Reddit Stories - I called off my MARRIAGE SUDDENLY when I found out my partner DECEIVED

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #relationships #deception #marriage #trustissues #heartbreakSummary: I called off my marriage suddenly when I found out my partner deceived me. The betrayal shattered my trust, leaving me heartbroken and questioning everything. It was a painful decision, but I couldn't continue a relationship built on lies.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, relationships, deception, marriage, trust, heartbreak, betrayal, love, honesty, communication, breakup, emotions, difficultchoices, movingon, selfcare, healingBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. I called off my marriage suddenly when I found out my partner deceived me about hosting a wedding without children, only to exclude my teenage daughter while inviting all of her own. Kids I'm a 40-year-old man and I just cancelled my wedding to my 40-year-old fiancé at the very last minute after discovering she had been lying to me for months about something that involved my 15-year-old daughter. We had been together for four years and engaged for seven months, and I thought I knew her well. enough to trust her completely, but apparently I was wrong about that and she had been deceiving me

about something fundamental to our relationship that involved excluding my child from our wedding day. The whole problem started when we were planning our wedding guest list several months ago, and she insisted on having a completely child-free wedding ceremony and reception with no exceptions for anyone under the age of 18. This seemed very strange to me because she has three children of her own from her previous marriage who are ages 8, 10, and 13, and she's also very close to her eight nieces and nephews who range in age from 4 to 16 and who she sees regularly at family gatherings, birthday parties, holidays, and other special occasions throughout the year. When I asked her about excluding all the children from our wedding, including my daughter

who lives with me half the time and spends every other weekend and most school holidays at my house, she said she wanted our wedding day to be adult focused, and that children would be too distracting and noisy during the ceremony and reception. She explained that she had attended several weddings in recent years where children had caused disruptions during the ceremony by crying, talking loudly, or running around, and she said she wanted our special day to be peaceful without having to worry about managing young people or dealing with any chaos that might come from having kids present. She also mentioned that she wanted all the adults to be able to enjoy themselves fully without having to supervise children or worry about their behavior during the

reception dancing and dinner portions of the evening. I fought this decision for weeks because my daughter and I are very close, and I couldn't imagine getting married without her there to witness this important moment in my life and to be part of such a significant milestone in our family's journey together. My daughter has been through a lot with me over the years since her mother and I broke up when she was only three years old, and she's always been supportive of my relationships and my happiness, even when some of my previous girlfriends didn't work out or when dating situations became complicated or difficult. Her mother has been remarried for five years now to a really good man who treats my daughter well and who has become a positive father figure in her life,

and my daughter has never dating other women or with the possibility of me getting remarried to someone new who would become her stepmother. My daughter has always been mature and understand about the complexities of divorce and blended families, and she's never made me feel guilty about spending time with girlfriends or about pursuing serious relationships that might lead to marriage. She's told me multiple times over the years that she wants me to be happy and to find someone who makes me laugh and who treats me well, and she's been genuinely excited about the prospect of having a stepmother and potentially gaining step-siblings through after many discussions and arguments about the guest list over the course of several weeks.

I finally agreed to the child-free wedding when my daughter told me it was okay and that she wouldn't be mad about missing the wedding if I got her ice cream afterward and if we could have a special father-daughter celebration dinner the following weekend. She said she understood that some people wanted fancy weddings without kids present, and she didn't want to cause problems between me and my fiancé over something like this, especially since she could see how much the wedding planning meant to my fiancé and how excited she was about all the details and arrangements. My daughter said she would be fine staying with her mother that weekend, and that she could watch the ceremony later on video if we had it professionally recorded. She also suggested that we could have a small family celebration dinner the week after the wedding where she could wear a nice dress and we could take pictures together as a new family unit. I believed that the child-free rule would apply to all children equally, including my fiancée's own kids and her nieces and nephews, so I thought it was fair even though I didn't particularly like the idea of excluding my daughter from such an important life event. My fiancée seemed relieved when I finally agreed to the child-free wedding, and she immediately

