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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/jimmyjohnjohnjohn on 2023-09-02 02:11:13.
My [42m] friend [42f] of many years, who I am going to call “Pam” here, has been engaged since this spring. Planning on a Christmas wedding. Until recently, I only met the guy (let’s call him “Pete”) fairly briefly at a couple of social events and didn’t know him that well.
Last month, Pam invited me and a couple other friends (“Paul” and “Paulina”) out drinking to get to know Pete. There was no discussion of off-limits topics beforehand. No mention that anything at all was being kept secret from Pete. Now, Pam does have a history of being a somewhat private and secretive person, with a VERY compartmentalized life, so this night out with her fiancé did come as a surprise to us. Still, there was no briefing on things not to mention.
We were drinking, we were laughing, we were having a great time. Also, did I mention we were drinking?
At one point, Pam gets up to go to the bar, and I say to Pete, “you’re so much chiller and funner than Dave!”
He just looks confused and says “Dave?”
And without thinking why he would ask, my drunk ass goes “her last husband, the dud.” It never occurred to me he wouldn’t already know.
To which he replies, “she was married!? What do you mean her last husband?”
The speakers in the bar were blaring, but you could feel a bubble of silence forming around us. Time slowed down.
And then Paulina, ever so helpful, blurts out, “he didn’t matter, they were only married a few months. Her first one lasted eight years!”
Pete looks at me and asks, “is that true?”
I say “yes.” He gets up, drops some cash on the table, and leaves. Pam comes back and asks what’s going on and all I can think to say was “uh, apparently Pete didn’t know about Dave or Michael?” Her face goes paper white, and she follows Pete outside.
That was three weeks ago today, and the last I saw of her. She’s not answering my calls or texts, and she’s also cut off Paul and Paulina (even though Paul was pretty much drunk under the table). Pam doesn’t do social media, but the three of us have learned from other friends that invitations have gone out, so they’ve patched up any disagreement that might have occured from the revelation.
Paulina thinks that in hindsight, we should have know that’s exactly the sort of thing Pam would hide from a fiancé. That does have a ring of truth to it knowing Pam. She’s always been very judicious about what she reveals about herself, and when and to whom she reveals it. Perhaps I should have considered everything I know about her to be a secret. At the same time, I really don’t feel like I did anything wrong, and that she should have mentioned it if she hadn’t told him yet. Ex spouses are something you mention before the engagement, not after the honeymoon. She definitely should not have had a group of people who know a secret heavily drinking around the person she’s keeping the secret from.