Insecure fiancée cracked a joke about partner's late wife at family dinner. Her stepchildren's faces told her she'd crossed a line

Comparison in a relationship is not a healthy way to build trust and emotional connection. Yet, many partners struggle with it. A 43-year-old widower who goes by u/Vast-Ad-5383 on Reddit shared how his fiancée's comment about his late wife made him question their engagement. Using fake names, the author referred to his late wife as Kayla, Sam and Liz as his kids, and his fiancée as Amanda. During a family dinner celebrating their engagement, Amanda's standoffish comment about Kayla changed the way his family saw her. The post has received 8,500 upvotes and more than 3,600 comments.

New family member

The author's children are now 21 and 15, but when Kayla, the love of his life, passed away, they were just 15 and 10. He promised himself to wait a few years before getting into a new relationship for the sake of his children. Three years after Kayla passed away, he met Amanda, but it was only after a year of dating that Sam and Liz met her. Amanda and his children were not close, but they had a good relationship.

Would he still date her if Kayla was alive?

He explained, "Amanda has never overstepped any boundaries my kids have, like trying to replace their mother." However, she was a little insecure at the beginning of their relationship. She often asked him if he would still be with her if Kayla were alive. The author did not like these questions and reassured her that he was dating her now, and the present was what mattered. After a while, she stopped asking such questions, and the author thought she had made peace with it. However, it all blew up during a family dinner.

Unforgivable joke

The author's parents hosted a dinner to celebrate their engagement. They invited Sam, Liz, Kayla's sister, and her husband. The dinner was going well until the author's mom said that she was "so happy I [the author] was able to find the spark [he] had with Kayla in someone else." Amanda laughed and said, "I’m happy she died, I would have never gotten him to myself." What was supposed to be a lighthearted joke turned the mood somber, and Liz got up and left the table. Everyone went quiet, and Sam was waiting to see if his dad would say anything. Three days after the dinner, Liz still hadn't spoken to her dad or Amanda. 

'I'm a grown man'

The author wanted to resolve the issue and asked Sam what to do to fix it. Sam replied, "I’m a grown man and don’t care who another grown man marries, but I don’t want a woman who speaks like that about our mother around my sister." Sam's answer gave him clarity and made him think that his relationship with Amanda might become problematic, and he was seriously considering breaking off the engagement.

A changing view of relationships

While the author was questioning whether his engagement should move forward, research suggests that many people are finding love and commitment later in life. A Pew Research Center study from 2013 showed that more and more people who were 55 years and older were getting remarried. The study was done on participants between the ages of 18 and 65 and older. The age group with the lowest rates of remarriage was 18-24 years old (29%), while people between 55 and 64 years old had the highest number of remarriages (67%). As for the author's age group, 57% of participants between 35-44 years old remarried. 

'That's unforgivable'

People in the comments were disgusted with what Amanda had to say in front of the author's children about their late mother. u/Lil_Word_Said wrote, "'I'm happy she died' would be unforgivable for me. Especially knowing my kids heard my fiancée say that? Disgusting. I wouldn't be able to not think about that everytime I looked at them." u/laurafndz agreed with the majority, but also added, "NTA for wanting to call off the engagement for her comment about your late wife. But your mom’s comment was not okay and if your family makes comments like that I can see why she is insecure."

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