started making arrangements for child care for her own children during the wedding weekend. She told me that her ex-husband would be taking their kids for an extended weekend so they wouldn't be around during the wedding preparations or ceremony, and she said her sisters would be making similar arrangements for their children so that all the adults could focus completely on celebrating our marriage without any distractions. A few days ago, I accidentally discovered something that changed everything and made me realize my fiancé had been deceiving me for months about the true nature of our wedding guest list. I had mistakenly taken our shared laptop to work instead of my own laptop, and when I opened it to check my Facebook during my lunch break, I saw that Facebook

was still logged into her account with several notification messages visible on the screen. There was a message notification from her sister asking for approval of her daughter's wedding outfits and asking what time the children should arrive at the venue for photos before the ceremony started and whether they should bring the special shoes that had been purchased for walking down the aisle. I took a screenshot of this message immediately because I couldn't believe what I was reading. When I checked the laptop again a few minutes later after finishing my work tasks, the message had been completely deleted from her Facebook account, which meant she had probably seen it on her phone and removed it quickly to cover her tracks. But I already

had the proof I needed saved on my phone. I spent the rest of my workday trying to figure what it meant. When I went home that evening, I had asked my daughter about my fiancé's behavior toward her over or has something happened between them. My daughter told me that my fiancé's attitude toward her had completely changed after our engagement party, and that she was only sweet and friendly when I was around, but would completely ignore her or treat her coldly whenever I wasn't in the room or when I was busy with work calls or household tasks. My daughter said she had tried several times to have normal conversations with my fiancé

about school, her friends, her hobbies, and other topics that teenagers typically discuss with adults, but my fiancé would give her very short answers for just walk away without responding at all. She said that my fiancé used to ask her questions about her classes and her extracurricular activities before we got engaged, but after the engagement party, she stopped showing any interest in my daughter's life or activities entirely. My daughter also told me that my fiancé had started making comments about how much time I spent with her and how much attention I gave to her needs and schedule, particularly when it came to driving her to activities, helping with homework, or planning special outings together. She said my fiancé would make subtle remarks

about how teenagers should be more independent and shouldn't need so much involvement from their parents, and that she had suggested multiple times that my daughter should spend more time with friends her own age or her mother. My daughter explained that she hadn't told me about this treatment because she could see how happy I was with my fiancé, and she didn't want to ruin something good that had come into my life after I had been alone for such a long time following my previous relationship ending badly. She said she thought maybe my fiancé just needed more time, and that things would get better after the wedding when we all lived together as a family and had more opportunities to bond and develop a closer relationship. My daughter has always been

mature for her age and very thoughtful about other people's feelings and emotions, and she didn't want to create drama or make me feel like I had to choose between her and my fiancé, especially since she could tell that I was genuinely in love and excited about getting married. She said she had been hoping that my fiancé's coldness was just temporary stress from wedding planning and that everything would return to normal after the ceremony was over and we settled into married life together. On the morning of our wedding, when I walked into the main reception area around 9 a.m., three hours before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, I saw all of my fiancé's children and nieces and nephews already there. Dressed in formal outfits and taking

pictures with the wedding photographer who had apparently been instructed to arrive early to capture family photos. The children were laughing and running around the venue while the adults were setting up decorations and arranging flowers, and they were clearly comfortable and familiar with the space, which suggested they had been there for rehearsals or planning sessions that I hadn't been told about. They were wearing matching outfits that coordinated with the wedding colors, and the girls had their hair done in styles that obviously required professional preparation, which meant this had been planned well in advance and wasn't a last-minute addition to the guest list. I got extremely angry and walked directly up to my fiancé,

who was standing near the altar area talking to her sister, and I showed her the screenshot I had taken of the Facebook message the previous day. Her face went completely white when she saw the image on my phone, and she immediately started looking around to see if anyone else had heard our conversation or no, what was happening between us. She started trying to make excuses about why the children were there and why she hadn't told me about the change and plans, claiming that her sister had convinced her at the last minute that weddings were better with family present, and that she was going to surprise me with the news that all the children could attend after all. She said she had been

