Christmas Day is meant to be spent with your nearest and dearest no matter who you are. It's an unusual circumstance that you'd opt to spend the day with strangers, but one woman found herself in this situation when her mum's new partner wanted to spend Christmas Day with her, her mum, and siblings - but she'd only just found out her mum even had a boyfriend.
She took to Reddit's 'Am I the a**hole' forum to ask whether people thought she was unreasonable to uninvite her mum's boyfriend from their festivities because she barely knew him and wanted to catch up with the women in her family, without any men there.
She wrote: "My (29F) mum (50) has been 'seeing' this guy D for a couple of months. She lives with my older sister while she works in the city my sister is in.
"I found out about my mum and D through my sister even though my mum had told her not to say anything about them to any of us siblings (there are five of us). I have never met D and only know little about him from what my sister tells me.
"A few weeks ago I went to the city for a girl's night with my friends I invited my mum along since I hadn't seen her in a while and wanted to catch up while I was there. By this time my sister had told my mum that I knew about D so I specifically told my mum it was a girls night and we weren't bringing partners.
"So we go to our first cocktail bar and we're having a good time singing karaoke and I notice this guy hanging out by my mum but walking away when I would come back to the table.
"So mum and I are in the bathroom together at one point and I'm like 'hey, is that D?' And she was like yeah I told him where we were. I was like mum it's a girl's night!
"We didn't argue or anything she just giggled and walked back out to him and I carried on doing karaoke with my friends and mum. I was getting drunk and having a good time and didn't think it a good time for introductions with D so we didn't meet that night.
"Anyway fast forward two weeks to last night and I rang mum to ask if she could make a steam pudding for Christmas (I'm hosting Christmas this year so all my siblings families and mum are coming and although I will be providing the whole main courses I have asked each family to bring a dessert).
"I call her up and she says oh yeah D and I will bring a steam pudding. I was like hold on a second D is not coming. She asked why and I said well I know very little about him considering you're keeping him a secret from us this whole time and the only thing I do know about him is that he crashed our girl's night. I just don't think Christmas is the time to meet this guy you've been seeing for only two months."
The woman tried to suggest an alternative plan to her mum, encouraging her to make arrangements for them to meet each other in the new year, but she wasn't impressed.
"She then said she wouldn't come to Christmas cause he's not invited and I'm an a**hole cause now she's missing out on Christmas with her kids and grandkids because I won't let him come too", the daughter explained.
In the comments, people were shocked at the behaviour of her mum, and her boyfriend too, with many commenting on the fact that he was clearly comfortable with overstepping the line.
One wrote: "Your house your rules. The fact she can't go to girls' night without him turning up seems deeply red flag to me."
Someone agreed with that, commenting: "The behaviour at the girl's night is super weird though. Like if he had just stopped by to meet the original poster and drop her mum off/pick her up, that would be normal and a polite(ish) way to introduce himself.
"The walking away and avoiding the original poster makes it seem like he knew he wasn't invited but insisted on not letting the original posters mom go out without him."
Another said it wasn't really appropriate to meet the family at Christmas for the first time, writing: "I'd totally understand not inviting a dude to meet my kid for Christmas, and have planned for that in past. Mum needs to do better."
Who do you think is right here? Let us know in the comments.
