'AITA for sending my boyfriend half the bill for our dog's cremation?'
"AITA for sending my boyfriend half the bill for our dog's cremation?"
My boyfriend (m36) and I (f32) been together for 9 years. I know it's a long time but he doesn't want marriage saying it's meaningless and same as getting your drivers license where we live nowadays and that it's lost it's true meaning.
Anyways, we decided to get a dog 3 years ago. Since we don't share finances then we agreed to pay 50/50 for everything our dog needed. He said ok and things remained that way til recently when our dog fell sick.
I found myself paying the vet bill alone for the duration of 4 months. I asked my boyfriend to help out and pay 50 of the expenses but he kept making excuses to pay for things they weren't necessary.
Our dog unfortunately passed away which was devastating. My boyfriend cried and went radio silence for 1 day then went back to normal. But my grief was just starting I was mad at the fact he didn't help with treatment but I still asked if he agreed to get our dog cremeted and he said yes and go for it.
I asked him to pay half telling him how much it cost and he looked at me stunned and said 'I'm not the one getting cremeted, why tf should I be expected to pay for it? I'm not doing that after what happened. He's gone. This is too hard. Why should I pay?' I said because it's our dog.
He said he no longer is since he's dead which got me pissed. I said I'll go with burial then but he objected and said I shouldn't back out of cremation just to spite him and insisted I go ahead and do the right thing for our beloved dog.
I said alright then and ended up paying for only half of cremation bill then later sent him half of the bill through the vet and he was so mad when he saw it.
He said he couldn't believe how stubborn I was to pull that stunt because legally, he has to pay now. We had an argument and he said I should've just paid for the entire thing instead of acting petty to prove a point. He accused me of not loving our dog enough to handle the bill. AITA?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
darksanto writes:
Agreed, and NTA. For context: : I had been dating my now-wife for a couple of weeks when a cat she’d taken in had to be put down.
She didn’t have a car, so I drove her to the event, drove her home, got her ice cream, and helped to bury the body in the back and put a poem in the grave for her. I was around that cat for a week, tops.
He’s shown you who he is, and it may be that he processes grief and high-voltage emotions really poorly, so a discussion may be in order, but it may just be that he’s the asshole here.
you can also tell your boyfriend from a stranger that haggling over a bill when a dear animal companion has died is classless, boorish, and rude. I once had my cat in the vet waiting area for her allergy shot, and I saw a woman in tears come in with her pet as an emergency.
The cat didn’t make it, and when I asked the staff about it while I paid my cheap little allergy injection bill, I paid her bill for the vet visit/euthanasia and left before she came out. It is not difficult to be kind.
andiebic writes:
OP, you're NTA and he 100% is. Plus, red flags galore, IMO. Heck, when my cat of 20 years passed away my BF (who I'd been with 1 year at that point) was so heartbroken and so saddened by my grief that he paid for everything so I had one less thing to worry about. I'd re-evaluate your relationship, cos ouch.
proveout77 writes:
It's not that he's cheap or stingy. It's that he won't even take care of his own responsibilities. OP, please never have kids with this person. NTA.