Good friends will be there for you when things get hard, and great friends are there when things are devastating. So imagine how touched one woman was when her friends threw her a boob-voyage party after she discovered that she had a cancerous lump in her breast as a show of support before her mastectomy. The only person who wasn't thrilled by the gesture was her boyfriend, who was angry that she didn't ask him to throw her the party instead.
The woman explained that when she first learned she had a lump in her breast "it was a stressful time."
As she explained in a post on Am I the A–hole, the Original Poster shared that she was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer and was advised by her doctors to get a mastectomy.
A few days before her surgery, her friend came over and they got on the topic of throwing her a "boob-voyage" party.
She wanted one just like she saw on the TV show Jane the Virgin.
"I asked her if she would throw me one of those parties to help me get my mind off it," the OP wrote.
The OP swears that she thought it would just be a small party with a couple of friends.
"But she went all out."
She invited all of the OP's friends and her boyfriend, and the friend had "an array of boob paraphernalia," she recalled. "It was funny and lighthearted and meant a lot to me to get all that support from my friends."
But there was one person who felt like being a party pooper.
During her recovery from the surgery, her boyfriend "confronted" her and told her he hated her "boob-voyage" party.
"He thought it was tacky, and he was offended that I hadn't asked him to put something together instead," she wrote.
He argued that they were "supposed to be going through it together."
"And I should have thought about his feelings and the fact that he doesn't like parties and wouldn't want to spend one of the nights leading up to my surgery like that," she added.
She told her boyfriend that she was sorry her felt that way, "but it was really helpful for me and I was the one getting surgery and treatment."
"I told him I wanted to support him but my feelings had to take priority under those particular circumstances and the party helped me," she continued.
Her boyfriend's still angry with her about the party.
And he's still upset about her asking her friend to throw her the party without asking him first.
"It comes up now and again and he still wants me to apologize. Am I the A–hole?" she wondered.
People had one word to describe her boyfriend:
"So you went through a life changing experience and he made it all about himself? Not The A–hole," one person wrote.
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them," someone else chimed in. "Your boyfriend is a self-centered [expletive] who can't even tolerate you getting support in the way you need it for your medical diagnosis and treatment. That he thinks his feelings about your cancer are more important than your feelings is very telling, and I hope you'll ditch his [expletive] and find someone who has a working sense of compassion."
"OP please dump him immediately. He has made it clear who he is. And it isn't someone who will support you," a third person added.
Other people thought the OP was making a fuss over nothing.
"Why couldn't you consider him first?" one person commented. "This shows you care less about him and more about your friend."
"I understand both your perspectives," someone else wrote. "You are loosing a key part of yourself but what you did was also very tacky and inappropriate if you are in a relationship. So I side with him, even though I sympathize with your point of view."
"You were the one going through it, but he wanted to supportive and you don't seem to care," a third person agreed.
To us, it seems pretty impossible to place blame on the OP for asking for support when she needed it, and we think her boyfriend has no business getting angry with her for trying to make the best out of a bad situation. The OP has great friends! Her boyfriend? Not so much.
