This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Sebastianlim on 2026-05-28 00:07:15+00:00.

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I am NOT OP. The OP of this story is u/Salty-Limit411.

Trigger Warnings: Abusive Behavior, Stupidity.

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AITAH for telling my girlfriend her best friend has 2 years to find someone or we’re moving ahead without that condition?, Posted May 20th, 2026.

So me (28M) and my girlfriend (28F) have been together for 3 years now and i recently brought up the marriage and kids talk. My reason is pretty simple, i want to be fit and active while my kids are growing up. Like if we have kids at 30 ill be 48 when they turn 18 which still feels decent enough to actually be involved and active in their lives. So i wanted to start planning ahead.

She said she also wants to get married and have kids but she had one condition. She wants to get married around the same time as her best friend. Not the same event necessarily just the same season or timeframe. Honestly i found it cute at first.

Here’s where it gets complicated. I actually know her best friend personally and she is genuinely terrible at relationships, never lasted more than 6 months with anyone and is currently single. But the bigger issue is her best friend doesn’t even want to get married. So my girlfriend’s whole plan is to first convince her that she wants marriage, then find her a guy, then hope that guy proposes, then coordinate weddings.

I told her i don’t mind waiting but i’m not comfortable with our future basically being in someone else’s hands. She got upset saying i don’t respect the friendship. So i said fine, 2 years, if things fall into place great but i can’t wait forever with no end in sight. That got her even more riled up.

AITA for putting a timeframe on this?

EDIT: so after reading through all the comments i decided to reach out to her best friend and told her everything. and honestly her friend found the whole thing just as ridiculous as you guys did and immediately went and talked to my girlfriend trying to knock some sense into her. now my girlfriend is mad at both of us lmaooo. but hey at least her friend and i are on the same page. will update if anything changes.

EDIT 2: Did not expect this to blow up like this so here is a quick update. GF is currently giving me the silent treatment. But the wildest part? Her best friend texted me again apologizing for the collateral damage. She said she explicitly told my GF to drop the ridiculous condition. Instead of listening, my GF lost it on her and accused her of “betraying their friendship”, “not supporting her dream” and “choosing a guy over our friendship.” So now the two of them are fighting. After reading all your comments about codependency and projecting the red flags are glaring. Im taking a few days of space to seriously re evaluate this relationship. I dont think this is just about a wedding anymore. Will update if anything changes.

EDIT 3: Its been a few hours since the last update. I had a long talk with my GF earlier. She is still very upset and keeps saying that I don’t understand how important her friendship is and that I’m forcing her to choose. The best friend also messaged me again saying she is done trying to explain and is taking a step back from my GF for now. Honestly after everything that’s happened in the last 2 days I think I need more than just a few days of space. This whole situation has made me question a lot of things about our future. I will give one final update in a day or two after I clear my head.

EDIT 4: The situation is finally over. this post was getting way too long to keep updating with all the edits, so i posted the final conclusion in a new thread. you can read it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/nsD5Fi3Ap9

Relevant Comments:

u/Plastic-Cabinet67:

Ok. The girlfriend thing should tell you exactly where you srand in this relationship. Girlfriend come first. Think about it.

OP:

i hear you and i won’t pretend that didn’t cross my mind too after this whole thing. but in 3 years she has never once made me feel like i come second. this condition genuinely came out of nowhere which is why it hit me so hard. i think it says more about how much that friendship means to her than it does about where i stand with her. still doesn’t make it okay though

u/Music_withRocks_In:

If she really cared for her girlfriend she would respect her not wanting to get married (or have kids??).  She doesn’t respect her friend as a person, she just wants some Instagram girl power movie montage of them doing things together, and is willing to actually plan her adult life around it!!!

Honestly that sounds like someone so selfish with so little empathy that I would never have kids with them. How can she respect her kids choices if she can’t even respect the choices of her best friend?  This isn’t someone mature enough to have kids.

OP:

this actually hit different because you made a point i hadn’t even thought about. she’s basically trying to force her friend into something her friend doesn’t even want, all for the sake of this picture perfect moment she has in her head. and you’re right, if she can’t respect her best friend’s choice of not wanting to get married then that is a bigger issue than just the condition she put on me. i’ll be honest this comment made me think more than most of the others here

u/Affectionate-Food266:

You’re going to have to state your case and set a hard boundary. Or let it go. Having a grown ass woman plan her life around other people than herself is insane. Nta!

OP:

already did that, gave her a 2 year window as a compromise. if she still wants to stay angry over that then i guess that tells me everything i need to know about where this is going.

[UPDATE] AITAH for telling my girlfriend her best friend has 2 years to find someone or we’re moving ahead without that condition?, Posted May 21st, 2026.

Link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/WtQjLGxhq2

Since the original post was getting way too long to keep updating, i’m putting the final conclusion here.

First off a massive thank you to everyone who commented. A lot of you pointed out things about codependency and enmeshment that i was completely blind to and honestly it gave me the clarity i needed.

Before getting into the update i just want to address two things that kept coming up in the comments.

To everyone roasting me about my timeline, yes i know you can still be a fit and active dad well into your 30s and 40s lol. It was just a personal goal i had in my head but fair point taken.

To everyone jokingly suggesting i should just date the best friend since she’s apparently the sane one, absolutely not lmaooo. We are cool but i am staying far far away from that entire dynamic.

A lot of you were also asking how i missed such a massive red flag for three years. Honestly i didn’t understand it either at first. I think as a guy you are sometimes so starved for affection and care that you hold onto it tightly when you finally find it. But it wasn’t just that, i genuinely felt loved and cared for. She worked from home for her dad’s business and there was no lack of emotional or physical intimacy either and she made my life so easy like would always make food for me, handled all the household stuff willingly without ever complaining and even when i offered to help she’d just wave me off saying she had it. This whole condition truly came out of nowhere and blindsided me completely.

After my last edit i left our apartment and spent the night away to clear my head. I made up my mind that i was going to sit her down calmly and try to make her understand how absurd this whole thing was. My plan was that if she finally understood we could look into couples therapy together to get to the root of it.

We had that final long conversation this morning. I tried to explain why having my future tied to a third party was a dealbreaker for me. But instead of trying to understand my perspective or even taking the lifeline of therapy she doubled down. She said her best friend is “abandoning” her and that i am being unsupportive of her vision for her life.

I even asked her directly to be honest with me if she simply wasn’t ready for marriage or kids yet because that would be a completely different and understandable situation, one i was willing to work with and make compromises for because i genuinely didn’t want to lose her over some fantasy plan. But she said no, she loves me, she does want marriage and kids, she just wouldn’t drop the condition. And when i brought up the fact that her best friend had literally told her she doesn’t want to get married, she just waved it off saying “she will come around, i know her better than she knows herself.” That’s when it became obvious that i was essentially the third wheel in my own relationship and that no amount of reasoning was going to get through.

It was a long h…

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