A woman recently called her boyfriend late at night for help with a cockroach in her apartment — and was stunned when he said no. The man later shared the story on Reddit to find out if he made the right decision by refusing to go over.
“I’m not against killing cockroaches,” he wrote. “But she rang me up at 10 p.m. when I was already showered and in my PJs, and she was crying, saying she had locked herself in her bathroom and couldn’t leave because there was a cockroach in her bedroom.”
He explained that his girlfriend told him she was “insanely scared” and had a “cockroach phobia.”
Still, he thought her request was “totally unreasonable.” He said he didn’t want to leave home and drive over late at night, suggesting instead that she call her landlord — who lived in the same building.
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About ten minutes later, he checked back in and learned that the landlord had handled it. But his girlfriend was upset. “She was acting all cold,” he wrote. “She said I made it clear she can’t count on me and that I bailed on her when she needed me.”
The man then asked Reddit users whether he had handled the situation poorly — either by refusing to go over or by how he said it.
Commenters were divided.
“Unless you’re next-door neighbors, a cockroach is not a ‘drive across town’ emergency,” one user wrote. “If she’d called and told you she was mugged and in the hospital, and you’d said no? Different conversation.”
Another commenter disagreed, saying that when she first started dating her now-husband, “he absolutely would have driven 30 minutes to save me from a cockroach if I had asked.”
“One night of inconvenience could’ve made you the best boyfriend ever in her eyes,” another added. “It’s the little things in relationships that really make a difference.”
