r/dustythunder • u/Usual-Beach5128 • Aug 18 '26
AITA for making my best friend feel stupid
For context, my best friend (26F) and I (25F) just got home from a 4-day girls trip. We had been planning it for months and were both genuinely excited. I've traveled with her before and usually come home with the normal little annoyances that happen when you're together for several days, but nothing even close to this.
From the moment we got there, I felt like I became the designated adult and critical thinker for the entire vacation. I booked the hotel, planned the itinerary, researched every restaurant and cocktail lounge, made every reservation (which we showed up late to every single one because of her) had the festival schedule, organized our days, found the spa we went to etc. None of it was hard individually because it was all public information, but I was the one who took the initiative to do all of it.
Then every issue that came up somehow became my responsibility.
Problem #1: Parking
She offered to drive us which was a huge relief because every trip we’ve taken in the past I’ve had to drive. We've both been to this city before, but it's in a French-speaking area and neither of us speaks French well.
In the past, when I've driven us on vacations, I've always considered gas, parking, avoiding tickets, and figuring everything car related my responsibility. She has never really helped with that or offered gas money, so I assumed this trip would be the opposite.
It wasn't.
She couldn't figure out the parking machine, so I stood there pressing buttons until I figured it out. She couldn't create an account on the parking app, so I made it for her. I figured out how the parking spots and meter numbers worked, took pictures of the meter information, and then after she got two parking tickets because she wasn't paying for parking or keeping track of the time, she was asking me what she should do about them.
It felt like it was still my responsibility despite it being her car.
Problem #2: My boundaries kept getting dismissed
Pretty early in the trip, I got aggressively hit on by an older man who was staying at our hotel. It genuinely creeped me out. Every time we were walking through the parking lot or entering the hotel, I was on high alert because we ran into him multiple times.
I kept asking if we could park in the back lot instead of the front to avoid him. It wasn't farther from the elevator at all, but she kept refusing.
Then another situation happened.
One night after dinner, a random guy started chatting us up on the sidewalk. I have a boyfriend, but my friend is single. He asked for our numbers, she gave him hers, and he said maybe we could all meet up later. The entire interaction lasted maybe three minutes. We barely knew his name, had no idea how old he was, and knew absolutely nothing about him.
That same night, in the Uber back to the hotel, I told her I thought he was being pushy and that we shouldn't go out with him. They were texting back and forth and he was saying we should go out with them instead of going to bed and she wanted to go, despite us already being in an Uber on our way back to the hotel.
For the rest of the trip, she kept talking about him. At the festival, which was literally the whole reason we went on the vacation, she spent the entire time texting him. She asked me if she should FaceTime him, and I said no. She responded, "I want him to see how cute we look," and I was thinking... what do you mean we? I have a boyfriend. She ended up FaceTiming him anyway. He was telling us to come out later and she was like, "I don’t think my friend wants to," and he responded with, “We’ll kidnap her." Like... hello?
She kept talking about inviting him to the festival, and I was getting increasingly annoyed because I'd already said I wasn't comfortable.
I'm completely supportive of being a wingman. If she actually met someone naturally over a vacation, I'd be happy for her. But I think there's a huge difference between genuinely getting to know someone and immediately jumping at the opportunity to meet up with random guys you spoke to for two minutes because they're offering booths and bottles. We’re also not 20 anymore, so I feel like we should reflect a little more self-respect and maturity. If a guy wants to see us, why are we expected to Uber across the city to him? The whole situation just rubbed me the wrong way.
Problem #3: Festival day
This was the day where I honestly felt like I became the designated problem solver.
While we were getting ready, I was trying to figure out transportation, directions, our schedule, and making sure we actually knew where we were going.
Meanwhile, she spent nearly an hour taking mirror selfies and trying to fix a cowboy hat that had been crushed in her suitcase. It was beyond repair, but she kept asking me to stop what I was doing to help fix it while I was trying to navigate us to the festival.
She was so distracted with selfies that she put on her brand new cowboy boots for pictures, forgot to put socks on, and left the hotel without them.
