How to ask my wife to make up for a ruined Anniversary weekend?

30 comments

1. Why didn’t you get him another room. You could payed for it and problem solved. And after set some boundaries. You should be in first place not some gay cry baby

2. Dude. She wants to hang out with him, not you. I wonder if she didn’t invite him. Your marriage sounds over.

3. Ooh thats a hard one, I would just say that was a terrible weekend and you didn’t enjoy it because you felt like a third wheel and her and M ignored you.

4. sounds like there’s much bigger issues with the marriage than just one weird weekend, sounds like doesnt enjoy your company + doesnt wanna sleep with u

5. I’m gonna be honest, it doesn’t really seem like your wife likes you very much. =/

6. Ask more pointed questions. How did he just end up driving to the town you’re in? Why didn’t she just help him with a hotel room? Why didn’t she speak to you about it privately?

   Sounds like she’s trying to make you the bad guy here but she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Like some of the others I’m suspicious that this was planned.

7. What else is going on here? In your everyday life, do you feel that you and your wife have opportunities to connect? It sounds like no. As a result, you put a lot of emphasis on this weekend. It seems to have been super important to you while not as a important to your wife. Does that sound right?

   Look, you should make a big deal about this. You should have said no to him staying in your room. You should just have it out with your wife. What are you hoping will happen? She’ll magically know what’s on your mind? Or she’ll magically care about your feelings over her friend? Dude, just be messy and get your feelings out there. I have a feeling you’ve shoving a lot down over the years and now you’re resentful and angry on your anniversary weekend.

8. yikes, her bff crashing your anniversary trip is so not okay.. seems like a major boundary issue that she didn’t even check with you first about something this important.

9. This sounds like one of those drama box intros I see on TikTok.

   At this point, personally, I don’t think you shy away from your anger. Fucking lean into it. Express in no uncertain terms that she ruined the weekend. She showed you exactly how much you mean to her by shutting you down and inviting an other person into your hotel room on an anniversary celebration.

   I don’t think there is a way to make up for this weekend but she should know she is on thin ice and if she won’t make you a priority then you need to consider if you want to spend the rest of your life as the third wheel. And yeah, the friend needs to know that he fucked up too by crashing your anniversary because he can’t handle his boyfriend…..yeah, no.

10. I think you need to have a serious conversation about your relationship and how you want your life to be post-kids. Don’t bring it up tomorrow morning, try to play it cool and wait till you’re alone with your wife.

    Ask her what she thinks about the weekend and your relationship in general. See where that conversation might take you.

    Tell her that you were looking forward to this weekend, that you had put in a lot of effort to make it special. And you appreciate her being a good friend and helping someone in need, but how the day went, you are disappointed and feel sad. Ask if she might see things from your perspective.

    Try to stay calm and use I-sentences without being accusing.

11. Ask her to prioritize you instead of him, see what her reaction is. If she isn’t a hundred percent choosing you, your relationship is likely at an impasse. Tell her how hurt you are and how weirdly coincidental him being in the same town was…and that you felt sabotaged. If she’s not apologetic then you know to prepare to leave.

12. It sounds like it might have been staged because she didn’t want to be alone with you. That’s terrible.

13. Question,

    Your kids are out of the house and yet you need a getaway to have intimacy and relaxation with you wife? You sound resentful, as if the relationship is stressed beyond your acknowledgement. To be clear, I’m not criticizing you, you probably have good reason to feel this way.

    I also call bullshit on this guy just showing up in your getaway town with literally no way to get home… buuuulllshit. Even if it was true, it’s bullshit drama, teenager antics.

    He didn’t have money to get home? He drove there. Throw him $80 for gas…. far cheaper than keeping him at a resort paying for meals…. that’s insane…

    In fact, it doesn’t make a lick of sense. If this story is true, I don’t think your wife likes you anymore and brought M out for the fun company.

14. *”can we talk? i need to get my feeling out bec i am incredibly hurt by your actions when your bff crashed what was supposed to be an intimate weekend just for us. i planned this whole nice anniversary weekend. big suite in a beach town, fancy dinner, the ocean, etc., all to celebrate my love for you and our relationship. i understand he had a fight with his bf and you wanted to help. you’re a good person and caring about others like you do is one of the many things i love about you, so i understand that instinct. what i don’t understand is not prioritizing our relationship when he was here. why not include me in your friendship? tell him we have dinner plans and spend time alone and then invite him for a drink after? it felt like his emotional needs take precedence over mine. and then when i came out of the bathroom you two were leaning over the table and whispering back and forth and then immediately stopped once i came out. clearly you were whispering bec you didn’t want me to hear what you were talking about. why?”*

    i’d start with something like this (not over text, but face to face.)

