'AITA for flirting with another girl after my girlfriend introduced me as a 'friend?' MAJOR UPDATE

"AITA for flirting with another girl after my girlfriend introduced me as a 'friend?'"

Me (28M) girlfriend (29F) have been together for more than two years. We recently moved city, and she has started working in a new place three months ago. Two days ago was an after-work get-together event at a bar with her coworkers, and she forgot her phone charger at home and her battery was low. I went to give her the extra power bank we have at home, as her phone uses the old USB type.

As I went to her table to give it to her, one of her colleagues asked her who I am. Before I could say anything, she replied "This is my friend my name. He agreed to lend me the charger." I was a bit taken aback, and looked to her and said "Friend?". She just laughed and said "you are so funny, thank you for this" and waved to me (as in implying goodbye).

One of the other colleagues asked me that if I was free, I can also join them, and I said why not, and I could sense the annoyance on my girlfriend's face. People were drinking, some talked to me and asked me questions, made conversation (what do I do, where did I grow up etc.) I should mention at this point that my girlfriend and most of her colleagues there were Chinese, and I am Indian.

This becomes relevant later. Whenever someone would ask me anything related to how I met my girlfriend, she would pipe up to answer in a way that wasn't untrue, but completely omits any romance, giving the impression that we were just old friends. This kept bothering me, and I will admit I was getting pretty angry.

Then one of the colleagues, who initially asked who I was, pretty drunk now, said "gfs name never told us she had such a good looking friend" and laughed. My gf also did a small polite laugh. I replied "I didn't know she had such a pretty colleague either" and winked at her which made her laugh more, but my gf became visibly upset. Another colleague said to my gf "seems like you are an expert cupid!"

My gf was turning red, and I was also feeling slightly uncomfortable, so after a bit more chitchat I made an excuse and said I got to go, the colleague said I should get her number from my girlfriend, and then I left. Now, when she came back she refused to talk to me, and yesterday she angrily told me that I had "kind of" cheated on her, and hurt her badly.

I replied that although what I did was hurtful, she also needs to own up that introducing me as "just a friend" was hurtful. She refuses to acknowledge it as wrong, saying that she is just socially awkward, and she thought that her colleagues might react weirdly to her dating an Indian guy, as they all are dating white or other Chinese people.

Her reasoning is that it is a lot of explanation and questions regarding interracial dating, and she just wanted to avoid all that. I don't buy it, I feel she just wanted to hide the fact that she is dating me. We are at an impassé. I refuse to apologize till she sees that what she did was wrong, and she thinks she did not do anything wrong, and I was mean. AITA?

The commenters didn't hold back.

Bitter-Paramedic-531 wrote:

Absolutely NTA. Your girlfriend essentially erased your relationship to her new friends. New friends, I might add, who clearly didn't give a toss about your ethnicity. Your judgement was right. She just didn't want to admit she was dating you. Sorry, but that's a dealbreaker.

Shadow4summer wrote:

I would love to buy this man a drink for the way he handled it. She didn’t want him to be her boyfriend in this group so he didn’t act like it. Beautiful.

kneedeepco wrote:

She literally created the situation and then watched it unfold in front of her lol If she just said this is my boyfriend, her colleagues wouldn’t be hitting on him and they wouldn’t feel comfortable with him calling them cute.

SalaavOnitrex wrote:

*Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions!

ericjgriffin wrote:

They never expect the leopard to eat their face...

Sowetorising wrote:

NTA. Your girlfriend introduced you as "just a friend" after 2 years together.. that’s hurtful. Flirting back was petty, but understandable. She can’t hide the relationship and expect you to act like her boyfriend in front of people she’s hiding you from. You both need to talk honestly about why she’s ashamed to acknowledge you.

Wild-Spare4672 wrote:

NTA. She was embarrassed in front of her Chinese colleagues that she wasn’t dating a Chinese man. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩.

MangoLycheePudding wrote:

I am Chinese. Can verify. Our culture is very racist, especially when it comes to men from India or surrounding areas. GF was embarrassed to tell coworkers who she was dating, simple as that. I don't believe it was social anxiety at all, GF had no problem talking to her coworkers outside of the one issue with admitting he's her bf.

Inane_Insanity wrote:

But her colleague didn't seem too bothered by this particular social taboo. Unless being intoxicated made her less inhibited.

