I need some help processing this. They made me question whether or not I'm actually authentic when it comes to what I'm interested in. I feel like I don't want to talk about my interests with anyone because I don't want to be pop quizzed.

The person I'm dating (together 3 months), I'll call him 'Dan', recently invited me out to dinner to meet some of his coworkers. The first red flag was he invited everyone out to a Hooters, and said they chose that restaurant because it's close to where they work and is easy to get to. Which is true, but there are several other restaurants near by that offer better food and a better atmosphere.

Before he invited me out to dinner, he half joked that his coworkers (all of them are male) didn't believe that he was dating a "hot girl" that's into the same hobbies as them. (The are hobbies that are considered to be primarily for men.) I was a little irked at that comment, but he said he was "just joking around" (this pretty much became the catch phrase for the men that night). When everyone arrived at the restaurant Dan and his coworkers were making comments about the girls that worked there and their physical appearances. This made me a little uncomfortable but I didn't say anything.

Once everyone ordered their food/drink his friends started to quiz me about my interests. Many of them share the same "male dominated" hobbies I'm interested in, and they more or less just tried to see if I knew facts about the hobby, as opposed to asking me questions about what I like/don't like or what I'm currently doing in said hobby. For example, if my hobby was American history - one of them would ask an esoteric question like "Oh, so you like American History? How many one dollar bills are currently in circulation? How old is the French Broad River!?"

I also work as a junior automation engineer at a start up software company. I haven't been writing code that long, as I was working in QA prior and learned how to code while I was in that position. I'm really green and I know I still have a lot to learn. The projects I'm working on are small and I'm getting help at work. All of his friends are senior level software engineers and were quizzing me about my work and trying to see how much I actually know. They were asking about advanced things I did not know about, and were asking me technical questions that don't even apply to my job. But, they were all smiling and laughing, and would frequently say something like "aw we're just kidding!"

At one point I felt like I was at some weird interview and was taking one question at a time from each d-bag at the table. I know I stopped fake smiling at some point and just emotionlessly answered their questions. I think one of them became self aware because he just looked down at his phone for the rest of the evening, didn't ask me anything else and just looked uncomfortable.

When they weren't asking pointed questions at me, they were talking to each other and ignoring me. I'd be interrupted if I tried to include my thoughts on the subject, or nod at me and look away to someone else.

I should mention all of these guys were 5-10 years older than me, I'm 25, the guy I'm dating is 29, and his coworkers are in their early-mid 30s. I don't have as much experience as they do, part of me was hoping I could meet peers who could have helped guide me or answer my questions about their careers. Instead, one of them literally asked me to give him a sql query. They all kept saying they were just kidding around or just joking and laughing about it, but it was so cringey.

Dan was sitting beside me and wasn't stopping this behavior from his coworkers. He was coaching me, I guess? Saying things like "oh! you know this one!" or "come on you got this, we talked about this last week!" Dan also made the comment of "See, she's really smart too!" to one of the guys at the table.

That whole night was just awful. He was actually irritated at me because he saw my whole mood change while I was being quizzed by his friends. He said he noticed me having an "attitude" with his coworkers, when they were just having fun and trying to get to know me. That it was immature of me to have been to obviously annoyed and that I "audibly sighed" multiple times when one his friends spoke to me.

I can't stop seeing Dan as a super cringey dude now. I thought he was acting ridiculous and seemed more like a 13 year old boy as opposed to someone who is supposed to be turning 30 in a couple of months. I'm pretty sure I can't go on with the relationship at this point. I don't think this is an overreaction on my part, if I were to break up with him.

