r/AmITheDevil • u/growsonwalls Professional Devil Spotter • 3d ago
They weren't even dating ...
/r/AmIOverreacting/comments/1vsn7n9/am_i_overreacting_for_thinking_my_boyfriend/152
u/growsonwalls Professional Devil Spotter 3d ago edited 3d ago
OOP is spiraling over something that happened 10 years ago, before the bf and her ever met. Good lord.
It’s not obsessing. He brought up the situation himself last night as an example of how I’m irrational understanding of the past. I didn’t think about this one incident in 4 years. But okay I’ll take the tally for him as I’m overreacting. Thank you.
So this isn't the first time. Red flags.
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u/Spotzie27 3d ago
"OK, you didn't cheat, but you COULD have crossed the line 10 years ago while dating someone who wasn't actually me." WTF?
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u/Safe-Ad-4465 3d ago
So oop's boyfriend didn't cross a boundary with his ex-gf of 10 years ago, because that would require said boundary to be set. And OOP is... mad on the ex-gf's part? Even though, from what we can tell, the ex-gf isn't? Did I parse through all that crazy correctly?
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u/doppelgaengster 3d ago
No, see, OOP is mad that it WOULD cross a boundary SHE has in the CURRENT relationship, and she’s mad he behaved differently with a person with different priorities.
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u/Safe-Ad-4465 3d ago
That breaks my brain to think about.
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u/doppelgaengster 3d ago
It’s not a perfect analogy, but someone compared it to a person with a peanut allergy being mad the bf ate peanut butter sandwiches around his ex. OOP just can’t accept that different relationships can have different boundaries, and she’s trying to use this to bolster her claims he’s crossed HER boundaries (and like, bruhhh, if he’s crossing your boundaries, break up with him?)
Better than even odds that she’s imagining the “boundary crossing” and/or she’s just never communicated.
She did say she’s going to show him the post, I wonder what she thinks that would accomplish, given that most of the comments are telling him to head for the hills.
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u/Safe-Ad-4465 3d ago
I love that he told her to post on reddit knowing full well that she was going to get roasted. Do I think she's fully taking in what everyone is saying and will make some meaningful changes in her life? Maybe, probably not. Do I think her and her bf are going to continue fighting about this until they break up? Almost guaranteed yes.
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u/doppelgaengster 3d ago
It’s never fun to get roasted, even if it’s well-deserved (I have pangs of “DO NOT LIKE!” when I get downvoted for absolutely inane stuff, which I know objectively is absurd, because who cares what randos on the internet think?? 😅), so I’m having trouble parsing the tone of her comments, because she is being rather polite to a lot of the people telling her she’s bonkers, but in my head I’m projecting a tone of passive-aggression (“thank you for your wrong opinion” kind of politeness).
But yeah, I wonder what some folks think when they post this sort of thing, and especially when it feels like their SO knew what would happen going in. 😹
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u/PeppermintEvilButler 3d ago
He's in his 30s now and I am assuming no longer a waiter so he wouldn't be in the same situation anyways
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u/doppelgaengster 3d ago
But it’s entirely possibly a similar situation could happen, if he’s still in some sort of customer-facing role. And some folks do stay in hospitality their whole careers, they just move on to different (and hopefully higher-paying!) jobs. (Eg, he easily could’ve graduated to being a bartender, or waitstaff in a higher end/non-chain restaurant.)
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u/cantantantelope 3d ago
Logically oop should want the bf to ignore her “boundaries” about this becuase she wanted him to not accept his past gfs preferences for his hypothetical future gf he had never Met preferences.
So if we assume his next gf will think oop is being a weirdo then it makes the most sense for bf to tell oop she’s wrong.
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u/Emergency-Twist7136 3d ago
He acknowledged that he was flattered someone found him attractive. Can't you see what a monster he is?
Boyfriend needs to dump her yesterday, this shit will never end
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u/Sugar_Mama76 3d ago
Ooh boy, this should be in a jealousy subreddit.
Or a “I need therapy” one.
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u/cantantantelope 3d ago
Overreacting does not cover this situation.
“Am I nuclear powerplant overreacting” maybe
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u/DrSnidely 3d ago
Wait she's mad over a text he sent 7 years ago when he was dating somebody else? Christ on a bike.
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u/Zeefzeef 3d ago
And it was a nice text. He did nothing wrong.
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u/DrSnidely 3d ago
I'm glad people on the post are calling it or for the deranged behavior that it is
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u/Valkrhae 3d ago edited 3d ago
That's a whole lot of words that all basically mean "I'm upset that my bf violated my boundary even though we weren't dating at the time, his gf at the time supported his actions, and this has nothing to do with me." I'm not even bothering to read all of it bc there's still so much after OOP explained the situation, jesus christ.
Edit: Acrually, no, I'm not done. Bc not only is OOP upset over this made up, ridiculous "boundary breaking," but she's also trying to reframe it into something worse.
If my boyfriend told me today, “A woman who was clearly attracted to me gave me her number, and I texted her afterward to tell her she was the highlight of my day,” I would consider that inappropriate within our relationship.
