“[Am I The Jerk] For Leaving The Engagement Dinner Due To My Fiancée’s Obsession With The Dog?”

More than ten thousand years ago, humans domesticated a dog, and since then, people and canines have been going through history together, presenting more and more new examples of beautiful friendship. Balto and Hachiko, Greyfriars Bobby and Patron are definitely our best friends and we love them back. Sometimes even excessively…

For example, the heroine of our story which first appeared a few days ago in the AITA Reddit community as a post by the user u/National-Paint-7928 was so obsessed with her doggo that it even cost her a big quarrel with her fiancé one day…

The author of the post recently proposed to his girlfriend, and they appointed their wedding to the upcoming year

Image credits: Samson Katt (not the actual image)

The only thing which embarrassed the man was that his sweetheart loved her dog to bits

Image credits: u/National-Paint-7928

Image credits: Helena Lopes (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/National-Paint-7928

The woman often texted the author only questions on the dog’s health, and he thought she was being overreactive here

Image credits: Angelo Moleele (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/National-Paint-7928

When the man arranged an engagement trip for them, the woman literally clung to her phone, repeatedly asking the sitter for updates on the pet

So, the Original Poster (OP) recently proposed to his girlfriend, and the couple planned their wedding for next year. The 27-year-old woman has a 5 Y.O. golden retriever mix, and if he were a man, our hero would definitely become jealous – after all, his fiancee not only dotes on the dog, she simply devotes her whole life to caring for her furry friend.

In particular, as the author of the post recalls, the woman has left her jobs several times if she was not allowed to work remotely so that she could be near her pet. As for the man, as a child, he had several bad experiences with dogs, so he is still wary of them.

But you definitely know golden retrievers and their incredible friendliness! So the OP, in his own words, has also made friends with the doggo, and since he works from home 3 days a week, he often stays to look after the pet. And even so, the author sometimes gets upset as the only texts he gets from his sweetheart these days are her questions concerning the dog and its health and behavior.

On the other hand, who among us is devoid of any quirks? But their recent engagement trip actually became the last straw for the original poster. He reserved a nice restaurant for them, booked a hotel, and since the dog is still not the best companion for these kinds of dinners, it was left at home under the supervision of one of the couple’s friends. Under her oath to report in detail how the dog was doing every two hours…

On that day, as the man recalls, everything went wrong from the very beginning. At first they had to wait for half an hour for a table to open, and when the couple did sit down at the table, the woman simply did not let go of her phone, constantly inquiring about the health of her beloved pet. Her body was sitting with the OP at the table in the restaurant, but her soul and thoughts were at home, next to the dog…

In the end, the man’s patience literally snapped. He paid for the dinner and just left. A scandal broke out in the car with mutual reproaches, and now the woman is thinking about going to stay with her parents. However, the original poster does not at all believe that he is somehow guilty in this situation.

Image credits: Jep Gambardella (not the actual image)

However, this is not surprising at all – after all, millennials today are the largest pet-owning cohort of Americans, but the reasons for adopting a dog and, in general, the attitude to canines in this generation differ significantly from the previous leaders in this indicator – baby boomers.

“For America’s newest adopters, a dog can be many things: a dry run for parenthood, a way of putting down roots when traditional milestones feel out of reach, an enthusiastic housemate for people likely to spend stretches of their 20s and 30s living alone,” Amanda Mull, health columnist for the Atlantic, writes in her related article. “Dogs, long practical partners in rural life or playmates for affluent children, have become a life stage unto themselves.”

Irina Matveeva, a psychologist and a certified NLP specialist, whom Bored Panda approached for a comment on this story, agrees with this too. “In a number of ways, this woman treats her dog like a small child. Just imagine a new mom who is forced to leave on business, leaving her baby in the care of friends or relatives. Then such behavior will immediately become more clear.”

“On the other hand, this is not a baby or a toddler, but a completely adult canine, left for a day to a friend whom both partners obviously trust. And now such anxiety looks a bit strange. Perhaps the woman had some reason for such an attitude to her pet before – maybe it came out of a serious illness when it was a puppy. Who knows? In any case, there is no need to quarrel here – they just need to discuss this issue in detail. Together or with the help of a specialist. And the sooner this happens, so much the better,” Irina opines.

As for the commenters, they directly ask the original poster how he managed to propose to a woman who doesn’t give a damn about anything except her dog. Most folks in the comments advise the man to reconsider his engagement and possibly refuse. “Better now than when it’s too late,” one of the commenters simply wrote. On the other hand, it is always easy to give advice without knowing all the nuances of a particular life situation. So what would you, dear readers, do if you were the author of this post?

The man got fed up and left the dinner – and folks in the comments supported him, even asking him to cancel the wedding altogether

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