Is it within reason to end a relationship after this event? Everything was going fine before this happened. But now I just feel gross. The dinner happened last night and I haven't returned any of his texts today. I know ghosting is wrong, but I don't want to look at him or speak to him, the thought of him just kind of disgusts me at this point. I've never felt like someone's show poodle before. I don't know if I'll feel differently in a week or if I'm unjustified in my anger.

tl;dr: Went out with bf and his friends. They gatekeeped me about my hobbies and careers all night. Dan encouraged this behavior. I acted as unenthusiastic show poodle and unceremoniously answered their stupid questions. Dan is mad at me for not playing along and having a bad attitude.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

[deleted]

You are seeing Dan as a super-creepy dude because Dan IS a super-creepy dude. This guy does not respect you, and he purposely brought you to a restaurant and disrespected you by talking about the women there. Here’s what happened: they brought you to Hooters to undermine your confidence and put you at a disadvantage (“hi, we are a bunch of guys that are going to go to Hooters and talk about the appearance of the women there while the one woman at our table sits and watches us”). They all, including Dan, treated you like a specimen, and as if you were the stupid little girl. Dump Dan and his juvenile, misogynistic friends, please.

OOP

You're right. In a way I'm kinda glad this night happened so I could see who Dan really is. Even if he didn't mean anything malicious he's still an immature bro, and I don't want to be with that. I'm not going to ghost him, I think I'm going to use this thread to come up with a series of good pointers about how everything he did was wrong. I'm also laughing at the fact that his friends will likely make fun of him after I break up with him. I'll do it this weekend so he has something to talk about Monday morning at work.

BritishHobo

I wonder why Dan and his friends have to go to Hooters and leer at the waitresses, when they're just so good at talking to women.

Dan is an idiot who has ruined his own relationship out of a cowardly deference to the manchild behaviour of his friends. He deserves them and you deserve better. 'I'm just joking!' is the catchphrase of people to cowardly too stand by their own shitty views when challenged.

OOP

I knew Dan and his coworkers would frequently go to this Hooters for lunch, he always told me he didn't like how misogynistic that place was, but he really enjoyed the wings. Cue eye roll. But, the way they were all talking about the waitresses, and even how they thought some of the waitresses were "too old" to be working there really bothered me.

kevin_r13

one of my exes was a sw programmer, and she had more in common with my sw friends than she did with their gfs and wives, so at parties, she hung out with us guys.

none of us made her feel uncomfortable about work stuff.

your bf and his friends are not a good group of people to become involved with

OOP

It surprised me how shitty these guys were because everyone at my current job - male/female/junior/senior/manager/whatever is cool as fuck! They are all helpful and super humble. The more senior people have no problem holding your hand and teaching you without making you feel like a dumbass. We all have to start somewhere.

When someone guessed the hobby was Magic: The Gathering

OOP

It was actually several hobbies/interests that Dan would brag about to these guys - DND, video games and oddly enough the fact that I enjoy expensive Scotch.

Update Nov 19, 2019 (4 days later)

Wow, I triggered a lot of fragile men in my first post. To those of you who were triggered, all I have to say is: lol.

The actual update is a little further down, if that was all you wanted to see.

I got a lot of private messages a...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1lwx6m6/the_guy_29m_im_25f_dating_and_his_friends/

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Wow bunch of jerks feeding off each other.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Update Nov 19, 2019 (4 days later)

Wow, I triggered a lot of fragile men in my first post. To those of you who were triggered, all I have to say is: lol.

The actual update is a little further down, if that was all you wanted to see.

I got a lot of private messages and DMs. Many of them were angry messages from men, I guess they were too cowardly to post a public comment on my post because they knew they would be downvoted to oblivion.

To those of you who were nice, I'm sorry I couldn't respond to each of you. This is also a throwaway and I won't be responding to messages and post after I'm done with this post and comments.

Also, I read the most downvoted comments on my post - that stuff was some of the most painfully cringey material I think I've ever seen on these relationship posts, it was like some weird mix of T_D, braincels and conspiracy subreddits coming together to post some weird ass sexist bullshit. There were people describing themselves as a "female" which is a dead giveaway that's it's actually an incel pretending to be a woman. I find this to be absolutely hilarious.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your stories. But, I'm sorry so many of you had to go through something similar as this at one point in your life. This isn't the first time I've been gatekeeped either, just the most blatant.

I wanted to add that I know how real men act around each other, I have a brother and I've been around his friends plenty of times. Yes they rib each other and new members of the group, they joke around, but they've never just ask trivia questions as their only means of communication.

