AITA for “kicking” a girl out of our friend group?
So I (26M) have a long-standing friend group. Most of us have been friends since HS. This girl named Zoe (25F) has been part of the group since college. We’ve hung out plenty of times. But I would describe our relationship as causal friends. We follow each other on social media and talk in larger group but never one on 1 hanging out.
She is friends mostly with the women in the group. But I had a low-key crush on her. Some of the women in the group know but have kept it to themselves for my sake. But last month, I got pretty drunk. And messaged her late at night about possibly hanging out.
She messaged me back in the morning and said she would like to hang out more, just as friends. I told her I understood. But I knew what that meant, so I never reached back out.
So my parents own a bar. Typically I will bartend there on the weekends before I go out. My friend group is regular at the bar. I will send a text about what specials we have that night and invite people to come. So I sent out a big invite and included Zoe in it.
She shows up and immediately starts talking to me. I was working, so I just moved along. I charged her the total price the whole night, and she started complaining to the other girls, which ticked me off. Yes, sometimes I will give free stuff out to my friends. But it isn’t all the time. Yes, I used to hook up Zoe a lot. But that was before she said we were friends.
Then the second thing that happened was I invited a girl to come to the bar to pregame with us before we went out. Zoe sees me talking to this girl. They decided to introduce themselves entirely out of the blue. Then those two start talking at the bar. And it “slips out” that Zoe and I used to be good friends till I asked her out.
The girl I invited wasn’t happy, and I had to spend the next hour explaining that away. So the next time, the group went out. I sent Zoe a text and told her to please not show up. She is more than welcome to meet us later. But I didn’t want to deal with her at my bar.
Her friends came to the bar this weekend and asked me to talk. They said it was unfair not to invite Zoe. Because now she feels isolated. Our whole friend group hangs out here. So banning her is essentially banning her from the group. I said everyone could choose a different bar to hang out at. And then they can invite whoever they want.
But Zoe is weird and is causing issues. So it is her fault. I’ve still being called an AH. But my guys are on my side. AITA?
YTA (You're the A**hole).
Yeah, dude. Zoe's not the one making it weird. You made a drunken late-night move on someone who even you seem to acknowledge you didn't have any reason to believe returned your feelings.
When that (predictably) didn't work out the way you wanted it to, you immediately revealed that your 'friendship' was entirely built on the hope that you'd get to sleep with her. And you're surprised she's not happy about this? Or that you're alienating every other woman you know with how you're handling the situation?
YTA.
Zoe thought you were her friend. You weren't hitting on her since the get-go; you acted like her friend and hooked her up with free drinks under that premise. Then she finds out she got f*ckzoned by you and realizes you were only being nice because you were hoping to get in her pants.
Not just with the free drinks, you literally decided to ignore her and treat her as just one more random person in the group. Maybe she shouldn't have rained on your parade with the other girl, but at the same time, she just wanted to warn her off about you...
Then as a petty vengeance, you decided to ban her from the place the group socializes and try to single her out of the group because she didn't like being f*ckzoned? Damn.
YTA
Women are not machines you put kindness and friendship into to get romance and sex out of.