'AITA for leaving my BF because he brought his female best friend lingerie as a 'joke?'' UPDATED

"AITA for leaving my BF because he brought his female best friend lingerie as a 'joke?'"

My boyfriend (28M) and I (24F) have been together for a year and a half. I love him a lot, and he has been pretty amazing to me. He is also the sort of person who has lots of friends and his close friends are pretty much family.

He also loves to joke and play these harmless pranks on his friends, which sometimes makes me feel weird. Just for context: He has two female friends and three male friends. This is about my bf and one of his friends Claire (28 F).

Claire is a nice woman and we are friendly. My boyfriend also has never ignored me in favour of his friends or talked over me in front of them. Which is why I don't understand if I'm in the right.

They (my boyfriend's friends) had a recently escalated prank fight. I had made it clear to my bf that I am not good at jokes and am rather stiff, and he said he would keep me out of it.

Claire, my boyfriend, and another friend Kyle (27 M), even had a huge throwing 'water-balloons' fight in Kyle's backyard. Then my boyfriend got pranked with dye in his body wash.

Then Kyle got pranked by Claire, something about whipping cream and oven mitts. But the issue was when my boyfriend brought a red, lacy, lingerie set, and he planned to put it in Claire's room the next time when he went over.

I said it was a tacky prank, and why would he buy lingerie? None of the previous pranks have been of this kind, and it makes me really uncomfortable. I also felt like if I was Claire, I would feel gross about it. But my boyfriend got mad and defensive and told me Claire is 'cool like that', and she would think it's funny.

I admit, I get a bit weirded out when he calls Claire 'extremely beautiful' and jokes about how she was always been 'way out of his league'. But I thought it was nothing and they were like family, so I guess it was 'their' thing.

However, the lingerie prank had me put my foot down and I said that he was wrong to give another woman lingerie, no matter who, when he had a girlfriend.

We fought, and I said I wanted to break up, which he didn't want to and I said that I was just overreacting. He said that I was too conservative and needed to open my mind when he had never given me a reason to be insecure.

Claire called me and said that she and my bf have been friends for a long time, and 'inside jokes' are just that, and I'll learn with more age. I still feel weird about this. My best friend is supportive of me no matter what I do, but I have started to feel like I'm blowing this out of proportion.

My boyfriend says that the fact that he told me and didn't hide it from me shows that I'm the problem. I have started to feel like I've blown this out of proportion and maybe it's my fault I can't take a joke. I really feel awful about this whole thing. AITAH?

Edit: The people asking what the prank is with the lingerie? Apparently, it's an inside joke about how during their college days she had some problems with the color red, and the lingerie would have just given her a shock of some kind I guess?

I told my boyfriend it was cruel, but he said it wasn't a trauma thing, just an inside joke. Claire also said over the phone that the lingerie thing was just an inside joke of their college days.

Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:

lydocia said:

Best case scenario, you're not compatible with this guy. Worst and more likely case, you're a stand-in for the Claire he can't have. Also, you don't need his permission or agreement to break up.

Turbulent_Ebb5669 said:

Wow, how condescending was Claire???? NTA and she just confirmed it.

NovaPrime1988 said:

So, Claire thinks YOU need to mature more…while she’s engaging in water balloon fights with her friends? NTA.

Status-Pattern7539 said:

NTA. Ummm what about lingerie is a prank. Oh no, free lingerie! The horror!

FinancialCamel7281 said:

NTA that's not a prank at all, I LOVE a good harmless prank, this is gaslighting, especially as he is saying she is beautiful, out of his league.

Claire is enjoying the attention, saying your not mature is hilarious, you are clearly the only one who sees how inappropriate this is. Stick to your boundaries, save yourself future pain and just leave them to "prank" each other.

iknowsomethings2 said:

NTA. Walk away now. Claire will continue to be a problem and your ex-bf disrespected your boundaries. Why would you want to stay with him?

Later OP came back with an update:

My inbox got flooded with DMs and had to turn off notifications. When I posted this, I was ready to be called immature and ridiculous, and get a couple of comments but it seemed like the post blew up, and the comments were...…kind of eye-opening.

TBH, before all this fiasco, my bf has always been nice to me. Came with me to my grad school functions even though he found them very boring, but would do it so that I could network. He builds stuff like furniture and helps out with handy work all the time.

He is also very funny and at the very beginning, I thought all his jokes were funny, and I sometimes wondered why he wanted to be with me, plus, I was always busy with school and job interviews. His mom and I had even gotten close and she has been saying how happy she was that we were together.

I had always ignored his and Claire's weird dynamic because I told myself I was being insecure. I have male friends too, and I thought that just because we aren't like that, doesn't mean my bf and Claire can't be close. Claire has also never been outright mean to me, she was just aloof and I thought it was because I was new to the group.

To the actual update, my bf and I broke up. I'm sorry guys, but even after seeing so many replies on how he was cheating, I refused to believe it. I'm still in love with this guy. And he called me, like half a day after I wrote this post, and asked to meet. I met him, and he said that he understood where I was coming from.

But I was always too uptight to understand that friendship is friendship. He and Claire had known each other for years before I came into the picture, and I cannot expect him to just ruin their dynamic. I asked him what sort of 'dynamic' was red lingerie. Why couldn't it be literally any other type of clothing?

He told me he had it with my insecurities. And that he and Claire talked and apparently I was making them sound like cheaters and homewreckers. And that he thought it was better I find someone like me, who thought the idea of a fun night was junk food and a movie indoors.

That hurt a lot. He had always known I had insecurities about being called boring. He always complimented me on how his weaknesses were my strengths. Now he says things like this to me? Also, before this lingerie fiasco, I had never said a word about his and Claire's friendship.

I always supported his pranks and practical jokes no matter my opinions on them because I thought it was his business what he did with his hobbies. And he leaves without even putting up a fight because his girlfriend didn't want him giving lingerie to the woman he constantly refers to as his 'sexy' bestie?

Claire didn't call or text after the breakup either. But Kyle did and said that he was sad that we broke up and he hoped I would be okay in the future. I asked him if my bf ever cheated on me. He said that my bf had only been a 'one woman man' when he was dating me. But he could understand that some women can't handle female best friends, especially if they look like Claire.

I told him to fuck off and blocked him. It felt like he only wanted to gloat and hurt me because my bf left. I feel like I never knew these people. Claire and Kyle were always at least decent to me if not nice. Did it make me a free target now that my bf has been telling his friends I'm an insecure child?

I don't know what to do now. I have been told repeatedly by both my friends and sister that I dodged a bullet. But I have been breaking down like a kid again and again. I'm even thinking of going to therapy, after feeling the most insecure I've felt my whole life. Thank you to all who were supportive, it seems like my now ex-bf just did the work for me.