We all know that feeling of wanting to date someone, only for them to not reciprocate our feelings.
But suppose we want to have a healthy relationship with someone else. In that case, we have to move beyond those feelings of pining and regret about that other person, pointed out the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITAH) subReddit, or other relationships will not work.
Redditor Conscious-Jicama2133 was well aware of her boyfriend’s best female friend, Claire, and was supportive of their friendship.
But when her boyfriend gave Claire red lingerie as a joke, the Original Poster (OP) was shocked when he wouldn’t listen to her about how uncomfortable the gesture made her.
She asked the sub:
“AITAH for leaving my boyfriend because he brought his female best-friend lingerie as a ‘joke’?”
The OP cared very much about her current boyfriend.
“My boyfriend (28 Male) and I (24 Female) 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.”
In addition to dating the OP, her boyfriend had a best female friend named Claire.
“Just for context: He has two female friends and three male friends. This is about my boyfriend and one of his friends, Claire (28 Female).”
“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.”
The OP’s boyfriend and his friends loved to prank each other.
“They (my boyfriend’s friends) had a recently escalated prank fight. I had made it clear to my boyfriend 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 (27 Male), 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.”
Then the OP’s boyfriend committed to a prank that she was not comfortable with.
“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.”
“Apparently, it’s an inside joke about how during their college days she had some problems with the color red, and the lingerie would have just given her a shock of some kind, I guess? I told my boyfriend it was cruel, but he said it wasn’t a trauma thing, just an inside joke.”
“I said it was a tacky prank, and why would he buy lingerie? None of the previous pranks have been of this kind, and it makes me really uncomfortable.”
“I also felt like if I was Claire, I would feel gross about it.”
“But my boyfriend got mad and defensive and told me Claire is ‘cool like that,’ and she would think it’s funny.”
“I admit, I get a bit weirded out when he calls Claire ‘extremely beautiful’ and jokes about how she was always been ‘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.”
The OP found herself in a three-way argument about her relationship.
“We fought, and I said I wanted to break up.”
“He didn’t want to do that 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 with more 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 the fact that he told me and didn’t hide it from me shows that 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.”
“AITAH?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
Some reassured the OP that it was okay to question the lingerie prank.
“NTA. You aren’t blowing this out of proportion.”
“How is buying lingerie and putting it in someone’s room a prank?”
“And ‘you’ll learn with age.’ There’s a four-year difference between you and Claire. Does she think in 4 years you’ll somehow think buying lingerie is acceptable and somehow can be considered a prank?”
“Girl, I’m in my 40s, and I can tell you right now, that would never be an acceptable Inside joke or prank. And you bf telling you you’re the problem ‘because he didn’t hide it’ from you is just plain trying to manipulate/gaslight you.”
“You don’t need him to agree to dump his @ss. You deserve better. Drop him and f**k Claire too (not literally!)” – Lex-imo
“My ex-fiance 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 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. Sounds to me like you struck to close to the truth for his comfort and he is shocked his perfect deniability plan didn’t work.” – missing1776
“How is giving lingerie even a prank?!? He was absolutely testing boundaries with both of you. It’s so disrespectful to you. Claire’s response is very telling. She knows he wants her and she likes the attention.”
“If she said she wanted him, you can bet he’d dump you in a heartbeat. Good for you for having self-respect and moving on from someone who clearly is using a prank as a way to let Claire know he’s thinking about her wearing the lingerie.”
“Also, them saying that it’s an inside joke about the color red, that is such bulls**t. He’s gaslighting you. So if it’s about the color then why does it have to be lingerie? He could have literally anything else in the color red but he chose lingerie.”
“If this inside joke sounds convoluted that’s because it is. Their excuses make no sense and when that happens then someone is lying.” – IntroductionNo7686
“I’m confused because OP writes that the boyfriend said the inside joke was about the color red, and Claire said ‘the lingerie thing’ is a collage joke. Unless they didn’t really word it that way, with the boyfriend saying red and Claire saying lingerie. If they did, then which is it?”
