Tl;dr: Guy and his very close friend of 8 years have a tradition of exchanging expensive christmas presents. This year he bought her an expensive pair of shoes. His girlfriend of 1 year found out and became furious because she had told him she was interested in those exact shoes, and here he was buying them for the friend instead of her. I will concede that he fucked up by not paying enough attention to her to realize that she wanted those shoes.

Consensus in the thread is that it's super inappropriate for him to be giving expensive gifts to the friend. It's an "intimate" gesture, which apparently means it should be exclusive to a romantic relationship, because why would anyone ever want expressions of intimacy in a friendship, right? The most heavily upvoted advice basically recommends that he return the shoes, get the friend something cheap, and spend the money dramatically reassuring his girlfriend that she takes absolute 100% priority over every single other thing in his life, which is apparently a requirement in a monogamous romantic relationship.

A few (upvoted) people even said he should cut ties with the friend completely, because their friendship is "inappropriate" and now the girlfriend will always be worrying that he's secretly in love with her. They really think he should tank an 8-year friendship in favor of someone he's been dating for a year!

I'm pretty sick of this whole idea that romantic relationships have to be on a pedestal, that even a brief relationship should take precedence over long-running platonic relationships, that you're only permitted the shallowest of friendships once you're romantically partnered with someone. It's gross and it leaves people with unreasonable expectations.