend sounds at best to be a "fair weather" friend i.e. only there when the going is good. From some of the updates, I certainly wouldn't consider her a good friend.

She wouldn’t be the first woman to be desperate to get married and yet it doesn’t happen, so cross the wedding guest bridge when you come to it. But if it does happen, I think if you value her friendship, you should go. It’s her day, she wants your presence and your support on the big day. Your feelings about the groom can be put to one side for the day. As her MOH, you will mostly speaking to/sitting with her, not him. He’ll presumably have a best man and presumably you get take a plus one?
After the wedding, depending on how things go, you can surely engineer things so that you see her alone most of the time.

Ah, yes with only 15 guests I can see that could be really awkward. You’re likely to be “damned if you do, or damned if you don’t “. Sorry, I know you already know that, it’s why you posted. I hope you find a good solution.

I think you're right... No, the eggshells thing is related to her saying odd things to me sometimes (e.g. a weird remark about my nose, jokes around me eating too much, that kind of thing - I'm probably being overly sensitive since this doesn't happen often). But I do also worry about blurting out something (if I'm upset etc) when she's asked me not to talk about him to her.

I worry about being isolated / cut out of the group because I've already had a friend's husband tell me "life's too short" and that I should just "make up with him". People don't know the full story, haven't seen the emails, so I probably look like I'm being angry and overreacting.

It depends what she asked it. If she just copy pasted the email and said "summarise the sender's standpoint towards the receiver of this email" that's one thing. Doubtful though, I will admit.

I find it bizarre that people need it for such basic functions or ask it anything at all about anything personal. Simply would not occur to me. It's hardly an academic text, just an email, we should be able to figure out the subtext on an email without asking a bot. I might ask it to summarise an academic paper, for speed, or to help with citations if I was in a hurry.

There was a case just recently where Chat GPT is being blamed for a 16 year old killing themselves. Parents are suing.

www dot cbsnews.com/news/ai-chatbots-teens-suicide-parents-testify-congress/

You have said he hasn't asked her - but in several posts you report him talking about you being there, about the size of the wedding, etc.

Are pretending this is hypothetical to try and avoid the thread being too outing - and they're actually definitely getting married?

Of course you can go. We all have to do things we’re uncomfortable with for the greater good. It’s one day. Sounds like you might be happier working elsewhere.

I find it frankly terrifying that people are outsourcing their emotional decision-making to a large language model which has no capacity to understand or empathise.

@Countryspaniel can you clarify this statement? Are you saying that if someone wants their wedding a certain way, involving certain people, then those people should simply do as they’re told, attend if they don’t want to, behave as per a prescribed script, however unhappy it make them?

YABU for wasting 30 seconds of my life reading a post about an engagement and wedding that might never happen. Also for getting AI to write your OP (I suspect) And also for me wasting another 60 seconds typing out this pointless reply 😂

Maybe she'll go for a destination wedding where you'll have to pay over a thousand pounds to travel and stay in a hotel, upon which you can say "sorry Fiona, I don't have the money or enough annual leave for that".

I think there are two separate issues here, the wedding and the wider friendship.
The wedding, if I wanted any sort of possibility of a future friendship with her, I'd go to not because you're happy she is marrying them, not because you want to support the marriage but to support her. Yes it will be awkward but it's only a day. Ans yes people know you hate him but they will just see that you've turned up for her anyway, and that doesn't reflect badly on you or make you some sort of hypocrite or anything

I also think it's OK to take a step back in general. Work issues can feel like they're taking over your life, and talking through issues with friends is normal. She is essentially saying she won't support you with a massive issue you're having in your life, and it's OK for you to tell her that you're respecting her boundaries about this but that means that while these issues are ongoing you need some support with them and you're going to spend a bit more time with people who can give this support. That doesn't mean the friendship is over completely but you're just stepping back while things are so difficult.

It might be that he leaves or is managed into a different role if its got to the point of people wanting to leave because of him and management getting involved in his behaviour

No, I'm not trying to cover anything up - they aren't engaged but have discussed a possible wedding in future.

This would be the ideal outcome, honestly!

Worry about it when it happens. There are enough things in life to worry about without tying yourself in knits over something that might but ever happen.

Just slow fade... It sounds like actually you don't like her that much on reflection?

Can you look for a new job? Get away from this toxic man and it might help your friendship too, if it's worth saving.