I think I feel rejected, disappointed, mad, and sad.

There’s a wedding and reception today for one of my boyfriend’s somewhat close friends. My boyfriend is a corn and soybeans farmer. The fall/now is his busy season, they’re all out in the field harvesting. He can’t just be done working whenever he wants. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to pull himself away to go the wedding. I rsvp’d us both as a yes to the wedding and the reception a while back.

I think my problem is that I’m thinking he should try harder to get away from the farm, to actually make it to the wedding, or at least make it to the reception by 6 to eat dinner. If not, I just have to get ready and then what? Sit here around the house and wait for him? If he’s not going to get back in time to get to the reception, I’m supposed to just eat dinner here and then go to the reception? That’s dumb. I’m also not willing to go without him – this is his friend group, I’d feel awkward going alone and sitting with his friends that aren’t really my friends.

I think I’m also doing the f: rejected, a: reject him, which looks like withdrawing from him, making myself the victim to his uncertain plans, “poor me” attitude type of thing. I think the truth is, he doesn’t care about this wedding. I’m taking it personally, and thinking he doesn’t care about me. Why do I even care that much? I don’t really even want to go to this wedding either, they’re not even my friends. He should care more about his friends wedding. I wish he cared more about our relationship. Why have I connected him not caring about this wedding to making that mean he doesn’t care about our relationship? I don’t know.

My manual in a perfect world is:

• He should make the wedding of his friend.
• He should do whatever it takes to stop working in time to get back to the house, take a shower, clean himself up, throw on a decent outfit (khakis and a button down shirt)
• He should put effort into his appearance
• He should give me specific times he will be done working, and the time he’s shooting for being back at the house in order to shower, get dressed/ready, and the time we’ll leave in order to drive to the wedding venue and be in our seats 15 mins before the wedding starts at 4pm.

I’m fine with skipping the wedding, so if he can’t make the wedding, ok fine, then do all the same things I just said, but with the 6pm reception eating/start time. I wouldn’t feel uncertain/wishy washy about the plans. I would have concrete expectations that I can calendar around, and know when I need to get ready. I like exact times. Like even if he gave me a 1 hour range of time, that would be acceptable too, I can work with that. I can’t work with “hey when do you think you’ll be back by, so I know when I need to start getting ready” he says “I have no idea, whenever I can pull myself away I guess, we’ll be lucky if we can make it up there and have a few beers”

I can already hear Brooke saying to me if she were to coach me:
Me: We were supposed to go to that wedding, on time, and be there for all of it
Brooke: You were never supposed to go to that wedding 😂

I also like dressing up. I wanted to wear my cute fancy sparkly dress that I always wear to weddings. He said I’ll just come home and throw on some jeans and go. I’m like ??? I’ll be way too overdressed for you. You will look like a slob next to me. It’s a fucking wedding. You don’t wear jeans to a wedding reception. Show a little respect for yourself and your appearance. But, I don’t have like hardly any clothing options that are less fancy than the sparkly dress, but yet more casual than jeans and a casual blouse. I don’t have a lot of in between options. I don’t want to go and look too casual. I don’t want to be “those people” who didn’t dress up for a wedding reception.

I think it’s a waste to get all dressed up just for like 2 hours of drinking. I don’t even drink. I’ll just be sitting there sober watching everyone else drink, which is sometimes entertaining, usually painful because I’m relatively shy/don’t have much to talk about with his friend group. So I just follow my bf around like his shadow as he converses with his friends.