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It probably wasn't the best place to be honest.
By Nia Tipton
Last updated on Nov 24, 2023
A woman who served as a maid-of-honor at her best friend's wedding is receiving major backlash after revealing how she truly feels about her best friend's husband while giving a speech at the wedding.
The woman's friend and her husband have been together for 7 years, and she has gotten to know him rather well throughout the time he'd been with her best friend. However, when things started to get serious between them, the woman started noticing her friendship changing with her best friend.
The woman revealed her disdain for her best friend's relationship in her maid-of-honor speech.
The woman sobbed during the entire ceremony as she watched her best friend get married. And it wasn't because she was moved by the wedding, but because she was mourning her friendship. The day of the wedding became the woman's worst nightmare as she realized it was the day that "my hopes of things returning back to what they used to be were gone," she wrote in her Reddit post.
"Everyone though it was cute, how touched and happy I was but I was not. But I couldn't say it out loud," she continued.
When it was time to give her maid-of-honor speech, the woman decided to scrap what she had written and just speak honestly about her feelings. In her speech, the woman said that she didn't want to lie and that she wasn't happy.
She wasn't happy that the person her friend was marrying was the reason why their friendship changed so drastically.
"I just pretended the whole day [for] her sake but it would be a shame of me to get up there and lie about how happy and excited I am," she wrote. "I said I'm not happy but regardless I have to suck it up and congratulate the happy couple."
After giving her speech, there was an awkward stretch of silence that lasted "for 2-3 minutes." The woman's friend started whispering something in her new husband's ear, and for the rest of the night, she ignored her. The woman even asked to speak with her friend, but she angrily told her that now wasn't the best time. Many of the guests that had attended the wedding also gave the woman judgmental looks for the speech she'd given.
Two days after the wedding, the woman's friend still hadn't texted or called her and ignored the woman's attempts to reach out.
"During that time many of our common friends said that what I did was very selfish and that masking selfishness as honesty is not an excuse to make things awkward at the wedding," she said.
Eventually, the woman's friend finally contacted her and only asked if her purpose with the speech was to ruin her wedding, to which the woman denied that was her motive, saying her only motivation was honesty. The woman's friend responded that she was playing the victim and she couldn't believe the woman wasn't showing remorse for what she'd said.
"I said I can't apologize for being honest," the woman concluded, noting that everyone believed she was in the wrong for speaking her truth. "Her husband now feels uncomfortable about me."
Friendships evolve as people enter adulthood and priorities shift.
"It’s been seven years and things change when you are committed to someone that long," one person wrote, which is spot on. It's completely normal and expected for friendships to change over time. As people grow and evolve, so do their connections to other people. Just as having kids affects friendships, "the largest drop-off in friends in the life course occurs when people get married,” William Rawlins, the Stocker Professor of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University, told The Atlantic, as "friendships are always susceptible to circumstances."
Friendships require communication and restructuring in order to survive life's biggest milestones, whether that be moving to a new city or, as in this woman's case, getting married, especially if you're in different chapters in life.
While the quality of a friendship may appear to degrade on the surface, a true friend understands that priorities change in adulthood — but that doesn't mean your friend loves you any less or isn't there for you in the best way they can be.
It was unfair for the friend to make her "best friend’s wedding about yourself," as one person wrote, suggesting the maid-of-honor seek out a therapist "to figure out why this is impacting you in such a major way." If she was unsure about where their friendship stood, she should have addressed it privately with her friend instead of putting the couple on the spot on their wedding day.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.