Fake names to protect identities. My (27 F) fiancé (27 M), and I have been together about 3 years and are getting married this fall. Early on into dating, Ben introduced me to his coworker/friend, Melissa, at a party she threw at her home with her fiancé. She seemed fine, quite chatty and really friendly with Ben, but overall she was fine. Ben and I start going around the party and introducing ourselves to other people at the party when Ben starts accidentally saying “this is my girlfriend Melissa” referring to me. I hear this and at first I’m like… did that just happen? But it happened again and I’d have to correct him and say “Oh, I’m sorry, actually my name is Megan.” Weird, right? Because he wouldn’t even correct himself when it happened. I would usually brush this off as a fluke, but this happened 6-7 different times throughout our first year or so of dating and even after we had moved in together. One time being at a wedding of one of Ben’s former college classmate where she wasn’t even at this wedding. I confront this name/Freudian-slip problem up with him and am like “do you like her or something? Is there something you’re not telling me?.” To which he swears up and down they never dated or did anything, he says “I’ve never thought of her like that. I’m sorry, I’ll try really hard to not do that. I have no clue why I do that.” Since then, he’s never gotten my name wrong.

We met up for dinner with Melissa and her fiancé. I find out that she knows A LOT of details about our life together and Ben personally. She even brings up in conversation about knowing my brother recently got his girlfriend pregnant very young while they were both still living at home and relying on their parents and that she knew my family was probably very worried about what they were gonna do. This is just something I seldomly tell people because I don’t like to share a lot of intimate details of my life like that. Ben had obviously disclosed this private info to he. she’s super nosey and likes to chat and ask invasive questions. It’s like she took joy in showing off that she knew a lot about us. I tell Ben she gives me a vibe. I can’t quite describe it but it just seems like she knows a little too much about him and was quite interested in him. He brushes this off saying “how could she possibly be interested in me, she has a fiancé.”

We go to another house warming party they invite us to, she follows us around the party the whole night. I’m not joking like the whole time we can’t even mingle with other people, she’s always right there asking Ben questions and obnoxiously laughing at something he said. She has millions of other friends there, but only talks to us or follows Ben around. Ben shares that he and I went engagement ring shopping and were planning on getting engaged soon, I notice that she hears this and quickly sort of excuses herself to go to her bedroom and shuts the door. I shit you not, she comes out of her bedroom a little while later and she looked like she had been crying, (her cat-eye eyeliner and mascara had obviously been like smudged and running).

Now listen, I am the FIRST to give someone the benefit of the doubt, I hate jumping to conclusions and assuming something in the chance I could be wrong. But I just couldn’t shake the coincidence. I also want to emphasize, Ben has a bunch of other female friends, all of whom I adore and have become friends with myself, separate from Ben. I really wanted to like Melissa. She made it super apparent she was mostly just focused on Ben. Eventually, Ben and I have a long convo about her and we come to the joint decision that we’re going to stop pursuing a friendship with them bcs of how I feel. I feel bad about Ben having to distance himself from her but he doesn’t want to make me uncomfortable anymore.

Ben leaves his job where him and Melissa worked for an amazing new company. Melissa tells Ben that she wants to leave the company they worked for and wants to work at his new company with him. She asks him if he’d help her get a job there. Ben doesn’t tell me till after the fact that he put Melissa in as a referral for a couple openings with his new company. She gets into the final round, but doesn’t end up getting an offer. I feel relieved. There eventually becomes an opening on Ben’s direct team and Ben’s manager saw he had referred her and interviews her and offer her the job. She accepts and is now on Ben’s team. Ben lets me know this and we have another long conversation about how she makes me feel. I don’t wanna put Ben in a bad position at work. There’s nothing really we can do about them working together. He assures me that he’ll keep it strictly professional. They’ll be on different ends of the team so they won’t talk very much anyways and if I want to see their messages (but no more texting) periodically I can go in and view them whenever I want (which I decline the offer bcs that feels too invasive of his privacy). My only request is that I just don’t feel comfortable inviting Melissa and her husband to our wedding. (Low key, I’m sorry, I’m so worried he’ll see her sitting out there in audience and accidentally pull a Ross from Friends and say “I Ben take you Melissa.. I mean Megan” when we say I do’s). Ben pushes back a little saying that’s going to be hard, he doesn’t like hurting people’s feelings, but eventually agrees that we won’t invite her.

Her first day at her new gig on Ben’s team was last Monday. Her direct manager approaches Ben and asks if Ben wants to be Melissa’s mentor so it would look good for his promotion he’s up for - (every new hire gets paired with someone on the team as part of a big mentor program for onboarding. This will last for the whole first year of her employment). He accepts the position as her mentor, and thinks its a genius idea that since I don’t like Melissa and we’ve talked about how I don’t wanna invite her to our wedding, he’s NOT going to tell me he’s her mentor at work and meeting with her and talking to her every single day. I find this out AND that he has been texting her in the last few months bcs i found a card in our mailbox congratulating us on our new apartment and thanking Ben for helping her get the job. Meaning he’s given her our new address since we moved this past month. I don’t understand why he’d be deceitful. Can anyone give me advice on how to get through this? This new revelation immediately sends us back into a convo about her and how he feels really bad about not inviting her to the wedding. He has another coworker/mutual friend of ours who we are inviting to the wedding and he’s worried that Melissa will find out that we’re inviting another co-worker and not her. That quote “you don’t understand how awkward and uncomfortable this situation makes me feel” he says. To which I remind him that this girl and the name switcharoo has been awkward and uncomfortable for me our whole relationship. So am I the asshole for not wanting to invite his co-worker to our wedding?