15. Some marriages end about the time of the empty nest because the only thing holding the relationship together was the children, the passion is gone, menopause has well and truly kicked in, and the wife sees her partner and father of her children as someone who has gotten the redundancy package but hasn’t moved out of the bedroom yet.
    You need to talk to your wife.

16. I would be so hurt and angry if that happened to me. I’d be getting up, grabbing my suitcase and leaving my wife and her friend while I drove home. I would have been thrilled if my ex had done something like that for me. Both your wife and her friend are HUGE assholes. No matter what you say, you won’t sound like an asshole. Your wife obviously values her friend more than you. What a terrible situation to be in.

    Hopefully, this is just a one time situation but if this type of devaluing happens frequently, your marriage needs a tune up. Or even a write off.

17. This man is an adult, he can’t afford his own hotel room why?

    Regardless, your wife is prioritizing her friendship over her marriage. You need to talk to her about that in general more than the happenings of this weekend. This weekend is merely a symptom of that problem.

18. You planned a romantic week-end where you expected sex to happen, and you’re frustrated that it didn’t. What is your sex life like normally? If y’all have a mutually satisfying sex life, then this is probably a one-off. But I’m getting the vibe that you’re not happy with your “intimacy”. Has this been a point of contention for you and your wife? If so, please consider that she might have invited her gay bestie to your romantic week-end to run interference. Not because she wants to bang him, but because she doesn’t want to bang you.

19. Hello, friend. This wasn’t accidental. They planned it.

    I would honestly leave early and let your wife know she can get a ride back with bff.

    Then it depends entirely on whether you want to give her a chance or not.

    She won’t fix it, that’s for sure. So the only thing is to ask her whether she noticed that you had spent all this effort on the weekend, and if so, did she understand why you might have been annoyed by what happened?

    If she does the old “deflect, deny…” bit, you have your answer about how she feels about the whole thing, and you know she’s too chicken shit to speak openly and honestly about it with you.

    From there, you’ll know what to do. You might not like it, but you’ll know.

    Good luck…..

20. It’s really hard to believe this isn’t a setup on their part somehow.

21. Tbh it sounds like your wife didn’t want to spend an intimate weekend alone with you and they made up this scenario.

22. Avoiding intimacy is not a good sign.

23. She didn’t want to be intimate with OP, delayed the first night, and OP was blocked out the rest of the weekend.

    It’s an anniversary, that comes with expectations, especially when Hubby plans it all out as a romantic get away. She didn’t want to deal with that, or Hubby’s expectations, so she planned ways to interfere with her BFF.

    This sounds like mismatched expectations for what life would be like after the kids were gone. What an empty nest would feel and look like.

    OP should have the talk, articulate his wants and needs, and listen to his wife without getting emotional. See if there is a middle ground OP and wife can work towards. Go to couple therapy if they need help doing that. The marriage might not be over, but probably looks different than what OP expected.

24. I think your wife invited him to get out of being intimate with you.

25. >Apparently he just drove around aimlessly and ended up in the same beach town we’re staying in.

    bullcrap! this was all planned. I’m guessing you have a dead bedroom? She did this to skip being intimate with you (at best, at worst she is done with you but just doesn’t want to leave you yet?).

26. UpDateMe

    There’s a whole lot more going to come out, and I want to hear it!

27. I don’t know why you’re so hung up on sounding selfish to your wife. 

    Unless you think, like many of us here in the comments do, that your wife is done with you and got him there on purpose because she didn’t want to be alone with you and all she needs is an excuse to leave you. 

    But if that’s the case, you should break the seal and let that play out. You have a lot of life left to live and you don’t need for it to be feeling bad while you play a bit part in your wife’s life. 

    Clear the air. Put it all on the table. Tell her you suspect it’s no coincidence he showed up. Tell her he didn’t just invade the weekend but they were rude and exclusionary on top of that and you don’t appreciate being made less than a third wheel on your own anniversary weekend. 

    Ask her if she still wants to be married to you, so at least you get that on the record. 

    By all means, let her know how disappointed you are in everything, even beyond the weekend. That’s your real mistake on all of this. You put so much unspoken meaning into this weekend and she was absolutely not on the same page. 

    If you don’t want to take the anger route, that’s how you should approach it. 

    “I made the mistake of attaching a lot of meaning to this weekend without telling you I was doing so. I assumed you would understand and be on the same page with me about the importance of this weekend to our marriage. I know you’re not a mind reader but I’m really disappointed in how it turned out. And I think something we really needed as a couple didn’t happen.”

    You don’t even have to mention the friend. Let her take it from there and see if she feels like making it up to you or just shrugs you off like a chump. I imagine she’ll use the friend as an excuse, but that doesn’t make the making of your anniversary any less of a flop.

