"AITA for not celebrating my girlfriends birthday?"

This happened a couple days ago and we are fighting about it and I just want to know if i'm being unreasonable. So i've been dating Cora (my girlfriend, 25) for a couple years now and she just had her birthday.

A week out, I asked her not to make any plans for her birthday obviously stating that I had made evening plans for us (dinner at this restaurant she's been talking about for ages, dessert and then a drive to go stargazing). I had been hinting around it all week to Cora. I also asked if her friends wanted to celebrate with her.

They told me at the time they had "not figured anything out yet" so I assumed they weren't doing anything and then made my plans. The day of Cora's birthday comes and she leaves in the afternoon. I thought no big deal, she was probably having some birthday time to herself. She hadn't posted on her story or anything so I didn't think anything of it.

6pm rolls around, I'd messaged and called her and still nothing so I checked her location because she normally replies very quick (we have each others for safety reasons) and she was at one of her friends houses. So I asked her friend if she'd seen my girlfriend because I had a birthday surprise set up for her.

Turns out that her friends did make plans for her birthday and didn’t tell me because they thought I would "ruin the surprise" and "wanted it to be a complete secret" They had lunch and then made more plans to go out to some bars and celebrate.

They then invited me but I declined out of politeness and not wanting to crash their plans since she sees her friends rarely outside of work. I messaged Cora to have a good night with her friends and I'll see her when I get home (I had a cake waiting for her and thought nothing of it and hung with a couple of my friends).

Cora came home and was angry I turned down her friends invitation and she wanted to see me with all of her friends on her birthday too. I said it wasn't a big deal and that I saw her in the morning and when she got home anyway. I also said that the invite felt like an afterthought when she had all the time during the day to invite me and she didn't. Am I being an a$$hole here?

EDIT: She knew there were evening plans, just not the specifics of what we were doing hence the hinting

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

21stCenturyJanes said:

She knew you made evening plans for the two of you and then didn't bother to tell you she made other plans? And she didn't invite you to join her at the other plans? And now she's mad at you because you turned down a last minute, after-thought invite from her friend?

Either you're leaving something out or your gf is being totally unreasonable. If she wanted to spend her birthday with you, she made no effort to make that happen. NTA

Full-String7137 said:

NTA. Both Cora and her friends knew you had something planned that evening. Seems wild that the friends would plan something that bled into night time or that Cora didn't mention at any point that you had told her to keep that night free? It's maybe crossed wires but your invite was definitely an afterthought, I'm guessing purely at Cora's suggestion.

And nonamejohnsonmore said:

NTA. She ghosted you on her birthday, then got pissed when you turned down a last-minute invite from one of her friends. If she really wanted you there, she would have responded to your attempts to contact her.

Two days later, he shared this update:

Cora is out buying groceries so I thought now would be a good time to update those who wanted one. I couldn't figure out to make an update post on the subreddit so I posted it here. This morning, Cora approached me about this first and apologised. She asked me what the plans would have been so I let her know.

She was rightly upset, I think my plans were way more thoughtful and memorable than lunch and a bar hop. I also brought up my annoyance that she missed out on these plans which I really thought about and that if she wanted to see her friends instead, she could have messaged me throughout the day and I would have been happy to rearrange our evening.

She took most of the responsibility and was genuinely sorry that she left me in the dark all night. I say most of the responsibility because her friends painted a completely different birthday scenario to her.

When I'd called Rachel asking if they were doing anything to celebrate with Cora, they were telling Cora that her birthday surprise was going to include them too before our exclusive romantic evening ("I can't wait to meet [me] before you're big plans, you're going to love it" etc, things like that).

I never said anything of the kind to Rachel, however her friends twisted it slowly throughout the week and made Cora think that. Because it was her birthday, Cora thought it was really sweet i'd do that to get to know them better and when I no-showed at their lunch, she took that as a sign I didn't care to get know them, when I made a lot of effort with her university friends.

The only reason I don't know them as well is because they're not consistently in one place and I have been working/had other plans when they have been together.

They then went bar hopping and Cora said that she did want to leave early to catch our plans. However, she overheard Rachel inviting me and my decline but never the actual conversation. Rachel twisted that and said I didn't sound happy on the phone, her friends bought her more shots.

She overdid it and missed the time and our plans. When she finally checked her phone (the bars were busy and her phone was in her bag so she missed my calls), my text read as passive aggressive to her which is why she was lashing out at me when I got home. She was upset because she thought I'd planned to be there with them and that I'd bailed.

She doesn't really drink because she works a lot so I understand her emotions were higher than normal and she did take blame for everything that went wrong that night. She told me I don't have to meet those friends and that she doesn't think she is going to keep in touch anymore because she feels they overstepped by buying her so many drinks under the guise of being the birthday girl.

I am not going to reschedule like I was planning because Cora wants to do something for me to apologise and make up for the time we missed. I'm excited and glad things are back to normal now. Thanks for the advice everyone.