Lauren

I never thought I would have to worry about our relationship going south until now.

A few days ago, my fiance sat me down and said he had something he wanted to tell me, and he was smiling like it was good news.

He basically told me that his family has been secretly testing me for the last 11 months to make sure I wasn't a gold digger.

He said they were worried I only liked him for his income and wanted proof before we got married.

The test was that they all made it seem like he was struggling financially and might lose his job.

His mom would casually bring up layoffs, his dad talked about how unstable tech is, and slowly it turned into, he might actually lose his job, and you guys might have to really downsize.

At one point, his mom even told me I should be prepared to financially help him if it came to that.

I never wanted to bring up the possibility of a layoff to him because I didn't want to stress him out.

I wanted to be prepared to support him if needed, so I started budgeting more, saving money, cutting back on random spending, skipping stuff that I wanted, and just generally trying to prepare for the worst.

I constantly reassured my fiance, encouraged him, told him we'd be fine, that I didn't care about money, and that I just wanted us.

But this whole thing was fake.

Wow.

His job was never in danger.

His income never changed.

There were no layoffs.

His family literally planned this whole thing together.

They kept it going for almost a year.

Wow.

Subtle comments made him passing to manipulate me and test me.

Apparently, this all started because his older brother went through a really messy divorce.