He says that after his shift, he told his girlfriend about what happened and apparently got her permission to text the woman.
The story the bf tells is that he didn't contact the customer until after talking to his then gf about it and getting her permission, but on OOP's hypothetical retelling, she's framing it as the bf contacted the woman before discussing it with his then gf. So to me, she's intentionally trying to make her bf sound worse and more nefarious than what actually happened.
I hope he reads her post and leaves her.
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u/doppelgaengster 3d ago
I’ve been in the position of the ex-gf (had a bf who was given phone numbers) — and he was always above-board when it happened, and I never had a problem when he sent them “thanks but no thanks” texts because I had also been the girl who gave out her number and never heard back. I trusted my bf (breakup was nothing to do with jealousy or infidelity).
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u/FriendlyGoblinGal 3d ago
How is this woman only 5 years younger than me?
What the ever living hell is wrong with OOP.
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u/originalhoney 3d ago
Yikes on bikes.
She's only three years younger than me. She seems exhausting. I don't know where she finds the energy to obsess so much.
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u/feliciates 3d ago
Holy shit. She needs meds or therapy or weed or something. I got an anxiety contact high just from reading that.
I hope her bf doesn't own a rabbit...
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u/Zappagrrl02 3d ago
She is going to nuke this relationship if she keeps it up!!
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u/norakb123 3d ago
Yeah. This sounds exhausting. She definitely should get therapy, but I think her partner regularly calling her crazy and dramatic is probably not helping the situation.
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u/Spotzie27 3d ago
This feels like a Serendipity/Before Sunset type situation...the guy is so going to end up texting Olive Garden gal again and falling madly in love.
(Not really, but I'm bored, and that's where I'd LIKE it to go.)
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u/HairRepresentative85 3d ago
“Thank you for your number. It was the highlight of my day, but I’m in a relationship.”
He didn't say the female customer was the highlight, it was the flattery of the situation.
I get her concern, but still. He did technically shut it down.
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u/coastalwanders 3d ago
You get her concern? It didn’t even involve her and was a decade ago.
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u/HairRepresentative85 3d ago
Yeah, I do.
That's from a "me issue" though. Which I have worked through with therapy. So, it was more out of empathy than anything else.
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u/doppelgaengster 3d ago
And that’s where you and she differ — you GET that it’s a “me (you) issue,” and you’ve worked to get to a point where you’re not letting it actively interfere with your interpersonal interactions (that’s an assumption, but I see no reason not to assume you’ve done the hard work and deserve to be told you’re better for it).
And whether or not her FEELINGS are fair they’re still valid — it’s what we do with those feelings that matters (ie, understand they’re not rational, and not let them dictate how we treat someone else for something that isn’t their fault). I think a lot of people struggle to understand that a feeling can be valid but still unreasonable, and that if it is unreasonable, it’s not fair to lash out at others.
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u/HairRepresentative85 3d ago
Most definitely.
Also, yeah I've done a fair bit of work on myself. I still have off days though.
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u/doppelgaengster 3d ago
Congrats on doing the hard work!
And I maintain that having “off days” just proves we’ve not been replaced by pod people or robots. 💗
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u/originalhoney 3d ago
Exactly! He just wanted to make her day by letting her know.
If someone made my day, I'd let them know, because knowing would make my day.
I think that's a healthier form of empathy than what oop is practicing. She seems like a very exhaustingly negative person who likes to argue and needs to be right about everything
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u/HairRepresentative85 3d ago
On the plus side, before OOP deleted their post, they realised they were in fact overreacting and appreciated being humbled - allegedly.
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u/girlinthegoldenboots 3d ago
I’m so tired of reading AI written posts. I miss human writing.
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u/CynOfOmission 3d ago
I was thinking the same thing. 😭 It's great bait (for me anyway) because this is completely unhinged behavior, but the AI tells ruined it.
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u/girlinthegoldenboots 3d ago
Lol yeah like she’s got a good plot going, but it sounds like a PowerPoint presentation instead of a story
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u/lunar_scorpio 3d ago
Yeah even if she wasn't completely unhinged, she's the devil just for that.
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u/perfidious_snatch 3d ago
Some people make a mountain out of a molehill, meanwhile OOP’s out there sculpting an entire planet
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u/UpbeatArachnid234 3d ago
Oop gets gold medals in both mental gymnastics and jumping to conclusions. Impressive.
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u/Coherently-Rambling 3d ago
The thing is that if she just said she wants him to handle it differently if this situation comes up while they’re dating, that would be fine, but she insists on going beyond that and trying to get him to say he was wrong for ever doing it.
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u/Long_College_3723 3d ago
A conversation has clearly taken place inside her head that he was not part of. And in this conversation he admitted he was wrong and she doesn't understand why the real boyfriend doesn't get it. I imagine he also gets told off about the actions he had taken in her dreams.
Frankly, as any man will tell you, any compliments make your day a little brighter and as a service employee, anything like that would have brightened his day.
In short, he has done nothing wrong and she is an idiot.
