Having a big friend group can be super fun. Everyone gets to take turns hosting, everyone pitches in, and it makes parties and events that much more exciting.

But with big groups comes occasional conflict. In this situation, a girl hosted one of their celebrations and it did not go as planned.

When a friend confronted her about it, she didn’t handle it well. Now the girl who confronted her isn’t sure if she did the right thing.

Let’s find out…

AITAH for saying my friend shouldn’t have hosted if she wasn’t able to afford it?

I’ve been part of the same friend group since high school (11 girls, all in our early 20s now). Once college started, we spread out but we’re all still friends.

When the occasion calls for it (holidays, milestones, etc) one of us will throw a party for the group. We’ll have a theme, decorations, entertainment, food, the works.

It’s our way of feeling fancy and staying close despite all being broke college students.

Sounds like a fun group!

Most recently, we wanted to do a New Year’s party. Multiple people wanted to host, but one girl, “Maya”, was really vocal about wanting to host. She’s never been the one to throw the party before so we agreed.

She said she had a specific vibe in mind, wanted it to be classy and fun, told us to dress up. We met up at her apartment (a 2.5 hour drive from me, and farther from some of the others).

However, when I got there, I found out that for the entire gathering all she had ordered food-wise was one pizza. No sides, no desserts, not even drinks— literally just one pizza.

One pizza for ten people is… not a lot of food. Obviously we split it and had a great time, but I was pretty upset and hungry.

Towards the end of the party, Maya asked if we could each pitch in $5 for the pizza. This made matters worse since the pizza most certainly did not cost $50 in the first place, but it’s $5 and she’s a friend so whatever.

That made her pretty uncomfortable.

Now, Valentine’s Day is coming up, and Maya said she wants to host again. Nobody in our group chat said anything, but I also offered to host and four or five people immediately agreed that I should.

Maya called me and asked if she had done something wrong.

She and I are pretty close so I felt comfortable telling her that her party was super fun, but ordering one pizza for 10 people and then asking us to pay her back for it may have turned people off from wanting her to host again.

She got defensive and told me that she was having some financial issues at the time, and I said I understood, because I do, because we’re all broke college students, but that if that was the case she just shouldn’t have offered to host.

She told me I was being elitist and stuck up and we more or less ended the call on bad terms.

Then, today, a few of my friends have told me that Maya’s been telling them that I said she shouldn’t host any more parties.

Now everyone is involved.

That is NOT what I said, not at all, but when I explained and told my friends what I had said they told me that I was being super rude to her and that I should have just deflected and made up an excuse for why I wanted to host the party.

I think that’s BS, and that being a good friend means standing up to your friends when you think they’ve made a mistake.

They said I probably humiliated her and made her feel bad for not being able to afford to buy us all food.

I feel really bad about it now, but I still maintain that she shouldn’t have offered to host if she couldn’t afford to feed us. Other people were willing to host. So, AITAH for telling her what I did?

Let’s get into the comments.

Most commenters agreed that Maya shouldn’t have hosted that way.

Others pointed out that the other friends are also in the wrong.

This person suggests that while the conversation could have been gentler, it wasn’t wrong.

And another commenter chops it all up to age.

Being a good friend means being honest, even when it hurts.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.