Have you ever thought someone was joking when they were actually being serious? That can be a big problem and make the other person upset if you keep joking with them when they weren’t joking at all.

In this story, one dating couple is in this situation. To make it worse, the drama happens on the girlfriend’s birthday, and it’s all about her favorite parking spot. She isn’t kidding when she says it’s her favorite place to park, but her boyfriend thinks she’s challenging him to a race.

When they get back to her place, it’s far from a happy ending to her birthday.

Let’s read all about it and see if you think the boyfriend is a jerk or the girlfriend overreacted.

AITA for parking in my g/f’s parking spot?

The Story: On my girlfriend’s 25th birthday, we went to dinner with her mom and step-dad.

We drove separately to the restaurant as it was mid-week and we were both coming directly from work.

The plan was to have dinner and then head back to her place afterwards.

Near the end of the meal, she made a comment that she “better get her parking spot when we get back.”

But it’s not really her parking spot.

About this “parking spot”: This is not a designated, private spot that she owns. She was referring to a particular space of street parking in front of the house she was living in.

Anyone can park there; so if a random car was already there, she’d be out of luck.

This is also a suburban street that is generally empty, so parking on the street is pretty easy.

I’ll note that she does not have access to park in the house’s driveway.

She has a couple reasons why she likes this particular parking spot.

She had mentioned before that she liked parking in this particular spot because otherwise 1) she’d have to make a U-turn to leave if she parked across the street as the road had a dead end, or 2) if she stayed on her side of the street, she’d have to park about one house down due to how the driveways are, but she never acted possessive about the parking spot before.

When she made her comment about a parking spot that’s not actually hers, I thought (mistakenly) that she was joking around and was basically challenging me to a race to get to that spot.

Sure enough, I drive back quickly and park in that parking spot.

She pulled up shortly after and, as the street was empty, she parked right across the street from me.

Let’s see how his girlfriend reacts…

As soon as she parked, she started screaming at me that I’m a freaking jerk for parking in her spot. She would yell and cry over the next several hours that I was a jerk and ruined her birthday because I knowingly parked in her favorite spot.

During this time, I apologized and offered to move my car, but she did not take me up on that.

I think she went overboard over a parking spot that isn’t actually hers.

In her defense, I may have been a jerk because it was a special birthday, I misunderstood her comment, and the parking spot wasn’t a big deal to me. What do you think Reddit?

He misunderstood, so he wasn’t trying to be a jerk. However, she wasn’t joking, so I can understand why she was upset.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who is feeling guilty about having an unauthorized car towed from her assigned spot.

Let’s see whose side Reddit is on.

This person shares how he could’ve prevented the whole meltdown.

Another person thinks the girlfriend overreacted.

This person shares another way the girlfriend could’ve handled it.

But this person thinks this probably wasn’t the first time he was a jerk without realizing it.

This couple is definitely not compatible. I can see both sides of it, kind of, but overall, I’m on the girlfriend’s side. While her reaction was extreme, he intentionally took her favorite parking spot on her birthday after she had specifically said she wanted to park there. What is wrong with him?

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who was rudely confronted by a teenager, only to have the teen’s father step up in an unexpected way.