planning to tell me about the change when I arrived at the venue, and that she thought I would be happy to see the children there because it would make the day more festive and celebratory. I told her that I knew she was lying because the message was from several days ago, not from that morning, and that she had specifically deleted it from the laptop when she realized I might have seen it during my workday. I pointed out that the children were wearing specially prepared outfits and that there were designated seats and programs with their names, which proved that this had been planned for weeks or months in advance, not decided spontaneously the night before. I said I couldn't marry someone who would lie to me about something involving my daughter, and who would treat my child differently than her own children for no reasonable or fair explanation. I told her that our relationship was over-effective immediately, and I walked away from the venue without giving any explanation to the guests who had already started arriving for the ceremony and were beginning to take their seats. The wedding was supposed to start in three hours,

and there were over 100 people who had attended including my own family members, friends from work, and college classmates who had made arrangements to be there for this important day. I know that leaving without an explanation was probably confusing and embarrassing for everyone involved, but I couldn't stand there and pretend that everything was fine when I had just discovered that my fiancé had been lying to me and deliberately excluding my daughter from what was supposed to be one of the most important days of my life. I drove home immediately and spent the rest of the day fielding and calling phone calls from confused family members and friends who wanted to know what had happened and whether the wedding had been cancelled or just postponed due to some kind of emergency. I told them that the wedding was cancelled permanently and that I would explain the details later when I had more time to process everything that had occurred. I might be an asshole for leaving early without telling anyone but Ida for leaving my fiancé on my wedding day. Some people have questioned whether my daughter was being honest about my fiancée's treatment of her, so I want to provide some context about our family situation and my daughter's character. As previous mentioned my daughter's mother and I were never married, we just dated for a few years before breaking up when our daughter was three years old due to incompatibility issues that had nothing to do with our child.

My daughter barely remembers us being together as a couple, and her mother has been happily remarried for five years to a man who treats my daughter very well and who has never shown any jealousy or resentment about her relationship with me. My daughter has never had any problems with me dating other women over the years, and she's actually encouraged me to pursue serious relationships because she wants me to have a proper wife and happiness in my life. She's not the type of person who would lie about something serious like mistreatment, especially since she knows how much I value honesty and open communication between us, and she's never tried to sabotage my relationships or create drama where none existed before. Update 1. It's been three days since I cancelled my wedding, and I wanted to update everyone on what has happened since then and how I've been handling the aftermath of discovering my ex-fiance as deception.

Immediately after I left the wedding venue on Saturday morning, I went home and when she came back, I told my ex-fiancee that she needed to pack her things and move out of my house that same day, because I couldn't continue living with someone who had lied to me about something so fundamental to our relationship and our future as a blended family. She had been living with me for about a year and a half, and most of her belongings were scattered throughout the house. I told her she couldn't stay there anymore after what she had done. Since she didn't have anywhere else to go on such short notice, especially since she had given up her own apartment when she moved in with me, I gave her 48 hours to arrange staying with her sister or her parents. Both of whom live in the same city and have extra room in their houses where she could stay temporarily while she figured out her long-term housing. situation. She was crying and begging me to reconsider my decision, saying that we could work through this problem and that she was willing to do whatever it took to fix the damage she had caused to our relationship and to rebuild trust between us. I told her that lying about my

daughter was something I couldn't forgive or move past, and that I needed her to leave as soon as possible so that I could focus on repairing any emotional damage that had been done to my relationship with my child. She reluctantly called her sister and arranged to stay at her house temporarily, and she spent the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday packing only her essential items like clothes, personal documents and work-related materials that she needed for her remote job. My friends have been very supportive of my decision to prioritize my daughter and to stand firm about my house being a place where she feels welcome and comfortable, and several of them have told me that they're proud of me for making such a difficult choice

under such stressful circumstances. They said they could see that something was wrong during the engagement period because my fiancé seemed to get annoyed or impatient whenever my daughter was around, and they noticed that she would try to monopolize my attention during family gatherings, barbecues, and social events where my daughter was present. They told me they had been planning to talk to me about their concerns regarding how my fiancé interacted with my daughter, but they didn't want to interfere in my relationship unless I asked for their advice directly or unless the situation became obviously problematic.