They've never been bullys, or highly judgmental, or straight up boring like the group I met last week. I've been around groups of men before and have it not feel like a shitty interview. What the group did to me last week was not a friendly thing to do to anyone, even if it were another man entering the group for the first time.

Update

After the post I decided it would be best to end things through a phone call. I mentioned ghosting, but it's probably best he knows how and why he fucked up. I waited until Saturday to reach out to him, told him "we need to talk." I'm paraphrasing here, but this is basically what the convo went like:

Dan: This is about the dinner, isn't it?

Me: Yeah it is.

Dan: and?

Me: I don't think I've ever felt so unwelcome in a group before. It felt like a shitty interview, all they did was test my knowledge. No one tried to get to know me, and when actual conversation was going on I was ignored or interrupted if I tried to talk.

Dan: I don't feel it like it was anything like that.

Me: Ok, so how often do you guys sit around just asking questions like "quick - what is the sql query if you want to delete two rows from two different tables!?!"

Dan: I don't know

Me: No really, do you quiz your friends randomly like that at work or out and about?

Dan: No not really

Me: And why not? why don't you just ask lightning round quizzes like that? B/c it's not what normal people do?

Dan: I don't know. They were just having fun and joking around.

Me: It wasn't fun for me. I have male and female friends in all sorts of professions, I've never cornered any of them to test their knowledge. I trust they know what they're doing. I ask them about work, what they're doing, you know normal questions.

Dan: ok

Me: I'm not going to print out a CPA exam and quiz my accountant friend, don't you think that would be a little fucked up?

Dan: I don't know, maybe?

We talked a little more about that night, and I gave him more specific examples of what he and his friends did and he never really had any good answered. It was a lot of "i don't know" and single word answers. I told him I created a reddit post and I would send it to him. He was a little pissed off that I did that, felt like I had no right to so. At the end of the conversation he asked if we were done. I told him yeah, that I can't see a future with him, that I saw a different side of him that night and I don't want to be someone's prize poodle on display for the world to see. He didn't really say anything after that and just hung up the phone. I sent him the url for my first post.

He texted me throughout the weekend, but I didn't respond. He read the post that I sent him and wasn't happy with it, and said he couldn't believe so many people were on my side and were hating on him. He sent a few more angry texts after that like he couldn't believe we were breaking up over something so stupid. He did send a few rounds of "I'm sorrys" and "let's try to work through this" but when I didn't respond he just went back to angry texting me.

Also, I did find his friend who buried his head in his phone that night and sent him the reddit link and asked if that sounded like what happened. Dan's friend said he knew what his friends were doing were wrong, and felt bad for me. He apologized for not stepping in, and assumed that Dan would eventually speak up for me on my behalf. He also apologized for joining them in the beginning, and wished me luck in my career.

tl:dr: I tried explaining how that night was weird, uncomfortable and fucked up. He didn't see my point of view, didn't learn any lessons from it. I broke it off, he has been sending me angry texts, I haven't responded.

EDIT: I know my first post was gilded and some of my comments too, instead of giving money to reddit or giving me gold I can't use on this account, please donate to this organization, winter is approaching and there are a lot of kids that don't have coats. https://www.operationwarm.org/get-involved/give-3/

RELEVANT COMMENTS

[deleted]

"He did send a few rounds of "I'm sorrys" and "let's try to work through this" but when I didn't respond he just went back to angry texting me."

Ugh. Sorry about the Nice Guy confirmation, but at least you tried to get him to think about it. And at least one member of that group is capable of introspection. Hopefully he'll do better next time.

OOP

Yeah, I wasn't surprised when he went full Nice Guy. I was 100% expecting him to apologize and then take it back at some point, and I was right.

ChristieFox

Just confirms you made the right call whenever they do this.

But I have a question: Why did you explain it to him when he didn't even show interest in your reasons? Just by reading I felt annoyance and anger flaring up and I wasn't even involved in any of it.

OOP

It was frustrating, but part of me wanted him to understand what he and his friends did were wrong. I was hoping he would have a moment of clarity? And I also didn't want some future poor woman to go through that bullshit again.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7