For most couples, there are certain lines that do not need much explaining. Sleeping with someone else while you’re in a committed relationship is usually one of them.
For a 19-year-old woman, however, that line suddenly became the subject of an argument she never expected to have. Her boyfriend of two years had sex with one of their mutual friends, then insisted it wasn’t cheating because the friend was a lesbian.
The situation was already uncomfortable before anything happened. The friend had jokingly suggested that the boyfriend should be the person to give her what she called her “man virginity.” He seemed flustered by the suggestion, and his girlfriend immediately told him it made her uncomfortable.
He dismissed her concerns.
A few days later, he came home from drinks with the same friend and announced that the joke had become reality.
The “Joke” Went Much Further Than She Expected
The couple had been together for two years and shared the same social circle. Their friend, A, was openly lesbian and had only had sexual relationships with women.
During a group conversation about sex, A mentioned that she had never slept with a man. Her boyfriend reacted with surprising disbelief, telling A that she was basically still a virgin.
Then A jokingly suggested that perhaps he should be the one to change that.
Instead of laughing it off, he became visibly flustered.
That immediately bothered his girlfriend.
On the drive home, she told him she wasn’t comfortable with the interaction. His response was that A always joked like that and that she was reading too much into it.
For OP, the issue should have ended there.
Instead, a few days later, her boyfriend went out for drinks with A.
When he returned, he casually told OP that they had slept together.
But according to him, it wasn’t cheating.
His reasoning was that A was a lesbian, so the encounter didn’t really count as a normal heterosexual sexual relationship. He described it as doing A a favor by taking her “man virginity.”
OP was stunned.
She left the relationship.
That decision quickly turned into a social battle. Her ex-boyfriend, A, and other members of their friend group began texting her, insisting that she was overreacting. They argued that the encounter had meant nothing and accused her of being ignorant for treating it like infidelity.
Instead of feeling reassured, OP started wondering whether she had somehow become the unreasonable person in the situation.
The Real Problem Wasn’t A’s Sexuality
The Reddit discussion largely rejected the idea that A being a lesbian somehow changed the fundamental issue.
Sexual orientation doesn’t create a special exemption from relationship boundaries. If two people in a committed relationship have agreed to be monogamous, having sex with another person is still something that needs to be discussed and consented to beforehand.
More importantly, OP had already told her boyfriend that the situation made her uncomfortable.
He knew.
Then he went ahead anyway.
The fact that he later tried to redefine what happened as a “favor” only made the situation worse. Instead of acknowledging that he had crossed a boundary, he attempted to argue that the boundary shouldn’t apply because of A’s sexuality.
That left OP dealing with two separate betrayals: what happened physically, and the way her boyfriend dismissed her feelings afterward.
Why the “It Was Just a Favor” Argument Fell Flat
Relationship therapist Esther Perel has written extensively about how infidelity is not only about the physical act itself, but also about secrecy, betrayal, and the meaning partners attach to agreements within a relationship. Her work emphasizes that couples need to define their own boundaries rather than assuming everyone shares the same rules. Esther Perel’s official website
That distinction is important here.
OP didn’t have to prove that every couple in the world would consider the situation cheating. She only needed to recognize that she considered sex outside the relationship unacceptable.
She had communicated that discomfort before anything happened. Her boyfriend chose to proceed anyway.
At that point, the disagreement wasn’t really about whether A was a lesbian or whether the encounter “meant something.” It was about whether OP’s boundaries mattered.
And clearly, they did.
Reddit Had Plenty to Say
The comments were overwhelmingly supportive of OP’s decision to leave.
One commenter who identified as gay was particularly blunt, saying the boyfriend was still a cheater and that OP should get away from the entire social circle.
Others pointed out that the boyfriend effectively told OP he was willing to sleep with A before actually doing it, then followed through despite knowing how uncomfortable she was.
Several commenters also advised her to leave the entire friend group behind rather than continue arguing with people who were minimizing what happened.
The general consensus was simple: she wasn’t crazy, and she didn’t need permission from the group to end a relationship that no longer felt safe or respectful.
OP’s biggest question seemed to be whether she had overreacted by leaving immediately.
She hadn’t.
Could she have stayed, had a long conversation, and tried to repair the relationship? Technically, yes. But she wasn’t obligated to do that after her boyfriend knowingly crossed a boundary and then insisted she shouldn’t consider it cheating.
Sometimes the hardest part of leaving isn’t deciding that a relationship is over. It’s realizing that the people around you may never agree with your reasons.
But a boundary doesn’t become unreasonable just because a group of people disagrees with it.
In this case, OP didn’t leave because her boyfriend made an innocent mistake. She left because he knew exactly how she felt, did it anyway, and then expected her to accept his explanation.
That’s a pretty good reason to walk away.
