'AITA for choosing my budget over my boyfriend this Halloween?' UPDATED 2X
"AITA for choosing my budget over my boyfriend this Halloween?"
Trickortreat_ta
I need some perspective here, this whole thing is so out of control. I (28/f) own my house and my bf (29/m) moved in January. We had a ton of early money arguments and agreed that we would keep to a household budget. Also, he agreed to pay down his credit card debt. I have more flexibility in my personal spending than he does.
Early on, after we moved in, my boyfriend told me that, as a kid, he always wanted to live in one of the houses that were totally decorated for trick or treat and handed out full size candy bars. Here's where I messed up.
I took this as a comment and not a plan. When the end of September came, we went to the Halloween store, and he was under the impression we had savings for this. I didn't know. We go over the monthly budget together, and it was never listed. When he found out that there was no Halloween savings, we had an argument.
Afterwards, I talked to friends who all said he had talked about trick or treat excitement extensively and how much it meant. I chalked this one up to a misunderstanding on my part.
So, I came up with $500 of my own money and went to him with an apology. He decided to buy one big decoration, an animatronic clown and some lights. It burned through the $500, plus he put a little on his own credit card.
He wanted another big decoration and was mad I wouldn't put it on my credit card. I asked if he wanted to put up handmade decorations or spider webs but he said it would look cheap.
A few weeks later, we had a fight over candy. He was still stuck on buying full size bars. We easily get over 250 trick or treaters and I said we just don't have that much money. So, we got the bulk bags of good small bars. I also had these little coloring books for the allergy and diabetes kids.
Jump forward to Halloween. Early kids show up and he is letting them grab handfuls. I remind him we have a ton of trick or treaters coming, and he got really annoyed. I had ordered a pizza for us. So I get it and go inside for about 10 minutes.
By the time I came back out, the trick or treat bowls were empty. He had been dumping a third of a bowl in each kid's bag and had given out all the coloring books to whatever kids came along.
He told me that I'd have to go run out and buy more candy on my credit card. I said I wasn't going to do that and it wasn't my fault he just handed out 20 pounds of candy. He started yelling right there in front of the kids, and I told him to come inside. He responded that he wasn't stopping trick or treating even if there was no candy. I told him to have fun with the clown, and went inside.
He came in 15 minutes later. Then, he demanded that I leave for the night so that he could clear his head. He argued it was fair because I had already eaten and it was my fault that trick or treat time was ruined because I'm cheap. I handed the rest of the pizza to him and he refused.
He left and went to a friend's house and I guess they spent the rest of the night drinking, handing out trick or treat candy and texting me how awful and cheap I am. AITA?
Here were the top rated comments from readers after the initial post:
CakeEatingRabbit
NTA. It sounds like he isn't able to finacially support himself and you already support him finacially. You do more in the sense of organisation/ responsiblity/ planning. He full expects you to realise his dreams without having to lift a finger. Please tell me this guy atleast does half the chores?
Pretzelicious
OP is NTA but surely is an ATM. At this point him getting angry all the time to get you to pay for stuff is MANIPULATION. Why did you even let him move in...DO NOT TAKE HIM BACK IN.
Ok-Cheetah-9125
"he was under the impression we had savings for this."
No, he wasn't because he didn't contribute to any savings for this. He was under the impression you were going to cave and pay for it.
Ok_Ad5315
NTA and you need to run from this man. Making fun of how "cheap" you are when he is living in your house that you own?? Absolutely not. Tell him HE can GTFO, who is he to tell you to leave your own home? I'm livid for you girl. You need a man not this child.
Peripatetic_deviant
I AM SO MAD ON OP’S BEHALF. Cheap after dropping $250 on candy?!?? And $500 on his stupid decoration!?! This guy SUCKS. Op, he will drain every penny from you always. Do not stay with him unless you want to be broke for the rest of your life.
Not-nuts
So he manipulated you in to spending $500. You didn't mess up. There was no savings for that and he knew it. If he has credit card debt and is still spending like that he clearly has financial issues. Then he tries to bring you down with him. After the way he treated you (trying to kick you out of your own house), I'd think long and hard before taking him back.
