My wife and I have a friend that we’ve both known since high school, 25+ years ago. We’ve also known his wife since the college days (when they started dating). They’ve now been married 20+ years.

They live several hours from us, and it’d been 2 or 3 years since we’ve seen them. But we knew the wife had lost some weight, as in their Christmas photocard she was standing behind the rest of her family, but her face looked a little more slender.

We saw them recently for a sports event party at their house. But as soon as they greeted us at the door, it was obvious the wife had lost a massive amount of weight. She has been approximately high 200 pound range for many years (especially since she had kids). But when she opened the door, she was now low 100 pound range. She must’ve lost 150 pounds or more. She was skinnier than when we first met her at 19 or 20 years old — and she’s in her mid-40’s now. I’m guessing she weighed maybe 120 to 130 pounds now.

My wife and I were both shocked, but we hid it well. But we talked later and both agreed — that with all the weigh loss, she looked terrible. Her face looked aged 20 years. She looked slightly more than gaunt. She looked ill. She looked like she was 65 years old.

We spent a few hours at their house and had a good time at the party and saw a few other friends too. But most of the visit was the sporting event that we were all watching and also talking a little on the side.

My wife and I talked afterwards and realized that neither of us mentioned to her about her weight loss. And the reason was the same — that neither of us had anything good to say to her about it, and we didn’t want to be disingenuous. She had obviously put a lot of effort and dedication into the weight loss — and in hindsight we agreed that was commendable — but in our eyes, the end results were disturbing to us. We just didn’t know what to say to her about the whole thing, so we didn’t say anything.

She must’ve known that we noticed — as it’s impossible not to notice. And I’m guessing that it probably stood out to her that we didn’t comment on her weight loss.

AITA for not mentioning or acknowledging her huge weight loss?