So yesterday was my birthday. My boyfriend's parents came up yesterday for a football event and before coming up called my boyfriend and basically told him they were going out to dinner and I wasn't invited. I made no other plans and my old group of friends openly snubbed me, so basically having dinner with him was my only plan and this meant I'd be eating dinner alone on my birthday. I managed to hold in the tears until about 15 minutes before his parents got there before I burst into hysterics. The boyfriend basically tried to calm me down and told me it was just dinner. I called my sister and made plans to go eat with her. His parents got there, and things were awkward because I'm pretty sure they aren't huge fans of me. We go to the event and afterwards traffic is crawling. My boyfriend's parents insist that I cancel plans with my sister and have dinner with them because they want to go ahead and get it over with, so I do. We have an awkward dinner. We get back to BF's apartment and his dad gets a phone call that there has been an emergency with BF's grandmother, who has been in pretty bad shape for a while. They rush out the door. BF is upset for a while and calms down when they tell him she is stable for now. I log onto facebook and discover that literally NO ONE has wished me a happy birthday except my mother and aunt. That combined with everything else that has happened that day causes me to burst into tears. again. BF and I make a cake, I play with a cat, we go to bed eventually.

Wake up this morning, and he's been up for 3.5 hours playing a video game. I put our pet rats on his shoulders, thinking it would be funny. I remind him we have dinner planned with my family who are in town. everything is fine. We go to dinner, have a good time. I go back to his apartment, grab my stuff and head back to my dorm so I can get some work done and go to bed. Obviously that didn't happen. He pops up on Facebook and says he's upset. I ask why and he proceeds to say he won't tell me because we'd fight. I get progressively annoyed because he keeps going on about it but won't tell me. He then, finally lashes out at me saying that I shouldn't have cried last night about having a horrible birthday because he shouldn't have had to deal with it because of all the other stuff going on. He accuses me of being passive aggressive because I put the rats on him while he was playing a video game and apparently the people on his game are the only people who take his mind of things. I'm in shock, we evolve into a huge fight, I tell him it isn't fair that he's lashing out at me, and he starts crying and hangs up on me.

I'm still upset and angry and I can't sleep. I understand that everything with his grandmother has been hard on him, but that isn't my fault. I didn't make it happen, and I wasn't trying to be inconsiderate on purpose. I was legitimately pretty devastated about everything else that went on. I'm so mad that he lashed out at me, but I feel bad about it too because I can't figure out if he is just legitimately feeling upset or if he is being a jerk and blaming me for his problems. I'm mad in part because when I get upset he accuses me of being out of control and tells me he can't handle it but when he does something like this, suddenly everything is my fault.

It's not fair... I know I'm probably being selfish, but it hurts. I had to get it out to avoid doing something to sabotage my entire diet.

thats totally not fair I know I cant really comfort you, but i would have felt the same

If he puts things on facebook w/a elaborating on it, does that not make him passive aggressive?

*hugs*

Actually I think it was pretty inconsiderate of your boyfriend's parents to want to take him out for dinner and explicitly saying you are not invited, on the day of your birthday. Also saying that they "need to get it over with" when talking about having dinner with you is very rude. I find that their manners were very bad towards you and you are justified in feeling upset.

I agree with preetyladyserenity, for your boyfriend's parents to explicitly tell you you're not invited to dinner and then want to take your boyfriend out on your birthday, when surely they would expect you'd want to eat your birthday dinner with him, is incredibly rude. The fact that he told you it was only dinner suggests he didn't see a problem with not spending your birthday dinner with you and I see that as an issue too. It's the one day of the year that's YOURS and you're allowed to be a little bit selfish if the need arises.

Hope you work it out. I'm sending some hugs your way.

You're bf parents seem like really lousy people. I'm sorry you had to spend your birthday like that. Even if your bf was going through that it wasn't fair of him to treat you that way.

Happy Birthday!

Happy bday! Sorry it was rough over the weekend.

BF seems to be an avoider/ blame shifter. Is he playing GF and parents off each other to hide his own lack of thinking ahead?

When he learned of parents coming for football game, why didn't BF tell them you had bday dinner plans and either explain it was a couple date or invite them along after checking with you first? Did the parents even know it was your bday and you had plans?


"basically told him they were going out to dinner and I wasn't invited."
Is that true, or is that what BF said to cover the fact he didn't think to call them ahead to let them know he had other plans with you for your bday? Do they live far away or are they in town? How far in advance did he know they were coming to the football? If too short notice, why didn't he say "Oh, too short notice. We have bday dinner plans. Enjoy the game though!"

Or if he knew they were coming from far away for this game why didn't he tell you "Hon, the parents are in town from far away for the game. I'd like to attend and hang with them since we don't get the chance to see them often. How about we do your bday thing a different night either one up or one down so we can fit both things in?"

While I see the parents eventually tried to include you in their dinner plans, they sounded put out over it. Perhaps they were annoyed with the bad traffic. Or with BF for not cluing them in earlier. Puts them in an awkward spot too, esp if they wanted to use dinner to talk to BF in private about other things. BF doesn't seem to treat them with consideration -- same as you! Has he always done this? Maybe they're sick of him doing this all the time and that's why they were grouchy?

