Sometimes, you don’t realize something is a bad idea until you do it.

In this case, a man found himself caught between keeping the peace with a difficult friend or “defending” his annoyed girlfriend during a drunken board game night.

Now he’s wondering if he should have acted differently.

Let’s analyze the situation.

AITA for not interfering during a board game?

This NYE, me (37M) and my girlfriend (30F) went to another couples house to play board game and have a few drinks.

They invited someone else I’m good friends with, Philip (38M) and haven’t seen in a few weeks.

My girlfriend and I had been spending the day together in a spa, running errands and getting coffee.

Anyway, the night gets underway and we’re starting our board game.

Nobody else but my girlfriend played before so she explained the rules.

The board game was Ticket To Ride and decently complicated to explain, especially to a few drunk adults.

Some confusion was to be expected, but things got a bit out of hand.

The mood was rowdy and a bit childish, but as expected.

I could see she was getting frustrated and annoyed with us, so during a smoke break I said to Philip to turn it down a notch and for us both to be more thoughtful of the situation.

He tried to help, but it wasn’t enough.

Although that did help somewhat they both kept arguing and spoiling the mood, enough for everybody else to tell them to stop bickering.

After that the mood was pretty terrible, but I feel it did recover somewhat.

I concentrated on learning the game and paying attention to not rile Philip up more.

Philip took it easier too and settled in a bit.

His girlfriend still wasn’t happy, though.

My girlfriend was annoyed at people taking too long on their turns.

She rolled her eyes when were asking for rule clarifications or looked stuff up ourselves and to be honest was terrible at explaining the game in general.

When everybody goes outside to celebrate the new year, I get into a huge argument with my girlfriend.

She complains about how we’re ganging up on her, how I’m not defending her and have been ignoring her all evening (by not sitting next to her).

Things soon reached a boiling point.

It gets pretty heated, but I tell her it’s not my responsibility how people react to her behavior and I’m not here to police her or Philip.

She says she does not enjoy our humor, and doesn’t get the constant shooting jokes back and forth where we make fun of each other.

I tell her to lighten up, it’s a group situation and we all adapt to it and find a balance.

Easier said than done I guess.

His girlfriend couldn’t let it go.

She accuses me of not sticking up for her, and for only joking around with Philip and paying more attention to him than her.

We finish the game and what I can only describe as silence and everybody goes home.

She went home instead of to my place as planned and I’m pretty upset that New Year’s was soured by this and feel there’s no reason for it to have gone this way.

AITA?

I think this is the kind of situation where everyone just needs to forgive, forget, and do better next time.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

A reader shares their thoughts.

This commenter shares their point of view.

Another person thinks everyone is in the wrong.

I agree.

Another reader chimes in.

This person has a different take.

Hopefully, they will soon be laughing about this.

Mixing board games with alcohol was clearly a bad idea.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.