Woman says a college friend asked to come to her New Year’s Eve party — and she finally had to tell him he was not welcome after what happened the last time he was in her apartment
A woman on Reddit said she and her fiancé were planning a big New Year’s Eve party at their home and had invited more than 100 people through Facebook. The event description said everyone was welcome, but there was one person she absolutely did not want there: a former college friend named Ben.
She wrote that she had known Ben since college and had always been polite to him in group settings, but over time she and her fiancé had both come to dislike him. According to her post, Ben was loud, arrogant, sloppy, and constantly acted like the rules did not apply to him. She said his ego got worse after he lost weight in college, and he became the kind of guy who bragged constantly, got out of control at parties, and acted like being obnoxious was part of his personality.
The moment that pushed her from “I don’t enjoy this guy” to “he is never coming into my home again” happened one weekend after a night out with a big group of friends. She wrote that she, her roommate, and two other friends took a cab back to her apartment around 3 a.m., planning for those friends to stay over. Ben pushed his way into the cab without asking because he wanted to keep hanging around and, she suspected, hook up with a woman named Julie who had been flirting with him all night. During the ride, he acted like a complete disaster, screaming, hanging out the window, and repeatedly cranking the cab stereo all the way up while the driver and everyone else told him to stop.
When they got back to her apartment, she set up two air mattresses with blankets and pillows in the living room for everyone and went to bed. The others stayed up. She said Ben then turned on her stereo and started blasting music at 3:30 in the morning. She had to come out and tell him to turn it down three separate times because she had neighbors right on the other side of the wall and was also trying to sleep herself. Every time she thought he had listened, he turned it back up again.
The next morning, things got much worse. She wrote that everyone had left except her roommate, who told her that Ben had sex with Julie right there in the living room while their other guests were still in the room. She said the guests were shocked and deeply uncomfortable. While cleaning up, she discovered a large stain on one of the blankets she had put out for people to sleep on. According to her post, Ben had not bothered to clean it up or even warn her. She said that was the point where she was completely done with him.
She had hoped that would be the end of it because Ben was leaving town for a while, but months later he texted her and said he was back and would love to come to the New Year’s Eve party. She wrote that the message put her in an awkward position because Ben had no idea she disliked him. She had never directly confronted him before and had mostly just tried to keep the peace within the larger friend group. But this time, she and her fiancé both agreed they did not want him in their home.
After getting feedback, she decided to be direct. She messaged him and told him honestly that the last time he was in her apartment, he disrespected her and her home, had sex in her living room with other people present, and left a mess on her blanket and air mattress without cleaning it or telling her. She made it clear that because of that, he was not welcome at the party. That ended the issue, and he did not come.
