Woman gets caught in a fake marriage to seem 'presentable,' family demands wedding gifts back. AITA?
Woman gets caught lying about her fake marriage, asks "Did the lie hurt anyone?"
allusrnamestakenwtf writes
My husband (36M, gay) and I (36F, lesbian) have been legally married for six years now. We "dated" for three years before getting married. Here's the thing about our arrangement, though: we're not "actually together."
Nine years ago, my best friend (who is now my husband) and I had a great idea - we would pretend to date each other to please our families and seem like decent, presentable people to our friends and coworkers while hooking up with other people on the side. It went so well, we got married, ceremony and everything.
After getting married, we continued the same charade, appearing as a happy couple in public while maintaining wild dating lives on the side. We simply linked arms or engaged in other public displays of affection, and the only time we kissed was at our wedding. People assumed we were extremely conservative. Both of us were very discreet about our private lives.
Things were fine until one of my friends caught me getting very physical with a woman at a bar. Instead of confronting me about it and resolving things, she took a video and sent it to almost all my family and friends. (How she got all those contacts, I don't know.)
Within hours, they were coming at me from all sides. Eventually, it became such a sh^%show (and it went on for a while, with threats and people trying to convince my husband to divorce me), that my husband and I had to come clean. The reaction was not what we were expecting.
Now, everyone is at our necks about how we lied to them and "tricked" them, which we did, but did it harm them in any way? I don't think so. Our parents are flabbergasted and disappointed (and we didn't even come out to them yet), and some people are going as far as demanding their wedding gifts back. I don't think what we did was that bad, but I'm unsure. AITA?
Here are some of the debates commenters were having:
loverlyone says:
No one gets to decide how your marriage work except the person you’re in the marriage with. Why would you have explained anything to anyone? Tell everyone to butt out. NTA (Not the A%@!ole).
tourmalineforest responds:
Really? I would find it incredibly bizarre if I found out my longtime friend had lied to me on this scale for so long. OP refers to her own relationship as a charade and as pretending.
There’s nothing wrong with having a platonic marriage or extramarital dating (with no infidelity), but the amount of deception of EVERYONE they know is enormous. If this happened with someone I thought was a good friend, my thought would be “I guess we weren’t really friends then”.
LastPlaceStar says:
I like how the only example of gay people getting married ruining the sanctity of marriage is through a straight marriage.
Old-Iron-3396 says:
Strong NTA. You didn't feel safe being openly queer around your friends and family so hid it with a beard who was doing the same. Both of you consented and were very happy in that arrangement.
This isn't on you. This is on everyone else in your life that made you feel like you needed to hide. They all need to do some serious self-reflection, not spew hatred and prove your point valid.
Also, whoever filmed you is a major AH too. Fair if they took it to your husband, if they thought you were cheating and that he should know. But that isn't what they did. They outed you as queer to your entire social sphere. Not okay.
tourmalineforest responds:
OP doesn’t actually say anywhere that she had any reason to think her friends were homophobic or would be unaccepting.
samosamancer responds:
Why else would she hide it, then?
What do you think? Was OP right to lie about her marriage?