My fiancé mistreated and prevented one of my female colleagues from attending our wedding. But that wasn’t the end of it…
“No, Edward, she’s not allowed!” Laura said as we were discussing our wedding guests.
“What’s wrong, darling?” I inquired, curious. “Why isn’t Melanie on the invite list?”
Laura stood up and slammed the table. “Well, I don’t want her to come. That’s all!”
I was confused. “But Laura, she’s one of my close friends. How can I invite others from my workplace and not her?”
Laura glared at me. “I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t like her enough. So, she’s not coming
At this point, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t invite everyone else and leave Melanie out, so I asked Laura once more if she could make an exception and allow her. But Laura didn’t listen to me. She was dead set on preventing Melanie from attending the wedding.
“No means no, Edward, and we’re not talking about this again!” she almost yelled at me.
I felt Laura was very weird that day. She and Melanie had known each other for a long time, but she’s never acted in such a manner.
I thought maybe it was the wedding stress that made her act like that, but later, it turned out she didn’t want Melanie to attend the wedding because she believed Melanie was the type of woman who would hit on other people’s partners.
Yes, so that’s the reason. I feel you guys are too close to be just friends!” Laura finally opened up about why she didn’t want Melanie to come
See, Laura, there’s nothing like that. And it’s difficult for me to hand over invites to everyone but not her,” I said.
Laura sighed and rolled her eyes. “I don’t care about that woman! I don’t want to be stressed on my wedding day because of that stupid friend of yours! I don’t want to see her on our wedding day. That’s it!”
I don’t know why Laura felt that way about Melanie. I knew Laura was the one for me from the moment I saw her for the first time, and I knew I would never leave her—at least that’s what I believed until she did something terrible to Melanie.
A week later, I was on the way to my cabin. I somehow couldn’t take my mind off the discussion Laura and I had last week. Was that woman the right partner for me? Was she like that only with Melanie, or would she do the same with all of my female friends? I wondered.
Suddenly, I heard our CEO call everyone for an important meeting.
“Guys, I know you’ve all been working really hard on the project we received recently and that we were planning to give some of you a break next week. But our lead analyst, Melanie, resigned this morning. We’ll have to continue the project on our own until we can find another analyst. So no more leaves!” he said.
I was shocked. Melanie resigned? How was it possible? She loved her job. She always told me how hard she had worked for the position. In fact, she was the only one at our office who didn’t utter an “uff” no matter how huge the workload was.
After the meeting ended, I went around the office to inquire about what made Melanie suddenly quit. But no one responded. All of them just gave me a weird glance and avoided talking to me.
I returned to my cabin and sat there for a long while, wondering what could have happened. I even tried to contact Melanie, but she didn’t respond to my calls or texts.
I was worried about her. I couldn’t understand what was happening. So I called my friend, David, and told him everything. David works in my company, but he’s in a different department.
“Dude, it’s so shocking! I never thought she’d do that!” I told David, baffled.
No, man! I was on leave last week, and when I came back, that’s the first thing I learned,” I said.
Oh God! Trust me, you’d hate to know what happened!” David said, his voice firm now.
My heart skipped a beat. I was even more worried now. “Tell me, man! What is it?” I inquired, anxious.
David told me that Laura had come to my office last week and handed over invites to everyone except Melanie. And not just that, she even told Melanie she didn’t want to invite her since she believed she was the type to hit on other people’s partners.
After Laura created the entire scene in front of everyone, people made weird comments at Melanie and refrained from talking to her.
I was furious. I hung up on David and immediately dialed Laura’s number and confronted her about the situation. Sadly, everything that David told me was right
Laura admitted to doing everything and claimed she wasn’t embarrassed about it. She believed it was the perfect way to deal with women like Melanie.
When Laura said all of this on-call, that was the first time I regretted being engaged to her. I decided to end my relationship with her, but I needed to do something more important before that.
I drove to Melanie’s house and apologized to her for Laura’s rude behavior. I also requested her to reconsider her resignation because she had always been passionate about her job.
Melanie was in a terrible state. She couldn’t stop crying when I visited her. She said she tried to explain that she wasn’t like that, but they didn’t stop saying negative things about her.
Thankfully though, she decided to return to work. It’s been a month, and everyone’s cooperating well with her. As far as my relationship with Laura is concerned, it’s over. I called off the wedding.
Laura was furious at me for treating her that way. She even said a lot of mean things about Melanie. But I don’t care what she thinks about either of us. Melanie and I are good friends, and will always be. Moreover, Melanie just got engaged two days ago, and she and her fiancé make a lovely pair.
What can we learn from this story?
- Life’s a circle. What goes around comes around. Laura mistreated Melanie, and in the end, karma reached her.
- Misunderstandings can create problems that weren’t even there in the first place. Laura misunderstood Edward and Melanie’s friendship and ended up ruining her relationship.