They said they had noticed that my fiancé would often suggest activities or outings that specifically excluded children, and that she seemed to schedule important conversations or romantic moments during times when my daughter was supposed to be spending time with me. I've also blocked my ex-fiancee's parents and both of her sisters on my phone and social media because they were clearly complicit in the deception about the wedding guest list, and they had to have known that she was planning to exclude only my daughter while including all of their own children in the ceremony and reception. These are people I thought I had developed a good relationship with over the past four I had been looking forward to having them as extended family members who would be part of my daughter's life and who would provide additional support and love for both of us.

I also gave my ex-fiancee an ultimatum about explaining her behavior and her reasons for lying to me about something so important to our future together. I told her she could explain her thinking via text messages if she wanted to provide some context for her actions, but that I refused to meet with her in person or to have phone conversation. about what happened, because I was too angry and hurt to trust myself to remain calm during a face-to-face discussion. I said if she didn't want to explain herself or provide any reasoning for her behavior, that was fine too, and we could just let the whole situation go without any further communication between us, and I would simply move forward with my life and focus on rebuilding my relationship with my daughter.

She hasn't responded to this ultimatum yet, which is unusual for her because she typically replies to text messages immediately and she works from home doing online customer service, which requires her to be on her phone constantly throughout the day responding to customer inquiries and technical support requests. Update 2, it's been another three days since my last update, so it's now been six days since I canceled my wedding, and my ex-fiancee finally responded to my ultimatum about explaining her behavior and providing some context for why she lied to me for months about something involving my daughter. She sent me several long text messages insisting that she needed to meet with me in person to explain her valid reasons for what she did, and claiming that

she didn't want to be perceived as the bad guy in the situation without having the opportunity to provide her side of the story. She said that text messages couldn't convey the full context of her decision-making process or the emotional complexity of what she had been going through during our engagement period, and that I owed it to our four-year relationship to at least hear her out face to face before making any final decisions about our future together. She mentioned that there were important details about her reasoning that could only be properly explained through a real conversation and that she was worried I would misunderstand her motivations if she tried to explain everything through written messages.

I refused her request for an in-person meeting and told her again that she needed to explain everything through text messages or not at all, because I didn't trust her enough to be alone with her after she had lied to me for months. I said I wasn't interested in being manipulated by tears or emotional appeals that might happen during a face-to-face conversation, and that I wanted any explanation she provided to be something I could read carefully and think about without the pressure of having to respond immediately. I told her she had 24 hours to send me a written explanation that covered all of her reasoning or I would block her phone number and consider the matter completely closed forever with no

possibility of future communication or reconciliation. I said I needed to protect her. myself and my daughter from any further emotional manipulation or deception, and that this was her one and only chance to provide an honest account of why she had treated my daughter so poorly and why she had lied to me about the wedding guest list. She finally sent me a long explanation the next day, and her reasoning was something I never could have predicted or imagined, and it revealed a level of irrationality and poor judgment that made me realize I had never really known her true character during our four years together. She said that at our engagement party several months ago, my daughter had felt unwell during the evening and went to her room to rest after

briefly attending the party and saying hello to all the guests who had come to celebrate our upcoming marriage. When my ex-fiancee went upstairs to check on her and to see if she needed anything like medicine, water, or extra blankets, she heard my daughter talking and laughing on the phone with one of her friends from school. Which made my ex-fiancee believe that my daughter was faking her illness to get attention for me and to take me away from our engagement celebration. She said this made her suspicious that my daughter was being manipulative and was trying to disrupt our special evening by creating a situation where I would have to focus on her needs instead of celebrating our engagement with our friends and family.

