Surprise parties are often a great time- but very risky to plan.

What would you do if a nice gesture suddenly turned into massive drama? One guy recently asked for help navigating his birthday blues on Reddit. Here’s what went down.

AITAH for asking my parents to change the plans for my 21st?

I want to say that I’m very aware that I’m privileged to get to do anything at all for my birthday and am grateful for whatever happens.

For my 21st, my parents said they wanted to take me away for the weekend to somewhere that was a surprise, which I was very keen to do.

Seems like a reasonable perspective on the situation so far.

I also was planning on going on a lads trip the weekend after, so I asked if my parents could confirm that the place I wanted to go for that is not the same as the surprise they had planned, to which they said it was not.

Well my birthday is in two weeks and my parents have just revealed that it is the exact same place that I’m going with my mates 5 days later.

Yikes, that’s a little messy.

I asked why they didn’t tell me before I booked the trip with my friends and they said they didn’t want to ruin the surprise.

I was a little upset that this had happened, as the accommodation I had booked was non refundable.

Oof, that’s never a fun situation.

I found out that the accommodation my parents had booked WAS refundable and I said that while I was really grateful, I wondered if they wouldn’t mind refunding it and we could just do something local together instead.

It seemed a waste to go twice when this place is kinda one and done in my mind.

This line of thinking makes sense, but could not go over super well.

This INFURIATED my parents, which I felt really bad about because I didn’t mean for it to come off spoilt.

I just didn’t want them to spend money on something I’ve already paid to do a week later, and to be honest I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much knowing I was about to go again anyway. AITAH?

This is a tricky one to navigate. Let’s see what Reddit had to say about it.

Most agreed the son did his best.

Others didn’t really understand the parents’ actions.

A few tried to express some nuance.

Though some didn’t let the original poster off so easy.

But the comments section was left on a somewhat hopeful note.

Grown-up birthday means grown-up drama.

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.