Three months later, the OP returned with an update:
Trickortreat_ta
I posted in AITA in early November about something that happened with my boyfriend. He had spent a ton of money on Halloween decorations and blamed me for ruining trick or treat. I wasn't sure where to post an update, so here I am.
Everyone, and I do mean everyone online, basically said I was in the right and said some truly dire things about my relationship. I won't lie, there was so much anger towards him. I sort of shut down. When I started getting requests from actual news sources for more information? I just basically logged out and just decided to forget anything ever happened.
We met the next day, as he had spent a few nights at a friend's house. I said that for things to continue, we needed couples counseling, and I expected him to set up the whole thing. He was surprisingly open to this and said he would work on it. And that's where things started to unravel.
Our mutual friends had been really in his corner, b!t. Once they sort of heard my version, which I backed up with pictures and receipts, support went to me. In fact, his friends have been giving him a lot of ribbing about how he acted, which my now ex hates.
In the meantime, he had been working on getting us counseling, but found that getting therapy on his insurance meant months long waiting lists. So instead, he came up with this "couples coach" who was religious. I'm not religious and wasn't thrilled by this but figured it was better than nothing.
Our first meeting was only 3 days after I posted. One funny thing that came up was that my ex immediately handed over a print out of the household budget, and the coach praised it... but the coach thought my ex was the one who wrote it and that I was failing to follow it.
So, what followed was this weird thing where my ex wanted all the praise, but also wanted the coach to badmouth the budget because my ex hates it. It took the better part of the first session to explain to him the actual situation and the coach was weird about the fact that it was the woman in the relationship dictating money, even though he liked the budget itself (this was a lot of issues later, actually.)
The next day, one of our friends found the reddit post and sent it to my ex. All hell broke loose with him saying that I had betrayed his trust. Our next couples coaching session was all about that and honestly I felt terrible for airing his dirty laundry.
The coach and my ex both sh!!t on me a ton in this time that I had publicly humiliated my ex. Obviously, I'm updating, so I don't care about embarrassing my ex anymore. He has this username and will probably read this. Whatever.
One thing that was seemingly positive at first about the coaching was the coach pointed out that my ex had never had the ability to have holiday traditions because of his upbringing. I genuinely felt bad about this and, rolling into Christmas, I made a huge attempt to incorporate him into my family's traditions and to ask if there's anything he wanted to do.
He responded by shi++ing all over my family's traditions and his only contribution was to suggest something really extravagant that would have cost a fortune. I swear he only did this just to badmouth me when I said no.
This was all bookended by our twice a week visits to the couples coach who I increasingly hated. He would go through super religious prayers and had an issue with us living together before marriage.
Neither my ex nor I responded positively to this. But my ex would get really into it when the coach would talk about more misogynistic 'men as head of household' stuff. When I said I'd prefer moving to a regular therapist, my ex said I was undermining the work he was doing to get us help. There's a dozen little things that happened in there where I should have left. But last week was the real, final straw.
Ever since my ex found the post I had made on reddit, he has been obsessed with going through my phone. Because of my career, I wouldn't let him. I have a lot of emails and accesses on my phone that contain sensitive information in regard to work. I made a compromise that he could ask who I was texting etc and I'd show him at any point. This wasn't good enough.
I don't know how he got into my phone. But he went through it fully and started raging out that I was keeping things from him. But none of it had any relation to him. Like, I had a group chat where we were planning a wedding shower for a friend. He's only met this friend in passing.
He knew I was helping plan it, but was mad that I hadn't let him know every little detail. Specifically, we were surprising the bride by flying in her aunt who she rarely sees. I wasn't contributing to this financially, just knew about it. And somehow my not telling him that specific little thing was keeping secrets?
We were still fighting over this when we went to a party with friends. Apparently, in digging through my old chats, he found where a friend of mine had talked to me in confidence of a tragedy she went through.
Only her husband and sisters were really in the know. My ex was drunk and started talking about this loudly to her with her husband right there. Her husband told him to shut up and my ex basically got all superior about knowing things and there not being secrets.
It was very close to being a fight. I told him not to come back to my house after that and he seemed really shocked that I was telling him I wanted to break up. I'm still numb about all of this, but yeah. Him? Never again.
