Hello ladies of RPW,

I’ve mostly been a lurker on reddit in general but on here as well for the past while. I thought today I would share a post as I’ve been really focusing on making improvements in myself following RPW philosophy. Very thankful I’ve found this subreddit! Since I’ve started incorporating the tenets of RPW into my life I’ve noticed my relationship with my boyfriend growing by leaps and bounds. We’ve been together about five years and I’ve never felt more secure and in-love. I can’t speak for him although I have noticed he seems much less stressed these days! He’s a lawyer so his job is naturally high stress…. I think it’s made a difference that he’s had a lovely and calm home to come home to instead of nagging, manipulation or shrewish behavior.

Anyway, on to the situation that occurred that lead me to write my first ever post in RPW (and on reddit in general, I suppose?) Apologies if I make any errors, please feel free to let me know if there’s any way I can improve.

This past weekend one of our close friends was having their birthday. My boyfriend mentioned that he would like to throw her a surprise party as her husband just recently had a bit of a health scare and it’s been a tough time for both of them. I love planning parties so of course I jumped at the chance and invited all of our closest friends (mostly couples).

One of the couples that came, the boyfriend is very close to my boyfriend (we’ll call him K) and has been with his girlfriend (we’ll call her A) for about nine years. A can be a lovely person, her and I get along very well… when she’s sober. Unfortunately she’s quite prone to imbibing too much and there’s been multiple situations where she’s gotten completely wasted.

We chatted for a while as I put the finishing touches on the appies. She seemed in good spirits although she did make multiple complaints about her body and her appearance which was very sad for me to hear as she’s struggled with her body image for quite some time.

People steadily started showing up and one of my boyfriend’s buddies brought with him a beer pong set. My boyfriend loves playing games so him and his buddies played. At one point, my boyfriend was eager for me to play a round so the birthday girl and I played against my boyfriend and her husband. They let us use the sangria I made instead of beer since we’re not big drinkers and I had made the sangria very low in alcohol content for that exact purpose. It was super fun! We left them to their shenanigans once our game was over and myself and the other ladies headed out onto the patio to chat and sip on sangria.

A at this point had been knocking back drinks pretty rapidly and she was starting to get visibly drunk and somewhat belligerent. She mocked me and the birthday girl for playing beer pong with sangria and when the birthday girl laughed and shrugged that seemed to tick her off even more. She called us “p*ssies” and told us she’d “show [us] how it's done”. I laughed, thinking she was kidding, and went back to the conversation I was having with another girl. Next thing I know I hear the patio door open and close and she’s gone inside.

Ten minutes later my boyfriend’s cousin comes outside and looks mortified. She says that A is making an absolute spectacle of herself playing beer pong against my boyfriend, it had gotten so bad she couldn’t even watch she was so embarrassed for her. She tells me apparently she’s shaking her breasts at my boyfriend trying to distract him while he takes a shot and she’s twerking in the mirror and that she called K a homophobic slur in front of everyone. I’m stunned and my first urge is to run inside and see what’s going on, for some reason the hamster in my head starts getting angry at my boyfriend?!

I took a moment to calm myself down, debated pretending to go inside to grab a bite to eat (even though I’d already eaten, I clearly just wanted a reason to monitor my boyfriend's reactions to her behavior) and decided instead to stay and keep chatting with the ladies. I told my boyfriend’s cousin “oh no, how embarrassing for her, let me know if she needs anything” and went back to my conversation. I was fuming mad on the inside but I maintained calm on the outside and eventually my anger dissipated.

Long story short- she wound up vomiting all over the bathroom floor after the birthday cake was served. Being a good hostess I cleaned it up, gave her some old clothes of mine to change into as she’d thrown up on herself quite a bit, cleaned as much of the vomit out of her hair as I could and helped her boyfriend get her into their car. She texted me the next morning to tell me that she didn’t remember anything but that she had been told she was “a bit of a hot mess”. I decided to go the kind route and told her that I hope she doesn’t have too bad of a hangover and I thanked her for attending.

My boyfriend saw the text and commented on what a disaster she was and how embarrassed he was for her and how everybody was mortified watching her antics. We talked about it for a while and he said he might say something to her boyfriend as he doesn't understand how he can be with someone who was such a public embarrassment. Then he thanked me for throwing such a wonderful party and said he had a great time!!! I was beaming like an idiot.

Mission accomplished!

Moral of the story: Trust your man. ACTUALLY trust him. Don’t check up on him to make sure he’s “behaving” and don’t do so “subtly”. Whether or not he notices you’re checking up on him, that kind of behavior just feeds the hamster and reinforces those thoughts in your head.

PS- I’m open to any critiques about how I handled that! If any of you ladies have any suggestions I’d love to hear them. Not sure if I should have intervened when she was super drunk or if that would have just made me a target for belligerent drunken behavior.