šŸ“ Friend says I’m a bad host

By JoeyJoJo_Senior • Score: 2 • April 12, 2025 11:11 AM


My friend Sabrina (33F) met at work a few years ago. I was about 4 months pregnant after many years of fertility troubles and Sabrina was going through her own fertility issues, so we bonded over that.

A few months after I gave birth, Sabrina found out she was pregnant. Our kids are a year apart in age. Her child is almost 2, my child is 3.

We live about half an hour apart and see each other occasionally. We're always texting and FaceTiming, though.

Last Saturday she messaged me, saying that she was heading to IKEA. Our house is about halfway. She said that she could stop by for around 45 minutes on their way there. They were planning to leave their place around 10am so I expected them to arrive somewhere between 10:30 and 11.

The timing would have been perfect as I usually run errands Saturday afternoons.

Anyway, they didn't arrive until midday. By then it was lunchtime and I'd already fed my kid. We baked a cake together to pass the time.

When they arrived, we fully expected them to stay 45 minutes. Maybe less because they were running late, maybe.

Wrong. They stayed almost 4 hours.

When they arrived, their kid was already looking tired. And the kid was becoming more and more feral. Playing with the oven, slamming doors (they're sliding doors that can come off their rollers pretty easily).

We fed them cake and tea after they arrived, and their kid was running around with mouthfuls of cake. First of all, it's a choking hazard, and second, it makes a huge mess. Sabrina and her husband weren't saying anything about their kid's behaviour, so I told the kid that they have to sit down to eat and to leave the oven alone.

I don't even blame the kid. Poor thing was clearly exhausted, almost falling over many times, walking into walls, that sort of thing.

I tried to drop hints that it was time for them to go. Things like "your kid looks tired, maybe they'll sleep on your way to ikea" and "wow it's getting on in the day".

They were just oblivious.

Finally I told them that I have to leave to run errands.

They did leave at almost 4pm. And they didn't even go to ikea, they just went home.

Two days later I got a pretty nasty message from Sabrina saying that I was a bad host for not making them lunch. But hello, I didn't even know they'd be coming for lunch! And I wouldn't have been able to make much anyway, because I hadn't gone grocery shopping yet for the week.

Sabrina also said that I was too strict by asking their kid to sit down to eat, and she basically implied that I'm a bad parent because I don't understand little children.

And Sabrina ended up leaving our bathroom so messy with puddles of water everywhere.

I really don't think I did anything wrong, and I was trying to do my best given the situation. But Sabrina has been really unkind and now her husband has been having a go at me too.

AITA?

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