Woman Seeks Advice After Her Polyamorous Parents Ask Her To Let Their Boyfriend Walk Her Down The Aisle
Her parents were upset with her decision.
Bogdan Sonjachnyj | Shutterstock A woman is refusing to let her polyamorous parent's boyfriend walk her down the aisle.
Posting to the subreddit 'AITA' (Am I The A-hole), the woman, 23, explained that she is currently planning her wedding to her fiancée after graduating from college.
She's known her parents were polyamorous for years but is now struggling with how this impacts her big day.
Her parents want their boyfriend to help walk her down the aisle.
The woman's parents had her when they were still fairly young and up until the woman was 13, her parents argued constantly.
"Then all of a sudden they just stopped, things got better between them, they both got a lot happier and we started doing a lot more family activities," the woman wrote in her Reddit post.
"Us three would watch a show every night, we'd go to the movies or a restaurant or hiking and stuff on the weekends, we'd start having little parties and stuff when I got good grades."
Then, when the woman turned 14, her parents introduced her to Brian, who was 23 at the time but is now 33. They told her that Brian was their boyfriend whom they'd been seeing for a year and he was going to move in with them.
Things between the woman and her parents quickly turned weird after that.
They stopped doing family activities together, and if they were all going out, it would just be the woman and her mom, while her dad stayed home with Brian or vice versa.
"It was so weird being around Brian alone but even weirder when he'd get affectionate with mom and dad in front of me," she wrote, adding that she "stopped bringing my friends over" because of how awkward it was.
However, the woman acknowledged that Brian made both her parents happy, and he was never in the way if she needed to spend one-on-one time with either her mother or father, so she never said anything about the relationship.
While planning her wedding, the woman's parents to her with the idea that Brian and her dad should be the ones to walk her down the aisle, telling her that Brian was "kind of like a stepdad" to her.
"But he wasn't, yes I'll say he's family but he's not any kind of dad to me. I made it clear that I only want my dad to walk me down the aisle," the woman continued.
The woman's parents tried to negotiate, asking her if she would think about giving Brian some other role in the wedding, but she refused.
Her parents were upset at her decision, telling her it felt as if she "was rejecting their bond with Brian."
The woman's fiancée supports her decision to not have Brian walk her down the aisle, and her other family members, including her cousins, are staying out of the situation because they always found the relationship odd.
"Maybe I'm wrong though cause Brian means a lot to my parents so if I'm the a-hole here, please let me know," she concluded.
Most people who commented on the woman's Reddit post agreed that she was NTA (Not The A-hole).
"As a polyamorous person, your parents are being very selfish. Brian will likely never be to you what he is to them (relatively speaking) and they shouldn't try to force it," one user commented.
Another user added, "They're allowed to be polyamorous, there's nothing wrong with that. The issue here is them trying to make their relationship your relationship. If your parents were divorced and had remarried, you'd be under no obligation to let a stepparent have a role in your wedding. Same goes here."
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Follow her on Instagram.