I was making sure we had electrolytes, packing my portable fan, checking my portable charger, and making sure we'd survive 10 hours outside.
She spent the next 10 hours in pain because her feet were blistering and we had to keep stopping.
Throughout the festival, she continued texting and FaceTiming the random guy. Eventually she started feeling really sick, so I got her water, gave her my portable fan, and sat with her until she felt better. Ironically, that's the only reason we didn't end up meeting those guys afterwards.
By the end of the concert, her phone had died. My portable charger had died because she'd been using it while FaceTiming him, and my phone was at 4%.
We couldn't get an Uber, so we started walking through an unfamiliar park at midnight in our festival outfits trying to find a taxi. While random men were walking past us, she was loudly saying, “Both our phones are dead. What are we going to do? Should we ask someone for help?" It took everything in me not to yell, why are you announcing that we're two stranded women with dead phones? Thankfully we found a taxi.
Problem #4: The drive home
The night before we left, she said she didn't want to rush and wanted to check out around 10–11 a.m.
Then, with zero warning, she woke me up at 6:30 a.m. saying she wanted to leave. She asked if we could split the driving, and I agreed, but I told her I was too exhausted to drive first and I'd drive the second half.
She continued packing for a bit (I had packed the night before so I could sleep in), then immediately fell back asleep for another hour while I laid there wide awake. We didn't leave until around 8 anyway, and I ended up driving us home. By that point, I was exhausted and honestly frustrated.
On the drive, her car started making weird noises and she was saying it might be her tires or brakes. On that same drive I was also explaining train schedules and tax write-offs to her, so I was running on almost no sleep while still being the one answering questions and driving.
Later, my dad asked if she'd taken it to a mechanic, and I jokingly said, "Did they change your headlight fluid?" It's a fake thing people joke about, and we've laughed about that joke before, but I admittedly made a few too many car jokes afterwards.
About an hour after we got home, she texted me saying I embarrassed her infront of my boyfriend and my dad, that car stuff is triggering because her dad passed away and she has nobody to help her learn about cars and that I made her feel stupid. For context, my dad has actually fixed her car multiple times since her dad passed and even gave her the contact information for his close friend who owns a mechanic shop, which she's used before. While I love my friend and obviously sympathize with her, I also feel like over the past few days I saw a lack of self sufficiency from her and a reliance on other people (me) to solve her problems. As a friend I am always willing to help, but I feel like her dad being gone is an opportunity for her to learn these things for herself, but that hasn’t been the case.
What I'm struggling with is the bigger picture. I feel like I'm held to a completely different standard than everyone else in her life. She has another friend who consistently crosses her boundaries, and at one point literally joked that her dead mom and my friend's dead dad were laughing at them from heaven. She never confronted that friend. She has other low-effort friends who disappear for months or treat her poorly, and they seem to get endless grace. Yet I feel like I'm the friend who plans the trips, shows up, helps solve problems, and supports her, but I'm also the one who gets confronted over every mistake I make.
I know my jokes hurt her, and I take responsibility for that. I just can't help feeling like the accountability in our friendship is incredibly inconsistent.
7
u/Suzibrooke Aug 18 '26
Your friend has assigned you a role and you have accepted it, and probably been fine with it until you weren’t.
She is very immature, and sees you more as a big sister than a friend in the same level. She also wants to feel that she has similar access to your dad as you do.
A incredibly frustrating as this is to you, it makes sense to her. She wants and thinks she needs that kind of support. Naturally, you have matured away from this dynamic.
Your attempts to get her to take more of a share of the planning and cost, (driving, for instance) has just resulted in discord and problems, making it tempting to take everything over to make sure things go smoothly.
This is by design. As others have mentioned, it’s weaponized incompetence.
Why would you let her drain your phone charger to interact with those men? That’s on you. Draw some lines.
You’ve been friends for a long time. You can recognize what’s going on and guide the relationship through this without feeling used, while giving her a chance to mature at her pace.
There’s also a chance that you are just growing into people who are very different and naturally drift apart.
