If you go to a friend’s house, and the friend’s family invites you to stay for dinner, would you stay?

What if the dinner was for a family member’s birthday?

Would you politely decline, or would you accept the invitation?

In today’s story, one man accepts the invitation to stay for dinner, but now he’s wondering if that was a mistake.

Let’s read all the details to see why he thinks it might’ve been a better idea to leave.

AITA for staying at a birthday party when they explicitly asked me to stay?

My friend (35f) has been ill lately and severely under the weather.

To lighten her mood I(39m) decided to bring her a bucket of popcorn from the store.

I did ask If that was okay, but she hadn’t read my message yet when I arrived.

I just wanted to leave it with her at the door but her mother opened and asked me to come inside (she does this frequently but normally I’m in a hurry and decline).

He didn’t realize it was the mother’s birthday.

I came inside and had a long Chat with them (approximately 2.5 hours) and wanted to leave because I knew they would have dinner guests.

The guests arrived and started to wish my friend’s mother Happy Birthday!

I was mortified and apologized profusely, because I had no idea and they obviously hadn’t told me.

As I wanted to leave her father asked me to stay and said there was enough food for everyone.

I had a nice evening.

It turns out his friend had a different perspective of the evening.

A few days later after not having heard from my friend for a while I inquired about her health and she told me, she didn’t contact me on purpose, because she was not fine with how I acted.

I was surprised and asked what was wrong but she wanted to tell me personally and not on the phone.

This took a few days, in which I tried to imagine what I could have done wrong, but she finally told me:

She and all her family we’re really weirded out that I stayed when the guests arrived, I had already overstayed my welcome before that and should have left then at the latest.

He’s wondering if he really was rude to stay.

They did not tell me any of this at the time and as mentioned before explicitly asked me to stay.

This is we’re I wonder If IATA, because they all thought I should have politely declined and left.

I thought it weird them not mentioning the birthday and would obviously not even have come in if I knew, but to decline an invitation seemed rude to me.

So AITA?

People need to stop playing games with their words.

If you don’t want someone to stay, don’t invite them to stay.

If you invite them to stay, don’t be mad at them when they stay even if you were hoping they’d leave anyway.

Let’s read the reactions to this story on Reddit.

Hidden etiquette rules are hard to follow.

It might be best to stay away from this friend.

This “game” sounds horrible.

He’s not a mind reader.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

A lot of people would be better off if they would learn this lesson.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.