When I was a kid, my family went to the beach with a family friend.

The friend (a grown up) wasn’t getting in the water with us.

When I asked her why, she said she was afraid of sharks.

“But there aren’t any sharks here,” I said, “this is a lake.”

“Oh I know,” she replied, “but fear isn’t rational.”

That stuck with me, because it’s true. And it causes tension, sometimes.

This story isn’t about a fear of sharks but a fear of dogs. Let’s face the fear together…

AITA for ditching lunch with friends because of one them brought a dog?

So some people in my friend group and I met up at a restaurant for lunch the other day.

It was a newer place and looked kinda interesting so we wanted to try it out.

One friend was a bit late and ended up arriving last, and she had her dog with her.

OP has a good reason for not liking dogs.

For some background, I have trauma related to dogs and being bitten as a kid, and to this day I get very very anxious and scared around dogs, even smaller ones.

I told my friend this when I found out she was a dog person and owned two, and we’ve always organized things so that I pretty much wouldn’t be around them.

I’ve always appreciated her respecting my boundaries and making an effort to make me comfortable.

OP was starting to panic.

But yeah that day she came to lunch with a very large dog (can’t give details on what breed, I barely know anything about that stuff sorry) and as soon as I saw it I felt so uneasy.

We had a table outside the restaurant, so the dog would be next to us the whole time we ate, and that thought really made me panic.

Another friend noticed I was very on edge and asked if I was fine.

I told him I was sorry and I had to leave, he made the connection with the dog and said it was totally fine and he understood.

I told everyone bye and left (I hadn’t ordered yet).

Then there was the confrontation.

Everyone seemed chill about me leaving, but later on I got a text from my friend, the dog owner, telling me she felt really disappointed that I’d ditched them just because she’d brought her dog.

She said I overreacted, that she understands I get stressed but that the dog is well trained and well mannered, and I wouldn’t have even noticed it being there after a while.

She said that overall my reaction seemed over the top and disrespectful.

And now, in the aftermath, what do we think?

Now I’m not sure, like of course I don’t blame her for bringing her dog, that’s a me problem, she shouldn’t always have to accomodate me.

Maybe I should’ve tried to tolerate it and tried to forget it was there?

I don’t know, I thought me leaving was fine but I’m worried I might’ve actually offended her in some way.

Am I the [jerk]?

It’s hard to be confronted with something traumatic and act like it’s no big deal. Leaving seems reasonable.

Reddit weighed in:

OP didn’t do anything wrong.

Maybe she was reacting out of embarrassment.

This isn’t her thing to decide.

Also, help is out there.

There’s a lot of fear out there, and we’d do well to try and understand it.

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.