Rift in Their Relationship
Holy moly. My cousin “Jan’s” wedding was basically just a preamble to an elaborate Dance of Divorce that we all knew was coming from the moment the engagement began. For context, this took place 15 years ago in the backwoods of North Carolina.
My family is just a generation or two removed from snake-handling in church, so some of the wackiness is the product of upwardly mobile inbreeding, and redneck gumption. Just a few things that come to mind: Her fiancé proposed to her OVER THE CORPSE OF HER FATHER.
He was over with the family watching TV when Jan’s dad collapsed on the floor. He passed before emergency services arrived. Her boyfriend grabbed her hands as she was sitting next to her father’s body, pulled her up to her feet, and then asked her to marry him.
He later said that he “didn’t want her to get away.” The fiancé then disappeared for a month the week after the funeral. Nobody knew where to reach him.
The bride’s white trash mother told Jan that she had to get married within four months because she planned to move to another state with her new boyfriend to avoid bill collectors.
When Jan’s fiancé showed back up, he was cagey and weird. He later confessed his guilty secret. He’d been living with his ex-girlfriend because she insisted that he had to give her a month of his life,
Or she’d take him to court for child support that he was supposed to be paying on their infant son, but had never paid. Throughout all of this, Jan continued to insist that she wanted to marry him.
My mother and I did most of the wedding prep and arrangements. Jan’s mom, despite insisting on the 4-month timeline to help pay for the wedding before her move, never contributed a dime. We were both pretty convinced that the wedding was going to be canceled at any moment.
But, the day arrived, and so did the principle players. At the wedding itself: The groom walked around drinking PBR out of a massive travel thermos with a novelty straw and told everyone who would listen that Jan was a good “starter wife.”
Jan threw several tantrums about stupid stuff, including one in which she accused the groom of taking her drink. He told her she was a “dumb slag,” but it all worked out because then she found her drink. The groom pulled the ring off of Jan’s finger during the reception and swallowed it “as a joke.”
The groom picked a fight with his father because his dad had asked the ex-girlfriend to stay at home, and the groom had really wanted her to be there. Jan was in the dark about this invitation until the fight happened. Shocking precisely nobody, except possibly Jan herself, they eventually did divorce.
Eating the ring caused the groom some discomfort, so they had to cancel their honeymoon to the mountains so that he could go to the ER and get hospital-grade laxatives. They lost money on the cancellation and the ER visit, which they really didn’t have to lose.
That resulted in some immediate debt problems, and they lost the trailer they’d planned to rent when they couldn’t come up with the deposit. That resulted in both of them moving into the groom’s parents’ home, into his old bedroom. Things went downhill from there.
The groom’s ex-girlfriend popped back up less than three months after the wedding, heavily pregnant with his second child. She went after him for another “shared month,” but Jan wasn’t cool with it. The ex ended up taking him to court for child support.
Jan got a second job to make ends meet while resigning herself to living with her in laws for a while longer. One day, after he’d dropped her off at work, the groom sold Jan’s car. He then disappeared for several more weeks. She lost both jobs, and shortly thereafter realized she was pregnant.
The groom accused her of cheating because he thought he couldn’t have more than two children in a lifetime, and his ex-girlfriend had already filled the quota. As I understand it, this is what ultimately caused the rift in their relationship. Story credit: Reddit