Instead of talking to me about this incident or asking my daughter directly about why she was on the phone while she was feeling sick, my ex-fiancee decided to discuss the situation with her sisters. who apparently stirred the pot and convinced her that my daughter was unhappy about our upcoming marriage and would cause problems for our relationship in the future. Her sisters told her that teenagers often try to sabotage their parents' new relationships, and that my daughter was probably going to make our married life difficult by demanding constant attention and creating drama whenever possible.

According to my ex-fiance's explanation, her sisters shared stories about other blended families they knew where the children had caused problems, and they convinced her that she needed to establish clear boundaries with my daughter before we got married, or else my daughter would never respect her authority as a stepmother. They told her that my daughter was probably hoping that our relationship would fail so that she could have all of attention and support to herself again, and that she was likely pretending to be supportive while secretly working against our relationship. This single incident at our engagement party led to my ex-fiancee pushing my daughter away and treating her coldly for the entire seven months of our engagement, based on nothing more than

hearing her talk on the phone while she was sick. She said she thought that if she made it clear that my daughter wasn't welcome in our new family dynamic, my daughter would eventually choose to spend more time at her mother's house, and our marriage would be easier and more peaceful without the complications that come with stepchildren and blended family situations. My ex-fiancee also admitted that she had been hoping the child-free wedding would send a clear message to my daughter about her place in our new family structure, and that she had planned to include her own children and nieces and nephews to show that there were different rules for different people in our family hierarchy. She said she thought this would help establish her

authority and make it clear that her children would always take priority over my daughter and our household decisions and family activities. When I discussed this explanation with my daughter, she confirmed that she was indeed talking to her friend on the phone that night, but she was still genuinely feeling unwell with a headache and stomach problems that had started earlier in the day after eating something that didn't agree with her. She said she didn't understand why being sick meant she couldn't talk on the phone, especially since talking to her friend was actually making her feel a little better and helping to distract her from not feeling well physically. She said she had been excited about the engagement party and had wanted to stay downstairs

longer to talk to our guests and to celebrate with us, but she started feeling worse as the evening went on and decided to go rest in her room so that she wouldn't get sicker or potentially throw up in front of everyone. She said she called her friend to tell her about the engagement party and to talk about other normal teenage topics that had nothing to do with trying to get attention or disrupt our celebration. My daughter was completely baffled by the idea that talking on the phone while sick evidence of manipulation or attention seeking behavior, and she pointed out that she had never tried to interfere with my relationships or create problems between me and any of the women I had dated over the years.

She said she had always been genuinely supportive of my happiness and had never done anything to sabotage my romantic relationships or make dating more difficult for me. This made me realize that my ex-fiancee had never truly accepted my daughter as part of our family, and that she had been planning to gradually phase her out of my life after so that she could have my full attention and resources focused on her and her own children. The child-free wedding was just the beginning of what was. would have been years of my daughter being excluded from important family events and milestones,

and I'm grateful that I discovered her true intentions before we actually got married and before any more damage was done to my relationship with my daughter. Update 3, it's been another two days since my last update, so it's now been eight days since I canceled my wedding, and my ex-fiance showed up at my door unannounced yesterday to collect more of her belongings that she had left behind when she moved out of my house over the weekend. She had texted me earlier in the the day asking if she could come by to get some of her furniture and kitchen items that she hadn't been able to fit in her car during her initial move, but I had told her she needed to coordinate with me to schedule a specific time when I could be out of the house while she collected

her remaining possessions. I had suggested that she come by during my work hours when my daughter wouldn't be home from school yet, so that there wouldn't be any awkward or uncomfortable interactions and so that I wouldn't have to deal with any emotional confrontations or attempts to convince me to change my mind about ending our relationship. I had also offered to have one of my friends be present during the pickup to help facilitate the process and to make sure everything went smoothly without any drama or conflict. Instead of waiting for me to respond with available times or accepting my suggestion about having a neutral third party present, she just showed up at my door around 7 p.m. with her sister and her sister's husband, who had apparently

