I Saw A Text Notification At My Friend's Wedding Dress Try-Ons. What It Said Made Me Abandon Her In The Store

In a recent Reddit post shared to r/AmITheAsshole (AITA), Redditor Necessary-Wall-6446 explained that she’d recently been asked to go wedding dress shopping with her friends, Gaby and Shelly.

“While the three of us are close, I’ve always known that Gaby and Shelly are the closest,” she shared. “They have a really sweet friendship.”

Shelly, who’s engaged, invited the poster and Gaby to accompany her in her hunt for the perfect wedding dress. However Gaby was busy the day of the big shop, so it was just the poster in the boutique with Shelly. 

Therefore “Shelly asked that I take pictures and videos on her phone to send to her mum and Gaby,” OP wrote.

“I was getting the camera ready when a text from Gaby came through.”

The text raised some questions

Though the poster didn’t mean to read the text, the notification revealed that Shelly and Gaby had been talking about the post author’s Instagram picture earlier that day.

“Both were making fun of me for the face I was making and my outfit choice. It didn’t appear to be very good-natured,” the submission read.

Then, she looked further into the discussion, going so far as to search for her name in their chat. 

“I found multiple pictures that I, my boyfriend, or my mom have posted of myself, absolutely ripping them to shreds. Ranging from selfies to posed shots to even a few baby pictures, ” the Redditor wrote.

She added, “They’d also make fun of me in general in terms of the way I talked, wore my hair, and ate. This went back, as far as I could tell, to at least a year ago.”

The poster walked out of the shop

Calling the texts “juvenile,” the Redditor added that they brought her back to the difficult days of being bullied as a teen.

Tearfully, she “put the phone in Shelly’s purse and brought it to an employee, telling her to tell Shelly that I had to go.”

After that, she “drove home and had a long cry.”

A confused Shelly, who had no idea her friend had seen the texts, asked the poster where she’d gone. Shelly was upset and hurt that her friend had disappeared without telling her what was going on, and when she found out why, she was angry that the poster had snooped through her phone.

“I said [to Shelly] I didn’t want to make a scene but also knew I couldn’t fake being happy for her,” the poster relayed.

OP is now questioning her choices

”Shelly told me the texts were ‘all in good fun’ and clearly she loves me because I’m going to be her bridesmaid,” the Reddit user commented.

“Later on, Gaby called to tell me that I invaded Shelly’s privacy and hurt her by walking out.” 

Though her boyfriend and mum agree she did the right thing, the poster isn’t sure she stands by her actions. 

“But obviously, they’re [the boyfriend and mum] a little biased. I just want some unbiased looks: was I an asshole to look through the texts and then leave?” she asked the AITA community.

People had... opinions

The post has officially been voted “not the A-hole,” meaning the majority of people who saw it didn’t think the poster was in the wrong.

“If I was in your place, I think I’d drop out of being in the wedding,” one commenter said.

“It’s one thing to [jokily] make fun of someone one time, but it seems like they have done this to you a bunch of times. And it doesn’t seem like it was light-hearted.” 

“Searching her phone was maybe crossing the line, but that line is far less important than two supposed friends spending months making fun of you behind your back,” another Redditor wrote. 

What do you think?