MangoLycheePudding wrote:

Honestly? Most of us don't care. I mean the older generation might still gossip, but a lot of us do not care anymore. Within my circle of friends, they probably care more about how wealthy you are rather then which culture you're from, not that it's any better...

Two days later, OP shared an update.

Thank you all for your responses and advice on my previous post. The last three days were a whirlwind, TLDR; we had a fight, I moved out. Writing this from a friend's house who will let me stay till I find a place.

To answer some questions people had, in the work friend group that day there were three guys as well, I did not publically correct her because "saving face" is quite important for her, she would have had a literal panic attack if I had done that.

On Friday we talked. I admitted I was petty, but I was also hurt from her introduction as a "friend". She broke down. At work they have a group chat where they share memes and it gave her the impression that they hate Indian people.

She did not want to become the topic of jokes, so she had planned to introduce me slowly to the group, as a friend and after they start liking me, reveal that we are dating. This had backfired badly because I started talking to them last week before she was ready, and she got anxious and went into autopilot mode to support her initial lie that I was a friend.

She felt helpless, guilty and hurt when they found me acceptable and cool and I started flirting. Why did she not tell me all this earlier? She felt that it would make me dislike her coworkers who are otherwise "actually nice people" and I would feel bad that she works with them.

I asked her if I could see that group chat, I wanted to make sure this was the reason and not a work crush as many suggested. Almost one-third of the older memes they shared were "indians-dirty-uncivillised" or "indians-horny creeps" etc.

Yall know, they are plenty on ig. There were also some about south-east asians, all mostly posted by one guy and one girl, others would just laugh react or do a one-liner. I scrolled back to an old message by my (ex) gf to one of these memes, she had said "I have an Indian friend, he is pretty nice actually".

Someone had replied "You found one of the clean ones" to a bunch of laugh reacts. There were also some recent messages after they met me, but I didn't bother read and translate it all. I realised that although she liked my personality and looks she was never very interested in my language or culture.

Since I started dating her, I got an HSK3, can cook most Chinese dishes perfectly, know all about her region but Holi will come and go without her still knowing what Holi is. I felt hurt by how those kinds of jokes weren't a big enough deal for her. I asked her why she never said anything to them about these jokes, she said this is the kind of reaction why she didn't tell me before.

She feels like a relationship is private, and it is not a part of "who she is as a person, specially at work" so she saw no reason to create tension. I feel she just means I am not worth it. I asked her point blank if she would have preferred if I was not Indian, she said it would have made her life easier.

That stung me, I packed some clothes and went to a friend's house. I don't even know how to write about my feelings even now, but I felt very hurt, as if my trust was completely broken by her. My friend is going on vacation and will let me stay at his place while I find a new one. Today I went to get my other belongings, and she was crying a lot.

She says she does not understand why something so minor can make me break up and throw away a good thing. She says she loves me, and if it is so important she will change her workplace. I told her I will need to think about things, but I cannot be with her right now. My brain honestly feels like a jumble right now, I know that I feel hurt but having a hard time articulating what are the things that hurt me.

The internet continued to share their thoughts.

Rich-Ad-4654 wrote:

It’s interesting that she feels that erasing a whole part of who you are is “something so minor”. She wasn’t proud of you. Didn’t defend you. Didn’t have courage to call you hers publicly.

So she loses all the goodness that you are. OP, I’m proud of your for choosing yourself and holding a line. It would be easy to just try to get past this but you’re honouring your worth. Your ex can find an “easier” partner more aligned with her ingrained racism. In the meantime, you’re going to go on kicking goals in life.

CynthiaMil wrote:

Exactly she hid who OP was and called it minor that’s not love or respect yeah did the right thing by choosing yourself and walking away.

notsoreligiousnow wrote:

Bruh. This is not minor. She is delulu if she thinks their racism and her own is minor. You were absolutely right to break things off with her. Do not ever consider getting back with her. Racism should be a dealbreaker. End of story.

Successful_B#$ch107 wrote:

Not minor at all. If there was ever a hill to die on, this seems like on of the most important ones. She’s all like “I love you in secret behind closed doors! Why isn’t that good enough for you?”

It makes me sad that some people only find validation from acquaintances that they decide are important because of their perceived social standing and nothing else those coworkers don’t care about her - she knows it and yet she won’t do a goddamn thing about her situation apart from crying & blaming OP for her own shitty, racist, non-“minor” actions.