Here were the top rated comments from readers after this first update:
Forsaken_Woodpecker1
I remember that post. I’m sorry that he was such a shit. That whole Halloween thing was so weird and whiny of him, and absolutely zero of the update is a surprise. It’s so hard to imagine being the person posting these stories, and hearing such a unanimous denunciation of your SO.
I can’t imagine being able to break up with someone over the opinions of strangers, but…that guy was bunk. I’m really glad that you’re free of that controlling person, and I hope that he gets the help he needs. He won’t, but we can say the words.
MonkeyMoves101
Jesus Christ I just read the original post. Promise me you will ignore men like that from now on. He moved into your house and wanted you to get out? He has no money for himself and waits for you to pay for everything? He calls you cheap but is in debt? No more broke men. Stay away from them. Nothing but trouble.
Active-Delay-1337
I'm glad he's out of your life now! Let's hope he stays out of it too... with how possessive he seems of everything that has to do with you, don't underestimate his desire to screw all your relationships up and perhaps try to take stuff away from you. Change your account details where you can too, what if he managed to get some passwords?
Forsaken_Woodpecker1
I just went back and re-read your first post. Just wanted to add: I’d completely forgotten about that weird $500 lawn clown. I guess you can too, now.
Roughly one month later, the OP returned with their latest, excellently titled update: "It ended the way it began: With an animatronic clown."
Trickortreat_ta
So, look in my history if you are interested in my past with my now-ex boyfriend. But here's the cliff notes. My boyfriend lived with me. He hated the concept of a budget. He managed to convince me to give him a ton of money for Halloween decorations, and he spent the whole lot on an animatronic clown.
Then, he basically wrecked the trick or treating event, told me to leave my own house and gaslighting me afterwards. I posted online, we went into "therapy", then he goes and reveals my friend's miscarriage, so I break up with him.
So, some details since my last post. I now have therapy in quotations, because it since has become evident he picked the life coach he did because their website shows some really misogynistic views. It seems he was hoping that they would back him up on controlling me. I'm now in real therapy, don't worry.
Secondly, my friend has made up with me for the whole debacle of his reading our old conversations. She is helping me a lot, has read through these posts, and has given me permission to say that the secret he outed was that she had a miscarriage. Now, onto the latest.
The ex finally came by to pick up his stuff about a week ago. He's hemmed and hawed about this now since he left. Initially he only took the bare essentials, and has been dragging his feet. I think he thought I'd take him back.
Finally, he shows up with a friend to get his stuff. Every single thing he pulls out of the house, he is snidely telling me that I will miss having. But before he moved in, I had a fully furnished house. His contributions were either things that only he used, or stuff that I had duplicates of.
Except for the clown. When that finally came up, he was angry. He said that he was now living out of his friends bedroom, and doesn't have room to either store it or to display it on Halloween. So, he wanted me to pay him back for it. I pointed out that I had paid for it in the first place.
He has this whole alternate scenario where I had given him the money to buy it as a gift, therefore it was his money and I had to repay him. An argument broke out, he stormed out with his stuff and left the clown. I've sold it for $200, and look forward to visiting it in a proper, long term Halloween set up.
Here were the top rated comments from readers after this latest update:
PeteEckhart
The audacity of this guy just continues to amaze me. I'm glad you kicked him to the curb.
ShelyChelle
I bet he cried in the car!! 🤣 good for you!
Sorchochka
For a guy who is allergic to budgets, that’s some really interesting math he did at the end.
kangourou_mutant
The boyfriend is the clown.
People say reddit promotes breaking up too fast, and to that I say: see post. A-holes don't become better as they age, you should invest in wine or kimchi instead.
StellarManatee
Even leaving aside the ridiculous tantrums over (OPs) money, he sounded both useless and exhausting. When OP starts dating an actual, responsible adult she's going to be shocked at how easy it is and realize her ex bf was actually worse than she thought. It happened to me.
Golden_Mandala
Glad that guy is an ex. What a disaster of a relationship. I am so glad that 25 years ago I figured out not to get into relationships like this an/ymore.