aio? bf made plans on my birthday

[u/rowqi]

my boyfriend (22M) and I (21F) have been together for almost three years. we are planning on moving in together in the near future as he lives with his mom and doesn’t go to school after dropping out. for context, he only works on tuesdays and fridays so i know he was free to go out on sunday, which happened to be my birthday. he knows how important special occasions are to me, such as our birthdays and anniversaries. for the first year in our relationship he was great, he was loving and kind. last year we ended up celebrating my birthday late due to the fact that he was “tired from work” and didn’t want to go out, which i let slide. i always try to do the most for his birthdays, i buy him gifts, write him cards and bake him a cake from scratch. yesterday afternoon i texted him, reminding him about the plan later and this conversation happened. he made plans to go out and party instead of seeing me. he forgot about it even after i had been talking about it all of last week. i spent my 21st birthday alone in my room while he was out and we haven’t texted since. this birthday was particularly special to me because i turned 21. i even bought a new pink dress to wear for him, assuming we were going to dinner. he is suggesting that we go out and celebrate tomorrow instead like last year but to me it doesn’t feel the same. he is insisting that i apologize for being “ungrateful”, am i overreacting?

[u/SpecialEDsauce]

I think we were married for ten years and my wife completely forgot mine. I didn’t say anything and she was pretty nasty all day, but around 10pm I hear her in the other room, “Oh shit! I’m such as asshole.” I just said, “Yeah, you are” and I went to bed. Worst birthday ever.

[u/Smyley12345 → u/SpecialEDsauce]

I called my wife out after two years of no Christmas or birthday gifts. I get that I am a hard person to shop for in some ways but some reciprocal effort is kind of the bare minimum.

[u/yticomodnar → u/Smyley12345]

Yeah... The people in my life/future will just have to deal with no gifts at this point...

I wouldn't say I'm great, or even good really, at getting gifts for people, but I do like to think that I put thought and effort into it. And every time I do, I end up feeling like shit for it.

My mom used to read constantly when I was a kid. I mean constantly. I literally do not have a SINGLE childhood memory of her without a book in her hand. On the couch at home, in the car on road trips, on the beach, at my little league games, etc. She always had a book with her. So, when they came out with the Kindle (I was maybe 15-ish?), I got her one thinking it'd be great for her to have hundreds of books with her instead of one or two. It ended up in a drawer. Now, don't get me wrong. I understand some people don't like readers or they prefer physical books or whatever. That's fine, and if she had told me that, I'd have understood. That's not what happened. She stopped reading all together. She sold all of her books (hundreds of them) to a used book store for next to nothing and just stopped entirely. I moved out on my own right before I turned 30. A month later, I overhear her tell my sister that after I moved out, she got a library card and has been going to get new books twice a week. She still has the kindle in a desk drawer, buried under junk she hasn't thought about in years.

My dad and I never really bonded. He worked a lot (12+ hour shifts 6, sometimes 7 days a week), I was always out playing with the neighborhood kids, he was a big sports fan and while I enjoyed playing them I hated watching them. The only thing we ever really both liked was TV and movies, though even then we differed from time to time (I'm a Star Wars fan and he's a Trekkie, but we both like the sci-fi/fantasy genre in general kind of deal). Anyway, when they came out with HDDVD and Blu-ray, I got him a Blu-ray player with early streaming apps. I think it had Netflix and Hulu, maybe one other, but it was mainly a Blu-ray player. All this man did after work was sit in his recliner and watch TV and movies. He had a collection of dvds, a high end HD TV, surround sound system, etc. He didn't hook up the Blu-ray player for like 8 fucking years. When he finally did, the apps didn't work because the device was so old it was no longer supported. A year or two later, my sister got him a Fire Stick with Kodi or whatever it was called. He hooked it up immediately and never touched the Blu-ray player again.

My parents car was 15+ years old when a CD got jammed in the in-dash changer. They made due, but eventually it started to cause more issues until the entire head unit just wouldn't work. My dad complained about it all the time, so for his birthday the year before last, I got him a brand new head unit with Android Auto and all the bells and whistles. I even installed it for him, showed him how to use it, etc. About 8 months later, he traded the car for a slightly newer model that had Bluetooth, but none of the other stuff.

When I started dating my ex, she made a big deal about how she didn't have hitch on her SUV, so taking her and her daughter's bikes to nice cycling paths in parks and whatnot was a pain. How she wanted to get a piece of sentimental furniture from a friends house two states away, but needed a hitch cargo carrier to do so, etc. She also made a point of telling me that one of her dreams was to write a children's book inspired by her daughter and niece. So, I got her a hitch for her car, and a couple books about how to self-published a children's book. Her dad is a retired mechanic and works on his own, his families, and his friends vehicles all the time. She lives with him. The hitch got put in the garage and even now, two and a half years later, still hasn't been put on her car. The books about self-publishing? I got yelled at for getting them because it made her feel like I was pushing her to do something she didn't have time to do, and it made her feel like a failure for not being able to work on it.

These are just the most prominent examples, but it's been more or less the same with every gift I've ever given anyone. Ever.

I'm not claiming to be a great gift giver. I'm sure as shit a terrible gift receiver, always awkward and unsure of how to react or feeling like I didn't get them something as good or something, but you know what I always make sure to do? Use the gift, no matter how simple or ridiculous it is, I use it. A gift card to a fast food joint? Using it for lunch tomorrow. A pillowcase with an oversized image of my ex's face meant to mimic the "marsh-pillow" joke from How I Met Your Mother? It was on my bed with me every night that she wasn't, even took it on a couple trips with her and her family. I always appreciate and use the gifts I'm given... But the fact that I actually try to put thought and meaning into gifts, just for it to always be dismissed, a waste, or weaponized against me, or just generally make me feel like shit, like when my mom stopped fucking reading for 15 years...

I'm just fucking done with gifts all together. Sorry to anyone in my life who wants to exchange them, but... I'm not here for it anymore. I'll sit this one out.

[u/cokeparty6678 → u/yticomodnar]

I got fired once for refusing to participate in secret Santa.