Woman discovered her friends invited her ex on a lake trip but excluded her — their request to borrow her boat left them scrambling
Being left out of a trip is one thing, but being asked to lend your belongings to the very people who excluded you can sting even more. A woman who goes by u/WiseHunter817 on Reddit shared her experience on October 22, 2026, after finding out that her friends had planned a lake trip with her ex, Jake, without inviting her. Things got even more frustrating when her friend, Kayla, asked to borrow the pontoon boat she had bought with her own money. But since the situation felt unfair to her, she decided to respond in a way her friends hadn't anticipated.
AITA for saying my ex can bring his own boat after my friends invited him to the lake instead of me?
by u/WiseHunter817 in AITApod
When Kayla texted asking to borrow the pontoon boat for a lake trip, the woman discovered that her friends had invited Jake but left her out because they said it would be "awkward with both of you there." She wasn’t willing to lend them her boat for a trip she hadn’t even been invited to, so she refused. When Kayla brushed off her concerns, saying it was "literally just sitting in your parents’ yard," the woman fired back that Jake was “welcome to bring his own boat,” even though he didn’t own one. Kayla stopped responding but later turned to the group chat to ask about renting a pontoon instead, suggesting she understood that the woman wouldn’t lend her boat.
The woman added that Jake had often driven the boat when they were dating, but she had bought it herself with her work bonus two summers earlier. Since her apartment complex didn’t allow her to park it there, she kept it in her parents’ side yard, and the friend group often used it on nice weekends. She said that she broke up with her boyfriend in July after three years together but still shared the same friend circle. They had also managed to attend a few birthday dinners without much awkwardness, so inviting the woman on the trip wouldn't have been a problem.
The post also said that Kayla still had a spare key from the last time she borrowed the boat in August. The woman turned to Reddit to ask if she was wrong to refuse to lend her boat to friends who had excluded her from their plans. Readers largely sided with her. u/Indigo-Soulio said, “One of your friends wants to get with your ex. 100 percent." Meanwhile, u/Impressive-End241 noted, “These people are not your friends.” u/zeroFstotakeorgive wrote, “Well now we know who’s on Team Jake. They’re no longer your friends. If they take it, call the cops."
Being betrayed by your close friends and ex can leave someone looking for a way to stand up for themselves. In another story, a woman discovered that her college boyfriend had cheated on her with one of her close friends. Rather than confronting him, she and another friend came up with a plan to sign him up for hundreds of magazine subscriptions without his knowledge. Nine months later, he emailed her asking her to stop sending things to his address, and that's when she knew her plan had worked to annoy him.
For more stories, you can follow u/WiseHunter817 on Reddit.