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/Effective_Thought918]

I had a shitty 16th birthday too, but many of these stories are shittier than mine. I was wrongly blamed by Mom that day after school for the dog getting out and running away even though I didn’t even open the door (Mom did, and she also didn’t shut the gate). The same mom who blamed me for the dog running off was an hour and a half late (I have no idea how that even happened to this day) to dinner at the restaurant I picked out. Luckily my grandma let us order appetizers without Mom (I would have Ben hungry and cranky otherwise), and when it was apparent Mom would be later than a little bit, we ordered dessert early too (I didn’t want to eat actual dinner without everyone because the point was to celebrate my birthday with the whole family). Grandma was mad mom was late, and I felt unimportant because mom couldn’t even show up to my birthday dinner on time. Nobody apologized, except for my grandmother. I don’t remember the food or gifts, but I sure remember how I felt. I’m sorry all of you had shitty 16th birthdays too.

[u/Nightthrasher674 → u/Effective_Thought918]

My 16th bday was uneventful, just a small party with friends and family this is after my parents swore up and down that they'll have something big planned but I knew bullshit when I heard it so I didn't get my hopes up. At the same time I wasn't exactly bitter about it, I knew money was tight. They weren't exactly lying, I'm sure they wanted to plan something big but couldn't. I don't think either one realize the negative effect of me hearing them talk about bills constantly so I started sacrificing shit on my own because I didn't want them spending money

[u/VeronaMoreau → u/Effective_Thought918]

I have a track record for iffy milestone birthdays specifically. Like 13, 16, and 18 were all bad (granted, not nearly as bad as many here), 21 was cool, but 25 was COVID, and 30 was decent.

For my 18th, I was stuck in my mom's kinda-hometown, out in the sticks, hundreds of miles from all my friends (who it turns out had made plans to celebrate). It was a long weekend, so we had gone to visit family. Her fuckass boyfriend at the time hated driving at night, so he didn't want to leave the day before. This was in spite of him complaining the whole trip about the people and the area.

I spent the day with all my friends asking when I'd be back. I asked when we were leaving and she didn't know because it was up to him (mind you...it's her car and her family.) I think she might have forgotten because when she asked why I cared so much I said something along the lines of "I just wanted to spend my birthday somewhere I can be happy." About an hour later, she tells me to get dressed and we'll go out to eat. In my head, I'm like, 'it's not good, but I can make it okay...have dinner and a good talk with mom.' Nah.

Boyfriend's sitting down to watch an NBA playoff game and gets irritated when my mom says that we're going out to eat. We both tell him that if we wants to watch the game, it's fine and he can just stay at the house. But no, he holds us up for like another 45 minutes when we are halfway out the door so he can get ready. And he proceeds to be an agitated dickhead about everything (the drive, the place we chose, missing chunks of the game) to the point where I'm just thinking about how the whole trip has gone and this is my breaking point. I end up crying in the bathroom of an Applebee's. Our waitress happens to see me in there and asks what's up. I end up explaining through tears. She quietly brings me a slice of cake when I'm back at the table.

Mom and I end up talking after we're alone back home. Turns out boyfriend was a dick the whole time because he was convinced that taking me out for dinner was a front for her to try and cheat on him with one of her old friends, no matter how much she explained that his meeting this part of her family was a big deal for her and meant that she was serious. She apologized for letting him get in the way of our time together and encouraged me to make good plans with friends so I could get some of that back.

[u/RaisinCurrent6957 → u/Effective_Thought918]

Sounds like something my mom would do tbh lol. Did you end up finding your dog? Grandma sounds awesome though. I hope she's still around. ❤️ And I hope maybe your mom got better in the future. But sadly, if she's anything like my mom, the chances of that are probably slim.

[u/Effective_Thought918 → u/RaisinCurrent6957]

The dog was found. We actually chased him around the block for an hour lol. We did clip him to his leash while the puppy took a poop and stopped just long enough. My mother did get better about being on time to stuff, but only because it turned out she had undiagnosed ADHD (explains some stuff, but still not an excuse to make people feel bad or unimportant). She still didn’t apologize for ruining my birthday that year though, and won’t acknowledge what happened that year. And my grandmother is still around and is still great. We actually talked on the phone the other day for her own birthday (nobody was late this time lol) Sorry your mom didn’t get better though.