I don't think putting rats on BF while he's playing games was funny right after a difficult family scene. Maybe you meant it as an icebreaker to start talking about things. But who plays video games for 3.5 hours if they aren't trying to avoid real life stuff?!

The fact that you reminded him about your family dinner and it went fine maybe bugged him or reminded him how he doesn't manage his people like you manage yours.

I can understand needing some time to think before talking things out, but BF could be more direct with you. "Let's discuss this on Friday. I need time to sort out my feelings first" is one thing.

He doesn't need to tease you into "dragging it out of him" just so he can shift blame to you. That's classic passive aggressive. If he goes "I don't want to talk about it because we'll fight!" and you end up fighting because he's acting out rather than talking reasonably, then he can blame you for his acting out rather than himself. After all, he "didn't want to tell and you made him."

He then, finally lashes out at me saying that I shouldn't have cried last night about having a horrible birthday because he shouldn't have had to deal with it because of all the other stuff going on.

Well, part of the mix up in bday plans was his own lack of clarity/organizing with his family stuff! Most of that happened BEFORE the grandmother call and could have been avoided had he taken his social calendar by the horns rather than just floating along. Disappointing bday may not trump the sick grandmother in terms of severity, but you are entitled to your own feelings.

When you avoid dealing with people, be it the parents, girlfriend, your own needs... sooner or later there's a back up. BF got himself backed up, didn't like how it felt, and didn't seem to want to deal with the aftermath nor make any plans to better manage his relationships (with you, with parents, etc) in future.

Maybe he'll grow after this episode. Maybe not.

But don't be tempted to carry his baggage for him. So far the only things in all this that I see you carrying is relaxing a bit over when you celebrate the bday. As I've gotten older, I don't make too much about the actual day of my birthday because I figure I can celebrate somewhere around there (usually the Sat up or down -- whatever is closest to it) and that's good enough.

The rest of it sounds like you are still learning how to be together -- now you know not to bring out the rats when there's still air that needs clearing. You also know not to rise to the facebook bait when he's looking to pass the buck to you. Don't rescue him from his own crazy-making. He can sit in his crazy and then learn to plan ahead and not make crazy for himself.

In relationships yes, you are there for each other. But in relationships too -- you don't put up with silliness. There's a balance and we teach others how we want to be treated.

GL!

A.

oo yeah that sounds bad. i can kind of understand him lashing out the day after because he is probably under a lot of stress and pressure from the previous days events so you might want to be lenient there. BUT, some other people mentioned this too...why would he go out to dinner with his parents and let it be okay you aren't invited when you had plans at its your birthday? it could be because his parents are far away, but even if there is a good reason he handled it all wrong.

he also handled how he was upset with you all wrong as well. he refused to tell you anything was bothering him until it made him really upset then he wouldn't tell you what the problem was??? How will that fix anything? Sounds like when you guys get this sorted out you need to tell him relationships work on communication and that he needs to tell you if something is upsetting him or you will never know and can't fix it, and that goes for you as well but you haven't shown me you don't do that but thought i would throw it in there. My boyfriend and I still work on communication after 4 and a half years, especially because I'm an english and arts person and he's an engineer, we quite literally take words differently sometimes, lol.

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY!!

I'm so sorry your birthday didn't turn out at all. I come from a family where birthdays are a big thing and are celebrated every year on your birthday-day. So marrying a guy whose parents are like, oh let's have cake and here's some presents... but birthdays to them aren't really a big deal. Anyhow, I just wanted to say I know exactly how you feel about your birthday being a big letdown. Then on top of that, your bf's grandma has an emergency! Yikes! I can understand why he's upset, but it sounds like he is trying to put blame for things somewhere besides where they are due. Perhaps his parents really bothered him in not asking you to go to dinner initially as well? It's not fair to you for him to pass the blame and when he calms down I def suggest you talk to him about it.
I also wanted to say kudos for sticking with your plan and not letting it go down the drain. Let us know how you're doing.

Thank you ladies for the support and for letting me rant. It means a lot to have somewhere to go to get this kind of stuff out and not ruin my plan with emotional eating. As others have said, I don't think that all of what happened was specifically anyone's fault-- especially the emergency part, that never is-- but I do think that maybe I was the easiest place to put all of the blame. He has always had a tendency to stuff his emotions in until he can't take it anymore, and so have I, so when you mix that it's sometimes catastrophic. But I love him as a person, and we are trying to work through some of this together. He is acting normal today, but I'm still going to let things calm down for a while, also to make sure nothing else happens with his grandma before addressing the issue, because I don't want to make anything worse in the heat of the moment.

It doesn't help that this is the last week of school before "dead week" (the week before exams) which means that he and I have tests in just about every class and on top of that, my TOM is supposed to show up tomorrow. But I have 2 pounds left to make it to my next mini-goal of no longer being overweight, so I'm not going to let all of this drag me into ruining it. I just talked myself out of a giant slice of pizza for lunch! I'm sure things will calm down eventually.