    And just to help me understand: where is this guy going to live after this weekend? Why did he need your hotel room but has a place to stay otherwise? 

28. Thank you all for the comments and suggestions. I’ll answer some questions briefly: we have (had) a good marriage and a fine sex life. No issues and good communication, or so I thought. And yes the idea of giving up on the relationship crossed my mind for a moment but that is not what I wanted i thought. I love (or loved) my wife. But she is unbelievably disrespectful to me and I for the first time am clueless on her behavior.

    A lot of you told me to be direct and ask straight questions. So this morning after a very short sleep I started with that.

    I asked M to go get coffee somewhere else and leave us alone for a while. He apologized immediately and left without any fuss. Honestly that surprised me but now I get why.

    My wife got angry. She asked why I sent him away and acted offended on his behalf. I stayed calm and asked her how she thinks I feel after planning an entire anniversary weekend for the two of us and then watching the whole thing turn into a rescue mission for someone else.

    She kept deflecting and saying that helping a friend is important and that we can always reschedule. I told her that helping a friend is indeed important but there are limits and boundaries when you are married and trying to celebrate something meaningful together. A phone call would have been enough.

    Then I told her the thing I had been holding inside. I said I do not believe it was a coincidence that M ended up in the exact same town at the exact same time. And I mentioned the way his mood shifted last night after the first performance of whatever they were both hiding.

    Her face turned pale. She froze. She did not deny anything. That told me a lot.

    I told her that if she could not be honest with me I was considering a trial separation because I cannot stay married to someone who will not tell the truth.

    And then she said something that almost made me walk out immediately. She asked if she could call M back to join the conversation.

    I lost it. I started packing my bag. I told her this was between her and me and that bringing him into our marriage talk was insane. She begged me to stay and hear them out. I ignored her and kept packing.

    Then she finally shouted that I was right. She admitted it was planned. There was no fight with a boyfriend. He doesn’t even have a boyfriend right now.

    She begged me again to let M come explain. I felt numb at that point. So I said fine. She called him and explained in tears that he has to explain because I’m threatening her with divorce.

    M came back up and immediately apologized and said he did not want to be the reason our marriage ends. He said it was all on him and he had convinced my wife that having him join our anniversary weekend was a good idea.

    Then he told me something that just destroyed my brain. He said he had always had a crush …. ON ME. For years! And because I once told my wife a long long time ago before marriage that I experimented in a bicurious threesome with another couple she thought I might be open to becoming a throuple.

    Her words as best as I can remember them:
    You could have both of us. I get to spend time with the love of my life which is you and with my best friend at the same time. And he gets to be around his crush and with me. Everyone wins.

    My mind shut down. I literally collapsed to the floor. I do not even remember falling. The next thing I knew they were both leaning over me asking if I was okay.

    After drinking some water I told them both they were absolutely delusional. M again tried to take all the blame saying it was his idea. My wife said she agreed out of love and wanting me to receive even more affection than she could give alone. She said she loved me so much she was willing to share me.

    I told her she was out of her mind for thinking I would ever agree to this. I told her I was furious that she shared private information about my sexual past with him.

    She kept apologizing and crying and begging me to stay. Saying she thought this would bring more love into our life. That she did it for me. That she meant well. And that M not interested in sleeping with woman only men. So he wouldn’t be a threat to our marriage since she agreed to it.

    I told her I need space. And that I never want to see or hear from M ever again.

    Then I grabbed my bag and ran out. Got in my car and drove away quickly. Now I am in a Walmart parking lot a few miles away. I do not know how to move forward from here. I just need guidance, someone to tell me what I should do before I go insane.

29. Wow this sounds just like me and my husband ! I’m 40 he’s 41 and I have a 41 yr old GBF I’ve had since freshman year of highschool. My husband and I have been married for 18 years !
    Coming from someone who has a GBF
    NO!!
    Absolutely not !!! I’m sorry that he’s having a crisis but it’s your anniversary. If she feels so bad she can give him a hundred bucks and he can go get his own hotel.
    Somewhere else. It’s fine to answer the phone and talk to him for a few minutes but he’s 45.
    He’s not a baby and he can wait a day or town until she’s home.
    You really need to sit down and have a calm conversation with your wife about boundaries
    Again coming from a woman with a gay best friend !
    We wouldn’t do this to each other me my best friend either one
    Talk to her about this
    Rationally but it needs to be brought up
    I feel like you and my husband would be friends

30. She didn’t want a weekend away with you, or intimacy or anything. The gay best friend turning up “coincidentally” in the same beach town without a dime to his name is an obvious orchestration.

    So forget about asking “how she’s going to make up the weekend” and instead have a conversation about the health of your relationship.