Former soldier torn after his wife announces she’s attending her ex-lover’s funeral

A former solider divided opinion after his question on what to do about his wife attending the funeral of a man she cheated with received thousands of responses on Reddit.

The anonymous question was posted on the Am I The A**hole (AITA) subreddit, where a user asked fellow users if he was a bad person for “forbidding my wife to go to her affair partner’s funeral.”

It sounds like a regular telenovela.

“Married 15 years and almost didn’t make it this far,” he begins.

In our second year of marriage my wife went home when I was deployed and slept with Some D***head (who I'll refer to as SD from here out) who she was loose acquaintances with growing up. She hadn't seen him in years but he just happened to show up during my daughter's birthday party because he was the son of one of my mother-in-law's old friends. SD and my wife hooked up later that week after reconnecting.

The reason I didn't kick my wife's a** to the curb and eventually forgave her is because she told me herself soon after I got home. And she didn't try to justify it with the ‘oh well you were gone, i felt lonely blah blah blah’. No she actually said straight up that she was a fucking dumbass (her words not mine, though I agree) and she felt so sick and disgusting for doing it.

His wife cut off contact with the man she cheated with: fast forward a decade and his mother tells them he died in a workplace incident, as well as when the funeral was taking place.

The Reddit user goes on to say that he and his wife almost got a divorce, and it “took a lot of counselling and healing” to get to where they are today, and adds that his wife “has gone above and beyond proving that I was right to keep her.”

Herein lies the problem

"My wife told me this and that she wanted to go and it was like I got kicked right in the d***," he shared.

"I instantly felt nauseous and had f**king horrible flashbacks of when she told me about her affair. All those horrible feelings resurfaced along with the s****y memories of me crying my f**king eyes out and my image of her shattering. The pain felt as fresh as when she dropped that bomb on me.

I asked her why seeing as she hadn't talked to the guy in over a decade not to mention...you know....she f***ed him while we were married. She keeps saying s**t like "it's the right thing to do" and "she just wants to pay respects".

I can't stop repeating that I'm so hurt with that decision as he's had no part of her life in so long and I'm re-living all those s****y nights I was sure our family would be shattered and I would only see my daughter 50 per cent of the time.

He concluded: "After some back and forth I put my f***ing foot down and told her NO, she cannot go. I said it's so disrespectful to me and our marriage and we've been on the silent treatment since then. AITA?"

It's quite the conundrum, and lots of people weighed in with their thoughts.

Some expressed support for the nameless soldier

NTA [Not an a**hole] You are obviously distressed and she should consider this.

Also, excuse my atheism, this person is dead. His non-conscious decaying body will not care who shows up.

Others argued the wife has a right to attend the funeral

I think it's reasonable for OP to be upset, but also understandable that the wife wants closure and to pay respects to someone she once knew without some underlying motive or still having feelings for said person.

-waste_away_

You shouldn’t forbid another adult from doing anything. Candidly, that alone makes you sound like an a**hole, in general.

-lastoneususpect

And argued that she should go for closure

she's lived the last decade of her life agonized with guilt over what she did to you. She's put in the work to prove she's loyal to you still, but in the back of her mind his mere existence as a person reminds her of her crime against you. Maybe grief is the way she can finally let go of what she did, that he can't haunt her anymore and her bad choices with it.

-spongekitty

I have a lot of friends from high school that I haven't seen in 15 years. If one of them surprisingly passed away today, I would want to attend their services to honor the 5-6 friendship I had with them.

-vapebig13

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