come to help remove the larger items like the dresser and bookshelf that she had brought from her previous apartment. When I opened the door, she immediately started apologizing in trying to have a conversation about our relationship, while her sister and brother-in-law stood behind her looking uncomfortable and avoiding eye contact with me. She admitted that her behavior toward my daughter had been immature and wrong, and she acknowledged that she had been too influenced by her sister's advice about how to handle the situation with my daughter and how to establish her role in our blended family. She said she had recently had a big fight with her sisters after realizing that their advice had ruined her relationship with me, and that staying at her sister's house had become

uncomfortable and tense because of the arguments they'd been having about what happened and who was responsible for the breakdown of our relationship. She said her sisters were now claiming that they had only been trying to help her navigate a difficult situation, and that they hadn't intended for their advice to lead to such a dramatic outcome or to cause permanent damage to our relationship. She said they were blaming her for misinterpreting their suggestions and for taking their advice too far, while she was angry at them for encouraging her to treat my daughter poorly in the family first place and for convincing her that excluding my daughter from our wedding was a reasonable solution to their concerns. She begged me to give her

a second chance and promise that she would make things work with both me and my daughter if I would just let her come back home and try to fix the damage she had caused to our family. She said she understood now that my daughter was the most important person in my life, and that she was willing to go to family counseling or therapy to learn how to be a better stepmother and partner, and to address whatever issues had led her to make such poor decisions about how to treat my child. She promised that she would apologize to my daughter personally and sincerely, and that she would never again try to exclude her from family activities or important events, and that she would work hard to rebuild the trust and relationship

that had been damaged during our engagement period. She said she was willing to start over completely and to prove that she could be the kind of stepmother that my daughter deserved, and that she had learned important lessons about communication and honesty that would make our relationship stronger if I gave her another opportunity. I told her that nothing was more important to me than my daughter, and that I owed it to her to do what was right, which meant not allowing someone back into our lives who had to be. deliberately tried to hurt her and push her away from me for months without any valid reason

or justification. I said that trust was something that couldn't be rebuilt after being broken so completely, and that I couldn't risk putting my daughter through any more emotional manipulation or rejection from someone who was supposed to love and protect her as a family member. I explained that the fact that she had been able to lie to me for months and mistreat my daughter showed me that she didn't have the character or values that I needed in a truster to treat my daughter fairly in the future, even if she promised to change her behavior. I said that my daughter's emotional security and well-being had to be my top priority, and that I wasn't willing to gamble with her happiness or her sense of belonging in her own home.

I told my ex-fiancee to collect her remaining items quickly, and then I left the room and went upstairs to avoid having to deal with her tears and continued attempts to convince me to change my mind about our relationship being over permanently. She and her family members spent about an hour loading her belongings into their truck, and I heard her crying the entire time, but I stayed upstairs in my bedroom until I heard their vehicle leave my driveway and I was sure they were gone. My daughter was staying at her mother's house that evening, which was fortunate because I didn't want her to have to witness the emotional scene or to feel responsible for the conflict between me and my ex-fiancee. I called her later that night to let her know that

my ex-fiance had come to collect her things and that this chapter of our lives was now completely closed, and that we could focus on moving forward and rebuilding our normal routine together. The one positive outcome from this entire situation is that my relationship with my daughter has returned to exactly how it was before I got engaged, and she's back to sharing everything about her life with me with no secrets or hesitation between us. She's been telling me about her friends and school activities and her plans for the upcoming summer break, and I can see that she's much more relaxed and comfortable now that my ex-fiancee is no longer living in our house and creating tension in our family dynamic. She's been more talkative during our car rides

together, and she started inviting friends over to the house again, which she had stopped doing during the engagement period because she was worried about how my ex-fiancee would react to having teenagers around making noise and taking up space in the common areas. We're planning a getaway vacation with some of my friends who have children around her age, because I feel like I need a break after these difficult and emotionally draining weeks, and my daughter is excited about having our home back to its normal, peaceful atmosphere without the constant tension that had developed during the engagement period. I'm disappointed that I wasted four years with someone who turned out to have such different

values than I do when it comes to family and honesty, but I'm grateful that I discovered her true character before we actually got married and before she could do any more damage to my daughter's sense of security and belonging in our family.