The Airbnb Host Asked About Bondage. She Left. Her Friends Stayed.

The host had been welcoming. He'd shown them around the neighbourhood when they arrived. The next morning, according to the post, he brought them breakfast — a large one. Two days into the stay, he texted her directly to check they were doing all right.

Then he told her she was attractive. She says she replied that she had a boyfriend. He asked if she knew what a Shibari bunny was, and whether she'd be a good one. She googled it. The search results, she says, made her jaw drop.

She booked a hotel immediately. When she told her friends, they agreed the messages were creepy. Three of them thought leaving was an overreaction. They pointed out that there were four of them in the house, so it wasn't as though he could drag her out of the room at night. She left anyway. One friend supported the decision. The other three stayed.

She spent the rest of the trip at a hotel fifteen minutes away. She also told her father, which she now thinks may've been a mistake — his response, she says, was murderous.

The post asks whether she'd overreacted. The comments said no, she hadn't.

The top response said her father had the correct reaction, and that she did too. It argued that her friends had internalised the give-him-the-benefit-of-the-doubt training that most women receive, and that it wouldn't serve them well. Several replies urged her to report the host to Airbnb immediately.

Another commenter pointed out that she'd told him she had a boyfriend — described as the international sign for please stop being inappropriate — and he'd doubled down. A third called him a predator outright and said other guests deserved protection from him.

One response took issue not with her leaving, but with her having replied at all once the messages turned personal. The advice was to stop responding to things that should never have been said in the first place. Another made the same point more bluntly: when people send inappropriate messages, ignore them. We don't owe a response.

Several comments questioned the friends' risk assessment. One pointed out that the host had access to the property at any time — he could let himself in whenever he wanted. Another, from someone who identified as a tall and reasonably fit man in his thirties, said he'd have left faster than she did. The friends, he argued, had the survival instincts of wet paper bags.

A handful of replies noted that the friends weren't the ones being targeted. It's easier to feel safe, one commenter observed, when the attention's on someone else. The poster was the one receiving the messages. Big difference.

One response suggested the friends still at the property should check for cameras.

The disagreement was narrow. No one defended the host. No one said the messages were fine, or that calling someone exotic and asking about bondage falls within the bounds of hospitality. The question was whether leaving was proportionate.

The case for staying rested on numbers and logistics. Four women in one house. Locked doors. The trip already paid for. The alternative — a last-minute hotel, the hassle of moving, the cost — carried its own friction. The friends weren't arguing that the host was harmless. They were arguing that the risk was manageable and the departure was extreme.

The case for leaving rested on access and uncertainty. He knew where they were. He had a key. The messages established that his understanding of boundaries wasn't theirs. What happens next in that situation isn't predictable, and the cost of being wrong isn't symmetrical. The comments framed it as a textbook response: trust your gut, set a boundary, remove yourself.

The question neither side answered directly is what the friends thought staying proved. If the messages were creepy — and they agreed they were — then staying meant either that creepy's tolerable under certain conditions, or that the conditions made it safe. The first is a concession about what women are expected to absorb. The second is a bet on the restraint of someone who's already shown he doesn't share your limits.

The post doesn't say whether the friends who stayed had further contact with the host, or whether the rest of the trip was uneventful. It does say that only one of them supported her decision to leave.

If you were one of the three who stayed, what would it take for you to admit she was right to go?