The dynamic between your partner and their "best friend" can get tricky when you're in a relationship, and this Reddit story is a perfect example. A user, conscious-Jicama2133, is questioning her recent decision to dump her boyfriend for buying his female best friend lingerie as a "prank."
Here's the full story: "My boyfriend (male, 28) and I (female, 24) have been together for a year and a half. I love him a lot, and he has been pretty amazing to me. He is also the sort of person who has lots of friends, and his close friends are pretty much family. He also loves to joke and play these harmless pranks on his friends, which sometimes makes me feel weird."
"Just for context: He has two female friends and three male friends. This is about my bf and one of his friends, Claire (female, 28). Claire is a nice woman, and we are friendly. My boyfriend also has never ignored me in favor of his friends or talked over me in front of them. Which is why I don't understand if I'm in the right."
"They (my boyfriend's friends) had a recently escalated prank fight. I had made it clear to my bf that I am not good at jokes and am rather stiff, and he said he would keep me out of it."
"Claire, my boyfriend, and another friend, Kyle (male, 27), even had a huge throwing water-balloons fight in Kyle's backyard. Then, my boyfriend got pranked with dye in his body wash. Then Kyle got pranked by Claire, something about whipping cream and oven mitts."
"But the issue was when my boyfriend brought a red, lacy lingerie set, and he planned to put it in Claire's room the next time when he went over."
"I admit, I get a bit weirded out when he calls Claire 'extremely beautiful' and jokes about how she was always 'way out of his league.' But I thought it was nothing, and they were like family, so I guess it was their thing."
"However, the lingerie prank had me put my foot down, and I said that he was wrong to give another woman lingerie, no matter who, when he had a girlfriend."
"We fought, and I said I wanted to break up, which he didn't want to, and said that I was just overreacting. He said that I was too conservative and needed to open my mind when he had never given me a reason to be insecure. Claire called me and said that she and my bf have been friends for a long time, and inside jokes are just that, and I'll learn more with age."
"I still feel weird about this. My best friend is supportive of me no matter what I do, but I have started to feel like I'm blowing this out of proportion. My boyfriend says that not hiding it from me shows I'm the problem. I have started to feel like I've blown this out of proportion, and maybe it's my fault I can't take a joke. I really feel awful about this whole thing. Am I the asshole?"
A majority of commenters were on the original poster's (OP)'s side, saying that she, in fact, was NOT overreacting about the situation.
"You aren't blowing this out of proportion. Girl, I'm in my 40s, and I can tell you right now that would never be an acceptable inside joke or prank. And your bf telling you you're the problem because he didn't hide it from you is just plain trying to manipulate/gaslight you."
—Lex-imo
"Your bf is 100% into Claire, girl, and 'you'll learn with age' is an obnoxious thing to say," user Happy-Cow-2835 agreed.
"Your boundaries were disrespected, and I'm glad you know your worth and left."
This person shared a similar experience with their ex-fiancé.
"My ex-fiancé was gifted lingerie on friendship day by her male best friend. I was extremely uncomfortable. We later broke up due to the fact it turns out he escalated it to sex at some point afterward. As a man, no man buys a woman's underwear unless he wants to see her in it. You don't buy sexy lingerie as a joke gift. The 'prank war' is just an excuse that gives him deniability because he is a coward. It sounds to me like you struck too close to the truth for his comfort, and he is shocked his perfect deniability plan didn't work."
—missing1776
"I personally wouldn't necessarily see the lingerie as a problem alone," user Tall-Negotiation6623 wrote.
"But combined with the past comments about her being out of his league and extremely beautiful, it gets weird. You definitely need to find someone that listens to your feelings and doesn't dismiss them."
So, after the original poster's boyfriend saw her post on Reddit, he reached out to her and DOUBLED DOWN. Here's the update:
"To the actual update, my bf and I broke up. I'm sorry, guys, but even after seeing so many replies on how he was cheating, I refused to believe it. I'm still in love with this guy. And he called me, like half a day after I wrote this post, and asked to meet. I met him, and he said he understood where I was coming from, but I was always too uptight to understand that friendship is friendship."
"He and Claire had known each other for years before I came into the picture, and I cannot expect him to just ruin their dynamic. I asked him what sort of 'dynamic' was red lingerie. Why couldn't it be literally any other type of clothing? He told me he'd had it with my insecurities and that he and Claire talked, and apparently, I was making them sound like cheaters and homewreckers. He thought it'd be better if I found someone like me who thought the idea of a fun night was junk food and a movie indoors."
"That hurt a lot. He had always known I had insecurities about being called boring. He always complimented me on how his weaknesses were my strengths. Now he says things like this to me?"
"Claire didn't call or text after the breakup either, but Kyle did, and said that he was sad we broke up and hoped I would be okay in the future. I asked him if my bf ever cheated on me. He said my bf had only been a 'one woman man' when he was dating me. But he could understand that some women can't handle female best friends, especially if they look like Claire. I told him to fuck off and blocked him."
"It felt like he only wanted to gloat and hurt me because my bf left. I feel like I never knew these people. Claire and Kyle were always at least decent to me, if not nice. Did it make me a free target now that my bf has been telling his friends I'm an insecure child?"