Reddit’s Am I The Arsehole (AITA) threads are a phenomenon unto their own, and quite often a depressing one at that. From the man that literally broke down in tears after his wife stopped cleaning up after him to the teenage girl whose own family deemed her too ‘ugly’ to be in her sister’s wedding picture, it’s truly an insight into the very worst of human behaviour.
So this recent one from a Midwestern woman whose friends aren’t talking to her for the crime of going out to dinner without them seems pretty wholesome in comparison at first.
The woman in question turned to the forum to find out whether the internet thought that she was in the wrong for trying out a new, highly-recommended seafood restaurant in her town without inviting a friend who was seriously allergic to seafood.
‘Like, not just shellfish or just fish, all seafood,’ she added.
When it was the poster’s turn to pick the restaurant for her group of girlfriends’ monthly get together, she suggested the new joint.
‘A few other women spoke up that they've been wanting to try that place too. But then Jen spoke up and reminded us of Kate's food allergy and asked if I could pick a different restaurant. Unfortunately, the sushi place doesn't really sell much of anything that isn't seafood. Yes, they have some dumplings and edamame type stuff for appetizers, but that's pretty much it. Not exactly a full meal. But, I did the nice friend thing and picked a different restaurant that we could all eat at.’
So far, so unproblematic. OP then went on to propose a smaller group tried out the restaurant outside of their monthly scheduled dinners – but this did not go down well with the seafood-averse individual and a couple of others, who ‘were upset that the rest of us had gone somewhere without them. They felt that we were purposely excluding people.’
OP pointed out that this isn’t school, and if she’d wanted to be exclusionary, she could have simply refused to change her original plan. Commenters on the thread tended to agree, with one saying, ‘You picked a different place for her with the whole group, you just decided to go with the interested group of friends to that restaurant later on. They can't expect you to never eat seafood just because one person in the group can't.’
Truly, a life without legumes and bouillabaisse is no life at all.
Another said, ‘Groups are nice, but as people reach a point of adulthood where they are busy, relationships between them live or die on their own merits and can't be sustained by a social context where everyone's available or interested in a proposed activity every single time.’
It’s a sad fact of life that as we age into busy grown-ups with jobs, households and families to prioritise, our friendships become harder work than they once were. Not that they’re not 100% worth that effort – and everyone should strive to maintain strong platonic relationships for their mental and social health – but it’s certainly true that they can look different to how they did in our twenties.
We’re sure that OP and her friends will make up – it is, after all, a fairly minor fall out – but going forward, the group should learn to appreciate their connections for what they are, rather than dwell on what they’re not.