AITAH for asking my ex-best friend to take a bus home?
Context: I (19F) am married to someone in the military (18F) (and hadn’t seen her in about 2 months), because of my wife being in the military I, myself, do not work currently as it’s easier for us to be able to make plans to see each other or move when needed.
About 2 months ago I had asked a friend (19F) if she would drive out of state with me to see my wife, (we’ll call this friend Olivia). Olivia would pretty much get an all expenses paid trip, she had agreed to go with and had put in the time off at work. During this time Olivia’s car was in the repair shop and she was using a loaner car, after about a month of having asked Olivia to go with me, her time with the loaner car had come to an end but her car was still not repaired. I had offered Olivia to give her rides to and from work and for that time I would stay at her apartment with her and her husband to be availed for them if they needed a car. (Not asking for any gas money from them either).
Another week or so goes by and I am picking Olivia up from work and she is extremely distraught, she tells me that they don’t have enough money for rent, groceries, etc. Being that I was staying with them for a bit, my wife and I offered to buy some groceries, (even though we were already paying for gas to take them places and I was only staying with them to be there when THEY NEEDED a car). At this time buying them the groceries was no big deal.
Now here’s where it starts getting interesting; Olivia has had a LD friend (we’ll call her Faith) for about 6 years and being that we were going out of state to visit my wife, Olivia had requested that we went to meet her friend (which was about 3ish hours out of the way), I agreed though because I figured “*no big deal, they’ll have a good time and everyone will be happy.*” Finally we get to the city my wife is currently staying in and about a day after being there Olivia and Faith decide that Faith is going to drive 5 hours to the state that we were now in to hangout. Olivia and Faith decide that they don’t want to stay at the hotel my wife and I had already paid for, this was because they wanted to smoke weed and the hotel was on a military base, (for those of you who don’t know that is a federal crime, wether you are in a state where it is legal or not, and wether or not you have a medical card.)
So being that they wanted to partake in recreational activities they decided to look for a place to stay off base, no big deal right? They had then requested that my wife and I cover the hotel while they stayed there and that we would be reimbursed at a later date. Fine whatever, my wife was not happy but agreed since they would be paying us back.
On the day following our arrival we decided (myself, my wife, and Olivia) that we would go to the boardwalk and look at all the shops since we didn’t really have time to go to the actual beach, while at the boardwalk Olivia barely said anything to either of us and walked behind us looking down at her phone the ENTIRE time we were out. My wife and I had made multiple attempts to try to conversate and talk with Olivia but the whole time we got really short and somewhat rude answers from her every time. Finally we went back to the hotel and after having taken my wife back to her barracks, Olivia becomes talkative and loud and wants to watch a movie together and pretty much just acts like her normal self again.
A day later I picked my wife up and she decided that they wanted to take me to a history museum as a date, (at the time Olivia was asleep in the hotel and I had even tried to wake her up earlier that morning but had no luck) we ended up having an amazing time just the two of us. After we had returned from said date we had asked Olivia what she wanted to do and we didn’t really get an answer, “idk” , “whatever you wanna do” , “idc” , you get the point. So we ended up taking her to the mall, now I am a big fan of crystals and the mall that we went to had an amazing little shop filled with all kinds of crystals and other spiritual things. Olivia ended up becoming quite upset in the store to do the fact that she wanted to buy a specific ring but didn’t have the money for it. Now usually my wife and I might buy said item if its within reason but this ring was $100+ so there was no way we were going to be able to do that and Olivia seemed to get extremely offended that my wife had bought me crystals and Olivia got nothing. (Now this part I may be imagining that she was upset with us but she was definitely upset and made that clear to us).
A few more days pass and Faith is here, her and Olivia decide they’re going to do there on thing and go out and go to the beach and such. After the second day of Faith being here, her and Olivia planned to return to Faith’s hometown and I would drive there the next day to get Olivia and then we would drive to our home state. Well being that I don’t have any responsibilities back home my wife had asked about me possibly staying with her instead of going back home, and if any of you are a military spouse or even LDR you know you would rather be with the person you love than across the country without them. So being that my wife and I could actually be together and see each other everyday again (mind you yes it had only been 2 months since we saw each other last, it’s been 8 months since we were able to see each other everyday) we decided to ask Olivia if she would be willing to take the bus back home so she could go back to work and we’d pay for her trip. Now we did not book the ticket or anything at all, we simply asked if she would be willing. (To add I have ridden the bus for 56 hours here and back before so round trip about 112 hours on the bus, so it’s not like we were asking her to do something we wouldn’t do ourselves).
Olivia BLEW UP on me, she began telling me how I was a terrible friend and she would never do that to me if the roles were reversed, she came after my wife for being upset about paying for the hotel and claimed that “she should have never been upset because now she’s turning around and being okay with spending money.” She also tried to claim that we didn’t like her and we were pushing her away (we literally paid for her to go on a trip across the country and she decided to hangout with someone else instead of us). To which at some point just became a back and forth until she began comparing my relationship to hers and other people’s relationships and at that point I had, had enough and told her that if she wanted to continue to say disrespectful things about my wife or I she could at that point for her own way home and we wouldn’t pay for it at all. By then she stopped responding to me until the next day when I texted her to tell her I was having some personal issues that would possibly cause me to have to stay anyways and then she told me that she already had her own way home and then completely cut contact.
So AITAH for wanting to stay with my wife and pay for my ex-best friend to go back home?