'My BF flipped out when I stayed over at my friend's house during a girl's night in.' UPDATED

"Me (24f) with my boyfriend (28m); he flipped out when I stayed over at my friend's (24f) during a girl's night in."

Me and Gavin have been together for 8 months now. We met because he lives in the same building as my best friend Tammy (they're 10 floors apart). There was an instant connection and he's honestly the sweetest, most thoughtful person I've ever dated, which makes the following problem so confusing to me.

Tammy and I went to university together, and have a lot of mutual friends. As Tammy has an extra bedroom in her condo as well as a sizable pull out couch, her pad is the go-to place for our visiting friends to stay. Our two other best friends live a few hours away by train, so every few months since graduation they've come down to the city and we have a girls night.

We've done weekend trips for special occasions, but as we're all fairly busy I get to see them maybe 3x/year. we do typical things that we did when we were teenagers: talk about boys, periods, have pizza eating contests, face masks, etc. We usually pass out from food comas early in the morning and make brunch when we wake up. It's a ton of fun and reminds me of our uni days.

The first time I had a girls night was Gavin and I had just reached 3 months of dating - I shared Tammy's guest room with my friend and we went about our normal routine. Gavin asked how my night was, I said it was great, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Last weekend I had another girls night and stayed over again (as is usual). When I woke up in the morning I had a text from Gavin that asked why I didn't come home with a bunch of question marks. after our friends left I went upstairs to talk to Gavin, and he seemed super pissed.

Icily, he said he hoped I had a good time with my friends, and if I wanted space from him I should just tell him. I asked what he was going on about, and he just had this weird outburst about how it's immature of me to have a little girl sleepover with my friends, and that as my boyfriend he was supposed to come first.

I asked him why it was such a big deal if I wanted to stay at Tammy's for the night and he just kinda snapped that if I cared about him I would've come home to him, and that I was picking my friends over him.

He said that he thought that last time maybe I got too drunk to come upstairs to be with him (???) and that was alright, but this time was unacceptable. I told him before that I would be staying at Tammy's but he said he didn't think I was serious.

Am I the only one not seeing the big deal here? I spend 3-4 nights at his place a week, and see my friends once every few months. Am I overreacting? Is he? Help me! He hasn't brought it up since but I can tell he's still annoyed.

Tl;dr: My boyfriend can't understand why I like staying over at my friend's place on girls nights instead of going home to him. Is he right to be upset?

This is what people had to say to OP:

lolihull said:

He's being controlling and immature. You're allowed to stay at your friends house and a normal, caring partner would be fine with that.

Be careful about behaviour like this, it's a bit of a red flag that they'll get controlling about other things too. Don't let someone guilt you into not seeing your friends.

_bananas said:

GIRL RUN!! Nononononoooo this is exactly how my abusive relationship started. EXACTLY. I used to have to ask 2 weeks in advance for permission to see my girlfriends. Who I RARELY saw. It will only get worse. So so so much worse. Please save yourself while you can, because I couldn't.

chronic_blaze said:

You are never too old to have a girly sleepover in my opinion :)

And squirrel_statue said:

No, he has absolutely no right to be upset with you.

This is a really weird amount of insecurity, being overly controlling, or both on his part.

Ten days later, OP shared this update:

Hi everyone, just wanted to provide an update for everyone who thoughtfully commented and messaged me about my previous post. I read each and every one and am grateful for everyone who offered their advice and shared similar stories.

Reading all of your comments really helped to open my eyes - Gavin's behavior was controlling and immature, and the way he shut down my attempt to have a discussion with him is not promising. This is our first actual argument, and I don't like the side that he shows when he feels when he's in a disagreement. For days after the sleepover he was very cold and unaffectionate, which I see now is very manipulative.

I decided to give him one more chance and sat him down for a discussion about what happened that weekend and why he was so bothered by it. I asked him politely but firmly why he had such a problem with me hanging out overnight with my college friends, and what he expected me to do in the future when we planned another girls' weekend.

He got very quiet, and said that he didn't want to talk about it, and that I should just drop the subject. I told him that I wanted to get to the root of this issue, as it obviously upset him and frustrated me since I didn't think I did anything wrong.

He finally said that he thought that since we're in a serious relationship, if I'm in close enough proximity to come sleep with him, I should do it, as he's my partner and therefore my priority. He repeated that last bit a few times, and then added that he didn't get why I wanted to spend so much time with my friends anyways, shouldn't he be enough? That really put things into perspective for me.

I ended up telling him that while he was very important to me, but he wasn't the only person in the world I wanted to spend time with, and I did not appreciate being policed about how I spend my time with them, and if he wasn't alright with that then maybe it was best we go our separate ways.

He exploded. He literally leapt up from his chair and started yelling about how he knew this was going to happen, how those bitches were poisoning me against him all along, and all of this other nonsense. I got the hell out of there as fast as possible. I've never seen a turnaround like that before, and it was terrifying. I've already blocked and deleted him off of social media, and let Tammy know what happened.

Since he said some pretty awful things about my friends and they live in the same building, I just wanted to warn her just in case he does something insane like go to her apartment to scream at her (he doesn't know her apartment number, just that she lives a few floors below him). I feel horrible that I might've dragged her into this.

She's staying at her boyfriends for a few days, and my roommate's boyfriend will be staying at our place for the next week, just in case. Thanks to everyone for helping me out before the relationship progresses any further - we had been talking about getting a place together after our anniversary, which gives me chills to think about now.

tl;dr: I confronted him, he went on a long angry tangent, he's blocked now and hopefully won't do anything crazy.