My school friend is hosting her 18th birthday this weekend. She told me a couple of days ago that I am allowed to bring my boyfriend of 8 months to it if I want to. Today I told her that he can’t come, when in reality I haven’t even asked him. I do love him very much, but we go to separate schools and he doesn’t even know who my friend is. It’s not that I want some alone time for him and I know that he would understand if I told him that I wouldn’t want him to come, but I have a good reason. For example, my boyfriend is a non smoker and I smoke regularly, but do refrain from doing so in front of him or even smelling like cigarettes in his presence because he doesn’t like it, but half of the people at the birthday (including me) will be smoking. I also want to communicate with my friends in our regular manner, but with them I behave differently than I do with my boyfriend. I also don’t want to pay too much attention to my friends so he feels pushed aside, but in that same way I don’t want for my friends to feel like I’m ignoring them. AITA for this?
EDIT: Y’all had many opinions on this one, and reading the comments made me realise what I have to do even though the lot of you haven’t been really nice at all. I just wanted to make it clear: this is not a friend that I hang out with a lot, nor do I hang with people from my school in general, aka I don’t have many friends there. My bf is COMPLETELY unrelated to any social connections that I have there and none of us have really spoken or cared about changing that. Of course, he knows all of my friends and we socialise both together and apart quite often. Some things I have to clear up are: he knows I smoke and has no problem with me even smoking in his presence, but I choose not to do that, and rarely smoke even on the day that we see each other. Also, we are teenagers, so even eight months is a lot of time for a relationship, and I don’t know what the future will hold for us. I’ve talked to him, and he said that he would go just because I was going, but that he himself has no particular wish to socialise nor meet people that aren’t important in my life. Plus, it turns out that he isn’t even there on the day of the birthday, so there is that. Any people who wish to further meddle in my relationship can gtfo because it is solely our thing, and we decide how it goes.
But thank you all, even the people who were a-holes, for your comments, because they helped me see what I needed to do.
NTA for not inviting him. YTA for lying/ not communicating
You guys are not compatible in the long run…
Soft YTA
Do you envision a long term relationship with this man? If so, he’s going to need to meet and socialize with your friends eventually. You also lied to your friend.
Also if you smoke regularly, you smell like cigarettes to a non-smoker. It gets on your clothes, in your hair, everything. There is no getting around that.
If he’s invited you should have told him, but also be honest about what the party entails. If he doesn’t want to be around a bunch of people smoking, he could always decline.
You are NTA to want to keep spending time with your friends, without your BF present. These are important relationships too.
But, better to be honest about it. It’s okay to say, “It’s my friend’s birthday and I want to focus on her for the night.”
YTA for not seeing how problematic this is.
You’ve essentially said that you act completely different around your boyfriend than you do around your friends.
You need to figure out why you feel compelled to do this. If you can stand behind your choices (like whether or not to smoke) you don’t need to deceive people.
If you can’t defend your choices – for instance, if you know smoking isn’t your thing anymore but are struggling with stopping because it would mean changes in your friendship – then it’s time to find the tools and strength necessary to make different choices.
You think your boyfriend doesn’t know you smoke, the hard truth is that all your outer clothing will stink, when you kiss your mouth and breath will stink like shit.
I smoked for 49 year and in that time I knew what I smellt like so only got with smokers,
NAH – maybe this is an unpopular opinion but i don’t see an issue here unless you are lying to people. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to just hang with the girls and telling both parties this. All the extra excuses about smoking and how you speak to your friends and him not knowing people seem unnecessary. Sometimes we just want to go out without our significant other and that is okay- providing you’re honest and not excluding him for some malicious reason.
Why are you lying to your friend? Why are you behaving one way with your bf and another way with your friends? The right thing to do was to tell him he’s invited too and let HIM make the decision whether he wants to go or not, since there will be smokers there.
But it seems like you want to keep the two areas of your life separate, since you’re a different person in each. Did you lie to your boyfriend and tell him that you don’t smoke? This post is all over the place.
NTA for not inviting him, my husband and I go out with friends together all the time but sometimes you just need a girls/guys night out.
But soft YTA for lying to him, you could’ve just said X invited you to the party but I think it’ll be more of a girls night type of vibe if that’s okay with you. Or something to that effect. If you don’t communicate well in that respect I can see why you’d lie but also you’re just setting yourself up for more problems in the long run if that’s the case.
By not telling him (withholding info) you are deciding FOR him. You don’t have that right. You lied to your friend for no reason. At some future outing or circumstance where they are both there, what if your friend mentions she’s sorry he couldn’t come to her 18th bday party and he says ‘what party?’ and they both look at you.
Make your choices but be honest and stand by them. Don’t lie to your friends and don’t lie to your boyfriend.
YTA
NTA for not inviting him but definitely YTA for not communicating honestly!
YTA
You excluded him just to maintain a deal breaking lie you are telling him to keep him on your line. Liar, user, predator, and AH. Break up so he has a chance to date a decent person while still young.
Maybe just communicate with him in the future so you can avoid lying for no reason.