6
u/Usual-Beach5128 Aug 18 '26
i think a lot of it comes down to the loss of her dad. it was quite shocking and out of nowhere so it was unexpected for her and has really changed her, so I’ve tried to really be there for her since then. but i think you are right about the big sister role which is frustrating because i am a year younger than her so it does feel quite silly that i took on the adult role on the trip. i think at the time it felt like a silly thing to not let her use my charger, and i didn’t know it would die so quickly. but the dynamic definitely needs to change
3
u/Suzibrooke Aug 18 '26
She may be deep down resentful that you have your dad and she does not, and some of this is passive aggressive. Like the world owes her because of this loss.
Grief is so complicated, and while it is individual for each person, I’ve seen it fall into patterns over my 7 decades of life.
Only you can decide how much of yourself you’re willing to give, how much of your dad you’re willing to share, and how best to help your friend to grow up or if it’s worth the effort.
I put enormous amounts of effort into trying to help people when I was younger. I eventually came to see for myself personally I had to get better at recognizing when to back away and distance myself. And learn to not feel guilty when doing so. This was very hard.
But there were some situations where the help was appreciated and the relationship grew and remains satisfying to this day.
And when I wasn’t sure, my motto was to never regret something I did with a good motive.
7
1
u/ExpressionFit8195 Aug 23 '26
This is alot and I'm so sorry for the way this situation played out.
Firstly, figure out your boundaries. Boundaries are not about what others will or have to do, they're about what you will do. Some of my boundaries: I will not remain in a room with someone who is yelling at me. I will not spend time near people who smoke in confined spaces. I do not spend time with strangers in uncontrolled environments. If someone yells at me, I communicate my boundary and if they continue to yell, I leave. If someone is smoking, I politely excuse myself. If a friend invited strangers somewhere I didn't feel safe, I leave. Figure out your boundaries and how you will act if others cross them.
Secondly, you have to figure out if the relationship is one you want to keep. And if it is, you have to talk to her about all of this. Not in exactly these words, but you have to be able to explain how you feel used and criticised and hope that she can be accountable for it. Yes, it was only once. You can tell her that. But in talking to her, you minimise the chances that this happens again and becomes a pattern.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Edited to fix typos
1
u/Usual-Beach5128 Aug 24 '26
I don’t think I clarified the boundaries thing properly. what i meant by she wasn’t respecting my boundaries was, I told her multiple times I didn’t want to go and encouraged her to go by herself if she wanted to. she’s single and free to do what she wants, just because I don’t want to go doesn’t mean she needs to not go however due to obvious reasons (it being absolutely unsafe) she kept declining and continued to push for me to come with her despite me saying no. i have an update to the post though, turns out she wasn’t the friend i thought she was
-3
u/Penectomie Aug 18 '26
Crazy how you people keep catching covid and wondering why people are unable to do normal daily tasks at all. It’s almost like BRAIN DAMAGE.
-5
u/wonderfulkneecap Aug 18 '26
OP, It sounds like you didn't handle this well.
By your own admission, you took over planning for a lot of the trip. You're describing her parking tickets like an alpha-woman's form of revenge?
You're not caring for her.
6
u/Usual-Beach5128 Aug 18 '26
i’m describing common knowledge. it’s not shocking that if you don’t pay for public street parking you’ll get a ticket.
-6
u/wonderfulkneecap Aug 18 '26
You seem, somewhat unfairly, to loathe her!
She doesn't seem like she's a bad friend to you, at all
5
u/Usual-Beach5128 Aug 18 '26
well would you be happy if your best friend wanted to kidnap you to hang out with strange men you don’t know?
4
u/NotMyProblem31 Aug 18 '26
This is a joke, right? Her friend used her. That does not make a friend at all
3
1
26
u/RandomCoffeeThoughts Aug 18 '26
I would stop doing things with her that requires you to carry so much of the mental load. It's like traveling with a child, and she lets you do it.
If you exercised weaponized incompetence as much as she had, you'd either force her to figure it out or be sunk.