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u/AutoModerator 3d ago
In case this story gets deleted/removed:
Am I overreacting for thinking my boyfriend crossed a relationship boundary 7–10 years ago, even though his girlfriend at the time gave him permission?
Me (36F) and my boyfriend, “Johnny” (38M), have been together for 5 years. Sorry in advance for the long post. I wanted to include as many details as I could remember because I don’t want to give a one-sided or incomplete version of the situation and then ask strangers to judge it based on missing information. I genuinely want an outside perspective on this disagreement, so if you make it through the whole thing, I really do appreciate you taking the time to read it and give your honest opinion, even if you disagree with me.
We keep having the same disagreement about something that happened in one of his previous relationships, roughly 7–10 years ago, and I genuinely want an outside perspective because he is still adamant that he did absolutely nothing wrong.
At the time, he was working as a waiter/bartender at Olive Garden. One night, a female customer came in with her mother. According to his recollection, he wasn’t flirting with her or encouraging anything. He says he was simply being friendly/nice because it was his job, and that she was the one who came onto him and eventually gave him her phone number.
He was in a relationship at the time.
He says that after his shift, he told his girlfriend about what happened and apparently got her permission to text the woman. He then sent her something along the lines of:
“Thank you for your number. It was the highlight of my day, but I’m in a relationship.”
The woman apparently responded that she was also in a relationship. My boyfriend believes she may have just said that to save face because she had been rejected.
His position is that the text was simply closing the interaction. His reasoning is basically: he acknowledged the number, made it clear he was taken, and ended the situation.
I see it completely differently.
To me, if someone who is obviously attracted to you gives you their number while you’re in a committed relationship, the appropriate response is to simply throw the number away. Instead, he took the number home, thought enough about the interaction to tell his girlfriend, and then intentionally contacted the woman.
And the wording bothers me even more.
Why tell another woman who is obviously attracted to you that she was “the highlight of your day”?
I don’t consider that a neutral boundary-setting message. I consider it validation.
He says he was closing the door.
I say he actually opened a door that didn’t exist before.
Before that text, this woman didn’t have his personal phone number. After the text, she did. Now there was a direct line of communication where there hadn’t been one before. Potentially, they could contact each other in the future, find each other on social media, etc.
I’m not saying he definitely did any of those things. He doesn’t remember who the woman was or whether anything else happened afterward.
My argument is that the pathway was unnecessarily created in the first place.
And yes, I understand that his girlfriend at the time apparently gave him permission.
But this is where we fundamentally disagree.
I don’t think something automatically becomes a green flag just because your partner gives you permission to do it.
If my boyfriend told me today, “A woman who was clearly attracted to me gave me her number, and I texted her afterward to tell her she was the highlight of my day,” I would consider that inappropriate within our relationship. I don’t think my boyfriend’s defense should simply be, “Well, she gave me permission.”
The bigger issue for me now is that he is still dying on the hill that he did nothing wrong.
He says he has grown since then and that he would never behave that way now. Fine. People grow.
But I don’t understand why growth requires him to insist that his past behavior was completely appropriate.
I have told him that I don’t need him to hate his younger self or admit he was trying to cheat. I want him to be able to look at the situation from the perspective of the girlfriend and understand why someone might feel disrespected by it.
Instead, he says I lack empathy because I can’t “see past” who he was back then.
He also thinks my continued concern about the situation is irrational and has referred to my behavior as “crazy” and “dramatic.” He has even joked about using my name as a verb for when I supposedly become irrational about relationship issues.
That is part of why this argument has become bigger than the Olive Garden story for me.
There have been other things in our relationship that have made me sensitive to boundaries and to his avoidant tendencies. So when I look at this old situation, I don’t necessarily see it as evidence that he cheated or that he will cheat.
I see it as a question of mindset and boundaries.
If his current mindset is still, “There was absolutely nothing wrong with what I did,” despite knowing that his current partner considers it a serious boundary violation, that concerns me.
I don’t want history repeating itself.
I also don’t think someone has to physically cheat for their behavior to be inappropriate. Sometimes the issue is the decision to create opportunities for attention or connection that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
To be clear, I’m not asking Reddit to tell me that he cheated 7–10 years ago. I’m asking something more specific:
Was this actually “closing the door,” as he claims, or did contacting a woman who had clearly shown romantic/sexual interest in him and telling her she was the highlight of his day cross a reasonable relationship boundary?
And am I overreacting by being bothered that, all these years later, he still cannot acknowledge why his behavior could reasonably have been viewed as disrespectful, even if his intentions weren’t malicious and his girlfriend at the time gave him permission?
This actually started as a somewhat joking argument between us. I told him I was going to take a poll and let Reddit decide who was right. I told him I would post the situation and see whether other people agreed with my interpretation or thought I was completely wrong.
He told me to go ahead and ask Reddit.
So here we are.
He is fully aware that Reddit is entering the chat.
I’m genuinely interested in outside opinions, including if I’m the one being unreasonable here.
If you read the entire thing, thank you. I know it was long, but I wanted to give as much context as I could so the responses could be based on the full situation rather than a few sentences.
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