“Sounds like the joke is really about what he’s buying her, not the color of it. So why do they have an inside joke about lingerie? And Claire sounds condescending as f**k.”
“Either way, if the issue is enough to make op feel like breaking up, then it’s enough of an issue. Period. Because either it is as big of a problem as she feels it is, or she’s not invested enough in the guy in the first place. I don’t think this is a small issue, though, because it’s friggin weird to buy your friend lingerie.” – usernotfound88
Others agreed and stated that much more was going on than “just being close friends.”
“Claire knows the ex is in love with her and feeds off it. The ex enjoys her attention, too. Not a situation to bring a girlfriend into, ever.” – Ok-Complaint3844
“The OP said, ‘I admit, I get a bit weirded out when he calls Claire ‘extremely beautiful’ and jokes about how she was always been ‘way out of his league.’ That last part is pretty dodgy.”
“Also, at 28 these endless pranks are pretty childish, what a cheek to patronize you.”
“NTA, I’d be moving on personally, meet a man, not a silly little boy who seems to be in love/lust with his ‘friend.'” – GingerPrince27
“He’s waiting for the day Claire picks him. Which she won’t, so he’s just screening himself out of ever having a happy long-term romantic relationship.”
“Especially since he’s claiming she’s out of his league and extremely beautiful?! That’s desperate as f**k.”
“That was the nail in the coffin, in my opinion. That would have been the moment I would have had to take a step back. Because that means he got friend-zoned and accepted friendship to maintain access to Claire in the hopes that she’d have him later on.” – TheBougie_Bohemian18
“Claire friend zoned OP’s boyfriend, and OP is the person he had to settle for. The prank is just a cover for the boyfriend to give Claire a gift, whether Claire would be aware of it or not, in hopes that she would initiate a certain type of conversation and move it on from there, and if she didn’t, it would just be played off as a joke.”
“The explanation from the boyfriend about what the joke was makes absolutely no sense. Claire has a thing about the color red, so he’s gifting her red lingerie to shock her? That’s the biggest load of horses**t I’ve ever read, lol (laughing out loud).”
“Claire’s comment about OP understanding more with age was deliberately condescending and demeaning. Claire probably enjoys the fact that OP’s boyfriend pines after her, but she keeps him at a safe enough distance to where she gets only the amount of attention she is comfortable with without having to make any commitments.”
“As for OPs boyfriend, he thinks just because he told his girlfriend about the prank and explained how it worked means that he’s in the clear and shouldn’t be held accountable for OP’s insecurity with the situation. He did this to cover his @ss in advance in case his plan worked and Claire initiated the conversation that he was hoping she would. He didn’t want to get called out for giving her such a brazen gift and making such a bold move while having a girlfriend so he is doing it under the protection of it being one of the pranks, especially if it didn’t go the way he wanted it to and Claire didn’t take the bait.”
“I’m willing to bet that his audacity to even do this was triggered in part by Claire, at the very least, leading him on, or at worst, entertaining him and actively flirting with him. Otherwise, someone who is in the friend zone, unless they are unwell and obsessed, isn’t going to feel comfortable doing such a thing.”
“The fact that he is comfortable doing this speaks volumes. Worst case scenario is they have an active affair, and this is their cover story in case OP were to discover the lingerie or its purchase receipt, so they came up with this plan to ‘let her know’ in advance.”
“Either way, OP’s gut says something is wrong. And regardless of what she knows for certain, she is safest sticking with her gut no matter what. But I think everyone else here would agree that something shady is going on with Claire and the boyfriend, or at the very least just the boyfriend.”
“He’s definitely in love with Claire and OP is what he settled for. She’ll always compare herself to Claire as long as she’s with him. And she’ll always find ways to throw in OP’s face how they have a dynamic that OP just will not understand. Even if OP were to mature and still be dating at Claire’s age that she is now, Claire would still find a way to make OP feel like she’s too young to understand their relationship.” – AvrieyinKyrgrimm
And what was that about “learning more with age”? Was the age gap in the room with us?
