Recently I went to a friend’s wedding.  During the ceremony, and the reception there after, you could literally see the happiness shooting off this fella and his bride. If I had that hippy-dippy ability to read people’s aura’s, theirs would be a blazing hot pink surrounded by rainbows. It was great to see, and it made me reflect on the past few weddings I’d been to.

But the Background should be pink

A friend of mine got married a little over a year ago.  And we had been friends for a really long time.  I’m talking, upwards of a decade.  In that situation, you really want nothing more than to be thrilled and excited your friend was getting married.  He found the person he wanted to share the rest of his life with, hooray!

(This sort of ties into my previous post, about my inability to sugarcoat things, and if I should even say anything…the quandry…blah blah blah )

A while before my friend walked down the aisle, I met his then-girlfriend-soon-to-be-fiancee.  I didn’t know her very well, but she seemed very sweet…funny, entertaining, in love – and she seemed to take good care of my friend – which is awesome.  We hung out a few times after that, and I truly enjoyed her company.

I clearly remember where everything changed.

::cue ominous music::

One evening, we gathered as a group to one of my favorite local restaurants that was doing this great event called a “Beer and Bourbon” night, where they close down the restaurant, create a special 5 course meal paired with craft beers and Bourbons.  Its so awesome.  So, SO awesome.  We were all having fun, hanging out, and my friend’s girlfriend peers over her beer and goes “JoJo.  I broke him”.  Confused, and assuming there’s a joke somewhere, I got “Well how come?  I didn’t know he was broken!”

“he’s going to marry me!”

::confusion is starting to settle in::

“…okay…that’s great!”

My friend now interjects, and tells me this little story about how his girlfriend updated her Facebook status to “engaged”, spinning a little web of deceit.  He only found out after some of his friends started to text and congratulate him, looking to portray this is a funny joke.  A gag.  Now, I am not the girl who thinks its cool to drag your man down the aisle.  It is not a good look.  Not for me, not for you – not for anyone (and I can pull off orange taffeta).  I truly believe if you are going to marry someone, they have to want to marry you.  Enough to ask.  Of their own volition.  And if they don’t, or you have to trick them into it…you’re simply setting yourself up for failure.

As the evening goes on, she continues to tell me how there is a time frame in when they will be engaged, and then married, and then have children.  If the time frame gets delayed, she has a plan to move it along…by “forgetting” to take her birth control pills.

Hard Stop Number Two.

Yeah, that’s me.  Speechless.

At the end of the day, the only thing you can do is tell your friend the truth.  Which I did.  Afterwards, I continued to hear some horrible things she was doing, and saying about people I care a lot about – people I had been friends with for a very, very long time.  I could clearly see the kind of person she was underneath the exterior she was using to blind my friend.  He couldn’t – and it put a strain on our friendship.  It got to a point where he said to me (after one particularly ridiculous incident at their wedding – mind you, I’m trying to keep this story as vague as possible.  My friends know who I’m talking about, and so will he, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings with all the repulsive details about this woman) that he didn’t think I treated his wife with the respect she deserved.

I disagree, I think I treated her with more respect than she deserved.  If it were my choice, I would never have associated with her again, after I read a text she sent to a mutual friend saying she wanted to punch my friend out – for reasons that are so insignificant and immature – or told me she wanted to trap my friend into marriage by getting knocked up.  And we haven’t spoken, really, since his wedding – which makes me a little sad.

And this, friends, is one of the casualties of not being able to censor what you think of people.