'AITA for being mad my BF left me by myself to go skateboarding on Christmas Eve?'

"AITA My (26F) boyfriend (26M) left my by myself to go skateboarding on Christmas Eve?"

My (26F) boyfriend (26F) loves to go skateboarding. I support this hobby wholeheartedly and have never kept him from it. He has a lot of energy and loves to keep busy, and his abusive ex used to not allow him to go out. So I made a promise to never be that way and it’s never been a problem until today.

Today we are celebrating Christmas together, as every other day this week we have other plans. This morning we went to breakfast, went last minute stocking shopping, then exchanged gifts.

Afterwards we spent a few hours on the couch doing individual activities (I was crocheting, he was watching tiktoks). He says he’s going to go skateboarding with his friends soon. First, I say that’s not a great idea because he hurt his ankle pretty badly yesterday. He says he will just hang out.

I say that I won’t tell him he can’t, but that’d I’d prefer he didn’t and this time together means a lot to me. He chose to go out with friends. I told him this hurts my feelings a lot because he can go whenever he pleases, and I’m just asking for one day. He says “we’ve spent all day together.”

We’ve spent from breakfast until 3pm together. He then begins using things against me, saying that we went to my favorite breakfast place, and the gifts he bought me.

He also mentioned his friend’s wife and said, “do you think ____ feels this way about him going skating?” He tossed a package into my lap and said “here’s your last present since I’m so inconsiderate.”

As he was walking out of the door I told him to just stay out for a while because I can’t be around him when he is like this. I genuinely don’t know what to make of this. I’m just laying in bed trying to figure out where to go from here. Am I being inconsiderate and controlling?

EDIT TO ADD: He has told me on multiple occasions that his favorite way to spend time with each other is parallel play. In fact he frequently turns down requests to play a game together in favor of watching tiktoks on his phone. This is not my ideal way of spending time, and there were more plans for later that evening.

west9 writes:

Hey, OP, guy here. On the contrary to people saying your the asshole, here’s my input. He up and just made plans with his friends without even mentioning a word of it and then just hits you with “I’m going skating with friends”, and then he guilts trips you by reminding you of how much time you’ve spent together.

I get it, it’s the holidays, and I’ve often had to cut time short with past girlfriends in order to spend time with my family as well, and if she was up for it we’d even go to each others houses, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here, he seemed to have just wanted to be with friends, which isn’t bad if those guys are like family to him but friend groups like that are a rarity in this world.

No idea what was on your guys mind, but in my humble honest opinion the Holidays are meant for family, or whomever you consider family in your life. It sounds like he was very cold toward you, try to enjoy the rest of holiday and don’t let him bring you down.

cream0 writes:

NTA, he may be reacting strongly because he’s had to get defensive over going out in the past, but that’s something he needs to work on. It’s fair to want to spend the day with someone you’re close to around the holidays, and it sounds like he’s already likely seeing friends/family every other day of the week.

Also not great that he was going out skateboarding with a hurt ankle, which could get more hurt if something goes wrong.

I think the best thing to do would be to have a talk, and make sure he understands that his comments about the friend’s wife + the breakfast place felt unfair, and that you were worried about his ankle and just wanted to spend time with him during this busy week. I don’t think he’s much of an AH, but I do think yall need to talk + he needs to work through baggage from his ex

faounda23 writes:

Based on your story, I can’t tell if you’re deliberately choosing to only focus on the negative (things you two don’t have in common) or if you two genuinely don’t have many things in common. You spent breakfast to 3pm together in the same space but you don’t view it as together time, even though he does.

This tells me that you don’t find the parallel play thing enjoyable l in the same way that he does, which I don’t think either of you two have realized yet. Have a conversation with him about spending time doing things together that both of you enjoy, and if you can’t agree on spending your time together in ways you both enjoy, then you need to break up.