“‘You’ll learn with age’? ‘YOU’LL LEARN WITH AGE’??? I’m almost 30 years old, I would not think to tell someone who is only five years younger than me that they’ll learn something with age, that’s f**king weird and condescending as f**k.”
“OP is NTA but she definitely needs to dump this tool and his entire friend group as soon as possible.” – Powerful-Demand3385
“Wow, how condescending was Claire?? NTA and she just confirmed it.” – Turbulent_Ebb5669
“‘She will learn more with age’….girl, you are four years older than OP, not 40 years. Get out of here with that condescension.” – Guilty_Award_2777
“Tell Claire boundaries exist, and adults respect boundaries. But it’s okay if they don’t understand, they’ll learn with age.” – AnemoSpecter
After receiving feedback, the OP shared an update in another post, relieved by the support.
“My inbox got flooded with DMs and had to turn off Reddit notifications. When I posted this, I was ready to be called immature and ridiculous, and get a couple of comments but it seemed like the post blew up, and the comments were… kind of eye-opening.”
“To be honest, before all this fiasco, my boyfriend has always been nice to me. He came with me to my grad school functions even though he found them very boring, but would do it so that I could network. He builds stuff like furniture and helps out with handy work all the time. He is also very funny and at the very beginning, I thought all his jokes were funny.”
“I sometimes wondered why he wanted to be with me. Plus, I was always busy with school and job interviews. His mom and I had even gotten close, and she has been saying how happy she was that we were together.”
“I had always ignored his and Claire’s weird dynamic because I told myself I was being insecure. I have male friends too, and I thought that just because we aren’t like that, doesn’t mean my boyfriend and Claire can’t be close. Claire has also never been outright mean to me, she was just aloof, and I thought it was because I was new to the group.”
Then came the messy part of the update.
“To the actual update, my boyfriend 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.”
“He called me about half a day after I wrote this post and asked to meet. I met him, and he said that 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 had it with my insecurities. And that he and Claire talked, and apparently, I was making them sound like cheaters and homewreckers. And that he thought it was better, I find 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?”
“Also, before this lingerie fiasco, I had never said a word about his and Claire’s friendship. I always supported his pranks and practical jokes no matter my opinions on them because I thought it was his business what he did with his hobbies.”
“And he leaves without even putting up a fight because his girlfriend didn’t want him giving lingerie to the woman he constantly refers to as his ‘sexy’ bestie?”
The OP’s ex-boyfriend and his friends began to show their true colors.
“Claire didn’t call or text after the breakup, either. But Kyle did and said that he was sad that we broke up and he hoped I would be okay in the future.”
“I asked him if my bf ever cheated on me.”
“He said that my boyfriend 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 f**k off and blocked him. It felt like he only wanted to gloat and hurt me because my boyfriend 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 boyfriend has been telling his friends I’m an insecure child?”
The OP was clearly grieving the loss of her relationship.
“I don’t know what to do now. I have been told repeatedly by both my friends and sister that I dodged a bullet.”
“But I have been breaking down like a kid again and again. I’m even thinking of going to therapy, after feeling the most insecure I’ve felt my whole life.”
“Thank you to all who were supportive, it seems like my now ex-boyfriend just did the work for me.”
Fellow Redditors reassured the OP that she deserved more than what was in these posts.
“Any ‘boyfriend’ that is buying naughty clothes for another woman and not wondering instead what you would look like in it is not worthy to be with you.”
“I have an ongoing joke with my husband on the weekends. He always wakes up before I do and when I wake up I ask him if the maid is in there making my coffee. (We don’t have a maid.)”
“When he says ‘no,’ I tell him, ‘Well, she’s fired then.'”
