AITA? Partner is spending a lot of time with ex/friend on hospice.
Looking for advice on a complicated situation and wanting a neutral perspective.
I'm a divorced mom (41F) of 2 (17 and 23). I recently reconnected with my high school sweetheart (43M) about a year and a half ago. He lives about 5 hours away. We see each other when we can, although it can be challenging between both of our schedules, and my shared custody with my youngest.
He has a close friend, an ex, who is currently dying. She has been a paraplegic since she was 12 due to a car accident. After they broke up, her health took a turn for the worse and, after years of battling infections, she's declared she's done going back and forth into the hospital and made the decision to go onto hospice and not treat anything. This was about two months ago now, immediately following a severe car accident that my partner had on the way home from visiting me in which he was struck by a pickup truck on the side of the highway following his own fender bender.
When he finally made the decision to stay with me for about a week during his recovery, he was anxious about visiting her in light of her recent decision, so I drove him home for that visit, even though he had a commitment to attend a special awards ceremony for my youngest. He decided to go home and visit her and then drove himself back to pittsburgh a few days later to uphold his commitment.
We're now in the middle of a month of not being able to see each other. He's not quite back to work (possibly getting cleared to return today), so he has been spending, in my opinion, a lot of time with this woman. He picks up takeout to bring to her, gets her snacks and treats from the store, cooks dinner for her, watches whatever movies she requests and has stayed by her side. I don't have an exact count of days, but it is more often than not (at least multiple times a week) that he's paying her a visit.
Meanwhile, I've met her, twice. Once, we went to dinner (the first thing she said in the car was how her young nephew was confused that he had a girlfriend and asked if he'd be kissing both of us). The evening was riddled with strange comments like that and it was very uncomfortable for me. She also has preserved many photos of their relationship from a few years ago on her Instagram. He's told me she's towed boundary lines with him in the past (before us) and he's had to make it clear they're just friends, despite her waxing nostalgic and making bids for wanting more. The second time I met her, we visited her in the hospital. She complained that the hospital didn't want to admit her because her fever broke and made many declarations of how she knew the hospital and how the system worked better than many of the staff.
I have tried to be patient. To give them the time, for both of their sakes. My patience is running thin as it feels more and more like he is having an inappropriate relationship with this "close, dying friend." I get made to feel like I am being insensitive, not having an accurate understanding of the situation, or asking him to abandon this person in their time of need. Meanwhile, I have not been in a good place mentally, emotionally, and financially (which has been adding stress in regard to the first two). I do not feel like my needs are being met in this relationship at this point and it's challenging to stand by to see that someone else's may be (or not - as he told me, that's assuming hers are beng met by him). It doesn't help that we have no plan to close this geographical gap. Whenever I bring it up, it gets dismissed as there being too many variables right now, or he skirts the issue or (worse yet) he recently said he thinks about it too which provides some vague, abstract hope, but I'm given little more than that before the subject gets changed again.
So: am I wrong, here? Am I being unfair? Overreacting?
A final example to provide context for how he engages on the subject: I recently brought this all up, following an incident where yesterday, when we had very limited time to talk, he stopped to get her a special treat. I called, as he requested, and was put on hold, then said he'd call back. When he did, he explained how he had to wait for a store clerk to make this special treat for her because they were out of stock and it would make her day and that took longer than expected. Then, about 5 minutes later, I lost him as he was getting close to her house and the signal is bad. When I brought it up today that I was struggling with this dynamic and thought he was crossing boundaries in this relationship, his response was: "because I brought a treat to my dying friend on hospice??" Or, when I elaborated saying of course it's not just that, it was met with, (paraphrasing): "because I'm not leaving this person to die alone?" It's a frustrating cycle of conversations like these. So, lemme hear your thoughts. If you've read this far, thank you. I think this is the longest post I've ever made but I'm truly at a loss.