Definition: Given a real-life anecdote of a complex ethical situation, generate a suitable title that describes the main event/root cause of the situation. Imagine that the given text is a social media post, and you have to write the title of the post, so the users can decide to read the main text or not.
Input: One of my closest friends of 10 years, Sarah, is getting married this year. 

When Sarah and her partner first got together, there were problems from the get-go. The partner was emotionally abusive and just a downright awful person. Sarah would message me out of nowhere with long rants about their behaviour every few months, sometimes including screenshots where this person had said things to her that were just way out of line.  My response was always basically to listen, be there when she needed to vent, and sometimes gently encourage her to walk away. 

The thing is, our friendship basically died as soon as they got together. We’ve seen each other face-to-face maybe three times in the past year and a half that they’ve been together. At first I chalked this up to the “honeymoon period”, but later, I think Sarah felt uncomfortable communicating with me when things were relatively stable in her relationship, given she’d told me all these horrible details about the bad times. They ended up getting engaged and she asked me to be in her bridal party. 

On the few occasions I’ve met her partner, I’m civil. This person can be quite charismatic and manipulative, and I think they don’t like me because I see through it.

A few months ago, after Sarah and I hadn’t spoken in a good five or six months, I requested we meet face-to-face and addressed our drift head-on. She took full responsibility and promised to make more of an effort. She also said the relationship is going really well these days. All in all, we had a pleasant night. 

I haven’t seen her since. Our last communication was when I texted a couple of weeks later and asked how she was going and she never responded. But I’m still getting wedding updates (via group emails, not directly to me) and it’s expected that I’ll be there. It’s a destination wedding that will set me back around $1500 (which is a lot of money for me, but I’d be there for a close friend in a heartbeat). 

I feel disingenuous attending when I don’t approve of the relationship, and also am not sure if I really exist to Sarah as anything more than a “crisis friend” when things go bad. I’m weighing up whether I should just go, or have to fully explain to her why I won’t be attending (her absence, my sentiment towards the partner, etc). I realise the latter will officially end our friendship. 

WIBTA if I didn’t go to the wedding? 



not wanting to go to my best friend's wedding