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

A Reddit user recounted how he felt justified taking the better seat because he didn't think he could fit in his girlfriend's seat

A man is wondering if he was "wrong" to refuse his girlfriend's request to give her his roomier airplane seat during a recent flight.

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

Julie had been assigned to a seat "between a morbidly obese man and a woman on her other side who wasn’t as huge but was still quite big," the man wrote.

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Meanwhile, his seat was "next to two normal-sized people." The man explained that he is 6-foot-5 and 220 lbs. with "broad shoulders," while Julie "isn't 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 would even physically fit between the two larger passengers.

"After some arguing back and forth, Julie sighed and went to her seat," the man wrote.

He thought that was the end of their seat-switching disagreement, 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 that it’s better her 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, the friends sided with Julie about the plane seats.

"The general consensus was that I should have switched seats with her because it was the chivalrous thing to do. They said it wasn’t about who was bigger, it was about me protecting my girlfriend," the man wrote, before inviting fellow Redditors to weigh in on the situation.

"Now I kinda feel like I should apologize," he concluded his post. "Was I wrong for not switching seats with Julie?"

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The post garnered more than 1,000 comments. Many people agreed with the man that he was justified in taking the roomier seat due to his size — but took issue with how he handled his girlfriend's response to the disagreement.

"You weren’t wrong for not switching seats, but YTA [you're the a------] for dismissing her feelings and saying 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 take the seat. You should at least apologize for dismissing her feelings on the situation."

Another agreed, writing, "NTA [not the a-----] for not switching seats … YTA for telling her it’s 'not a big deal, just a 2 hour flight.' You don’t get to decide how other people feel about things. Minimizing how she was impacted sucks. You didn’t want to trade seats, and you didn’t trade seats. You don’t also get to control how she feels about that."

A number of male commenters told the OP that they believe in taking a more chivalrous approach to situations such as this and putting the comfort of their partner first.

Related: Plane Passenger Documents Seatmate Reaching Over Her to Take Pictures Out the Window: 'Plain Rude'

"Personally, I'd be uncomfortable 1000× over if it meant my girl was more comfortable, even if it's not a 'big deal,' " one person wrote. "I would've sat between the [larger] people so my girl could relax, without hesitation."

Someone else wondered if the man exacerbated the situation by not trying to make it up to his girlfriend after the flight. "You knew she was going to be miserable and uncomfortable for the whole flight," they wrote. "Did you try to make it up to get in any other way afterwards? Did you acknowledge that she must be feeling wrung out and take on any extra chores so she could recoup? Or did you just breeze along in 'well that's over, what's next' mode?"

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Yet another person argued that the situation really came down to the man's actions making Julie feel "unloved."

"Everyone is making this 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 asked you to make a sacrifice for them, and you, rather dismissively, refused," they commented. "I imagine, this made Julie feel very unloved and undervalued, and that's the backlash you're facing now."

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