I (28F) was supposed to get married two months ago to my fiancé (30M). We had been together for five years. He proposed during a vacation in Santorini and it felt like the most perfect moment of my life. I truly believed I had found my person.
Planning the wedding was stressful, but exciting. I come from a well-off family and my dad had offered to pay for a large portion of it. He has always been a bit... controlling, especially when it comes to money. He used to tell me growing up that I needed to protect myself financially, especially in relationships. I thought it was just fatherly advice. Sometimes it bordered on paranoid, but I chalked it up to him having seen some ugly divorces in his line of work (he’s a lawyer).
Two weeks before the wedding, my dad and I were having lunch and going over some final guest list stuff when he said something that completely blindsided me. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something like: At least now I know he signed the prenup. Money well spent. I literally paused mid-bite. I asked him what he meant and he brushed it off at first, then said he had offered my fiancé a significant sum of money to sign a prenup he drafted months ago. Not a mutual prenup. Not something we created together. Something he wrote up himself, behind my back. And my fiancé agreed to it.
I went home that night and confronted my fiancé. At first, he looked like a deer in headlights. Then he admitted it. Yes, my dad approached him with a prenup. Yes, he signed it. And yes, he accepted the money. His reasoning? He didn’t want to stress me out. He said my dad was being intense and he just wanted to keep the peace. He claimed he was always planning to tell me... eventually. He just didn’t know how.
The part that hurt the most wasn’t even the prenup itself. Honestly, I understand the value of one, especially with the wealth imbalance between me and my fiancé. I would have been totally fine discussing it openly. What broke me was the secrecy. The fact that two of the most important men in my life made a deal about my future without me. The fact that money was exchanged like my marriage was some business arrangement. I felt like I was being handled, not respected.
I called off the wedding the next day.
It wasn’t a dramatic scene. I just told him I couldn’t go into a marriage with that kind of breach of trust hanging over us. He begged me to reconsider. He said it was a stupid mistake, that he did it for me, that he didn’t want to start our life together with conflict. He said we could rip up the prenup. But the damage was done. He made a life-altering financial decision about our marriage without even consulting me, and the only reason I found out was because my dad accidentally let it slip.
Since then, everyone has had an opinion. My mom thinks I overreacted and says I’m throwing away a great relationship over a technicality. My friends are split, some say I dodged a bullet, others think I’m being cold. My dad, who caused all this, is now acting like he was the victim and said he was just trying to protect me. My ex has been texting and calling nonstop, saying he still wants to make things right.
I miss him. I still love him. But I can’t shake the feeling that if he hid this from me before the wedding, what else would he be willing to hide in the future?
So… AITA for calling the whole thing off