“He told me Saturday that ‘if you show me how to make it, I will have it ready for you before you wake up since I’m always up before you.’ He doesn’t drink coffee because he doesn’t like it and I make mine a certain way. The fact that he said that and is willing to mess with something he doesn’t like says it all.”
“Love is doing things for the one you are with, not doing things that you know annoys them, doing things you don’t even feel like just to be spending time with them, listening to their fears, making them feel secure from their insecurities, hearing the music in their laugh, holding them when they cry, and just loving them with all your heart.”
“If you don’t get that in return, then it’s not true love, and you should just move on and save yourself more heartbreak. Most everyone deserves to feel true love but it’s not easy. Nothing that’s worth it ever is. It takes work and commitment from both sides and don’t settle until you find someone that’s willing to give you both.” – UnshinyRose
“You did the right thing. You know how I’m sure? Look at how he talked to you when you were breaking up, insulting you in ways he KNEW were the most hurtful he could. Trash-talking you to all his friends.”
“THAT is who is he is. THOSE are his true colors. He was only masquerading as a ‘nice guy.’ Better for you to find out now that years down the road when you, god forbid, got married and he’s actually banging Claire behind your back.”
“You will need time to mourn, but remember you are mourning the man you THOUGHT he was. The real him isn’t worth mourning. And yes, absolutely go to therapy.” – Ok-Complaint3844
“It’s really telling that the ex-boyfriend turned it around and blamed YOU for the problems during the meet-up. It’s interesting that he specifically made sure to poke that insecurity of yours extra hard.”
“You need to focus on him twisting that knife on your last meeting. He is NOT a nice guy. A nice guy would have stopped at, ‘I understand how the lingerie would look to my girlfriend, I’m sorry, though I do agree we should break up.'”
“But NOOOOOOOOOO, he had to say you are too boring. He had to poke at you.”
“You DID dodge a bullet. He’s mean.”
“Also, I still don’t understand the ‘joke’ part of the lingerie… Was the joke that it was red and she really prefers blue? Was the ‘joke’ that she only wears granny panties and he was going to hide the sexy stuff in her underwear drawer and it was a ‘joke’ because she doesn’t wear sexy undies? Was the ‘joke’ that he was going to dress up in the undies and try and seduce his sexy best friend? I’m so confused where the joke is.”
“He will be hard-pressed to find ANY woman of ANY age who wouldn’t have a problem with him giving red lingerie to another woman.”
“Especially a woman who he’s said ‘is out of his league,’ has called beautiful on multiple occasions, and apparently often refers to her as his ‘sexy bestie.’ That is… um… not cool.”
“The entire problem is with your ex-boyfriend, OP, not with you. You dodged a bullet, and while he’s going to wait around for Claire forever, you’re going to move on and find something and someone so much better who won’t be mean to you, who will eat junk food and watch movies with you, and who will seek out lingerie that is perfect for you and only you, and NOT as a prank, if you get what I’m sayinnnnng.”
“Take a little time to heal, OP, but please know that you were always NTA.” – PatchEnd
“I’m side-eying Claire so hard over her saying that OP will understand with ‘age’ when Claire and that weird gawking posse of hers, who are in their late 20s with frontal lobes that stopped developing at 15, are throwing water balloons at each other.”
“OP, I hope you find someone you can eat junk food and watch a movie with. That makes you happy, so that’s what you deserve, over and over again.” – delinaX
“You know what? Junk food and a movie is so much fun. Because you and the one you love the most are together.”
“NTA and I hope you will find someone who really loves you.” – wybo76
The subReddit was full of reassurances for the OP as she struggled with the inappropriate prank her boyfriend had conducted with his best friend, Claire, and they were clearly relieved when the relationship ended over it.
If the prank had really just been a misunderstood prank, the boyfriend and Claire would have been apologetic, and the relationship would have lasted beyond a discussion about healthy boundaries.
The fact that the relationship ended over this spoke volumes about the boyfriend’s motivations and where his loyalties truly were.