6-Foot-5 Man, Who Refused to Switch Plane Seats with Girlfriend When His Was 'Much Better,' Now Wonders, 'Was I Wrong?'

A man wonders if he was “wrong” to turn down his girlfriend’s request to give her a more spacious plane seat during a recent flight.

In a lengthy post on the popular Reddit “Am I A——?” forum, a 23-year-old man told how he and his girlfriend Julie, 24, went on a weekend trip and bought “basic economy seats” because they are both students and on a budget. They accepted “whatever seats they gave us,” and when they boarded the plane, they discovered that one of the two middle seats was “much better than the other.”

Julie was assigned a seat “between a morbidly obese man and a woman on the other side who wasn’t that huge, but still pretty big,” the man wrote.

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Meanwhile, his place was “next to two normal-sized people.” The man explained that he is 6-foot-5 and weighs 220 pounds. with “broad shoulders,” while Julie is “not tiny” — at 5-foot-10 and 165 lbs. — but “obviously much smaller” than her boyfriend.

Julie immediately asked her boyfriend if they could switch seats — “to which I said no,” the man recalled, explaining that despite knowing Julie would feel “uncomfortable,” he didn’t think he could even physically fit between the two larger passengers.

“After some arguing, Julie sighed and went to her seat,” the man wrote.

Passengers in the plane (photo).

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He thought that was the end of their row about switching seats, but Julie was “very cold” to him when they landed. “I got the hint that she was upset about the seating arrangement. I told her it wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things and it was only a 2 hour flight and she was better off than me because she’s smaller,” the man wrote.

Later that night, the man met up with some of the couple’s friends, and when they asked why Julie wasn’t there, the man explained that his girlfriend was “upset” with him. To his surprise, his friends sided with Julie about the seat on the plane.

“The general consensus was that I should have switched places with her because it was a chivalrous thing to do. They said it’s not about who’s bigger, it’s about me protecting my girlfriend,” the man wrote before calling out his colleagues Redditors weigh in on the situation.

“Now I kind of feel like I should apologize,” he concluded his post. “Was I wrong not to switch seats with Julie?”

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The post has garnered more than 1,000 comments. Many people agreed with the man that he was justified in taking a roomier seat because of his size – but were bothered by how he handled his girlfriend’s response to the disagreement.

“You weren’t wrong not to switch seats, but YTA [you’re the a——] because he dismissed his feelings and said it wasn’t a big deal because it was only two hours,” one person commented. “You knew it was a big deal, which is why you didn’t sit down. You should at least apologize for dismissing her feelings about the situation.”

A man is sitting on an airplane seat (photo).

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Another agreed, writing: “NTA [not the a—–] because he didn’t change his seat… YTA because he told her that ‘it’s no big deal, just a 2 hour flight.’ You can’t decide what other people think about things. Minimizing her influence is bullshit. You didn’t want to change places, and you didn’t change places. You also can’t control how she feels about it.”

A number of male commenters told the OP that they believe in taking a chivalrous approach to situations like this and putting your partner’s comfort first.

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“Personally, I’d be embarrassed 1000 times over if it meant my girlfriend was more comfortable, even if it wasn’t a ‘big deal,'” one person wrote. “I would sit in between [larger] people so my girlfriend can relax, without hesitation.”

Someone else wondered if the man made the situation worse by not trying to make it up to his girlfriend after the flight. “You knew she was going to be miserable and uncomfortable the entire flight,” they wrote. “After that, did you try to make up for it by getting in any other way? Did you acknowledge that she must be feeling drained and take on some extra work to make up for it? Or did you just breeze into ‘well that’s over, what’s next way?”

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Another person claimed that the situation really boils down to the man’s actions making Julie feel “unloved”.

“Everyone makes it about men vs. women and chivalry, and I honestly don’t think that’s what it is. Your partner saw a situation they really didn’t want to face, and they asked you to sacrifice yourself for them, and you refused it, rather disparagingly,” they commented. “I guess that made Julie feel very unloved and undervalued, and that’s the reaction you’re dealing with now.”

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Source: HIS Education