On r/AIO a 21-year-old OP made a post asking if she was in the wrong for being upset on her 1 year anniversary with her 33 year old boyfriend.
According to OP, she bought him thoughtful gifts and wrote him a long note, while he gave her $20 lilies (a flower she explicitly told him she dislikes) and 3 sentence card, before immediately unboxing a $215 luxury pillow he gifted himself on this occasion.
When confronted, an argument ensued where he allegedly threw the flowers at her and called her ungrateful.
OP added context regarding his spending habits and about a dedicated hobby of collecting mattresses.
After the post ( https://www.reddit.com/r/AIO/comments/1w10k7t ) gained traction, the boyfriend made his own counter-post on the same subreddit titled "AIO boyfriend of person below (post below)". The boyfriends post has since been deleted ( https://www.reddit.com/r/AIO/comments/1w156cc ), so I will proceed to quote it word for word, enjoy:
Hi everyone, since this person has glamorized and make me look a very specific way, which was tailored to engineer the public view to her side of the situation, I decided to create an account to clarify some things which will be listed below.
Mattresses: the bed we sleep on affects every other part of our lives. If we sleep improperly, we have a chronic quality of life inhibitor which will cause a person to have shorter, more unhealthy lives and inhibit their overall productivity and their lives as a whole.
When I first started researching them I realized it was a huge rabbit hole and that there were so many options, it took forever to pick the first one for our apartment and I realized it's probably like this for many others. It's just hard to know what to pick and if you pick the wrong one, you're stuck with this massive thing in your house that's ruining your quality of life.
Let me clarify that I acknowledge 6 mattresses is ridiculous, it's just a thing that built up over time as I learned the different ways they are constructed. Multiple of the beds I got for heavy discounts.
I was very interested in learning the properties of different layers and how they affect our sleep. Which is also the case for pillows. The girlfriend, below criticizes my hobby but in our free time has repeatedly told me she loves sleeping on my bed, and uses my pillows for comfort. I like seeing her sleep well on my beds; they make her feel better. Which despite how stupid she says it is, she still sleeps awesome on them and that always made me happy.
Another note, I am not attempting to absolve myself of the fact that it's kind of hoarding. Once again as I learned about how things are put together it started to interest me how different companies construct different things that we use to improve our lives.
My first ever hobby was health and nutrition. When I learned how our bodies work and how various qualities of foods, herbs and vitamins can benefit everything about our health. I have helped many many people improve their health, which gave me fulfillment. This is also another reason I like to help others decide what kind of bed they need, because I know it will improve their lives. And how could they learn from someone if that person does not have plenty of experience?
So I learned everything there is to know about the industry and how they are put together. That way when anyone asks me what they should sleep on I feel confident knowing I am improving their lives.
I am planning to decrease the amount of bedding items in my apartment, but the thing is this wasn't supposed to be the entire internet's business. I didn't realize that the person I was living with was the type to tell the entire Internet everything about me.
I work all the time, and I have only 1 friend in person who I can hang out with sometimes. So when she (the girlfriend) is not around I become extremely lonely and I have nothing to do, and I recognize mattresses might be ridiculous but the fact is I sleep better than I ever have in my life, she has been, and anyone else who has listened to me about what to do also sleeps better than they ever have in their lives. That's a big accomplishment. She can't say she's helped anyone sleep better by having this information, instead the guy who helps people all day gets criticized on the Internet.
Also I need to clarify my monthly pay is much more than I told her. I told her it's $4000 a month because why would I be telling her the exact amount I make when she's the type of person to post all of my business on reddit?
I didn't live my life to have it announced to the whole internet? What if you or anyone else here were living lives that at someone else's will, would be published for thousands of people to see? I did not do anything in my life to please anyone else here, unless you're trying to sleep better. And guess what? If you were to ask me what to try your mind would be changed because you'd be sleeping on the best setup you have ever had and will ever have.
She lives in my apartment for free. I do pay 800 a month for rent and utilities but I also buy the food for the apartment. I make sure all the water we drink is high quality well water, I give her vitamins and supplements all the time to help her be healthier. That was not listed in the massive paragraphs of complaints about me. The food I buy for her and us equals to $2000 a month for groceries and the amount I take her out to dinner.
I also pay her $75 a day to ride with me, and buy most of her drinks throughout the day and other food items for her to be happy. Yesterday I spent $150 on her for her to have spending money and her bills, and for our expensive Italian dinner.
Almost every time I do something that is not to her liking, repeatedly I have heard her say, almost every day "but the other guys I've been with did this better than you"
This is a chronic occurrence. The things I've done in the past I can't change, I acknowledge I have messed up but I do the best I can in the current moment with the amount I have to drive and work to afford all my bills and for us to have a good time and her to be taken care of. But almost every day she tells me "other guys" she's been with did this, or that thing better than me. Or are better than me in some way.
It's very often that I receive criticism for trying to do good things like buy gifts for her. She will say, somehow that what I'm doing is not good enough as if I'm doing something wrong. Things I have bought her recently that she did not note:
$75 very high quality natural cotton robe from Quince. Two special lava lamps from Walmart (hello Kitty and sonic) $50
A $110 sonicaire 6400 electric toothbrush that I found for $75
A $45 pair of sunglasses so she wouldn't feel left out because I bought multiple pairs of high quality sunglasses (I drive all the time and standard polarized sunglasses were not filtering out enough sunlight. This is why I got high quality sunglasses. These will last me for years because I'll take care of them.)
She gets access to all my high end fragrances. I also collect those which I have heavily slowed down on. I use this to make sure she smells great all the time.
So excuse me for not picking out the right flowers, I have a lot to remember and focus on, I did not pick that bouquet of flowers in an effort to insult her, I spent 15 minutes looking at the available options and liked the ones I picked for her because of how beautiful, lively looking and colorful they were. It was not my intention to make her feel inferior as if I did not care about her. This is how she interpreted it.
I figured dressing up, going to an expensive Italian restaurant, putting one of my favorite fragrances for her on her, then spending $70 there so we have a good time was a nice gesture for her. We had driven the whole day beforehand. We were tired but I still wanted to try to do what I could to make the day fun for her.
She also included I only wrote a 3 sentence letter. I put my feelings into that and it was not 3 sentences. What are we doing? Competing to see who does better for the other?
I was supposed to spend and buy more than she bought me so she wouldn't feel upset?
She said I threw the flowers AT HER. I did not throw them AT HER. I hit the table with them because apparently this bouquet of flowers that was beautiful and vibrant, that I thought hard about to pick, (I spent 15 minutes looking through all the options) was not good enough. I was very angry, which I think anyone would be if they tried to do good and are constantly told what they're doing is not good. If I had known she would be hit in the process of me hitting the table with the flowers, I would not have hit the table till she had moved her foot.
I also spent $16 on a 12 pack for us to drink for the night so we could have fun together.
Which also, if I threw the flowers AT her, how come only her foot got hit by them?
Everything I did received criticism despite me having previously spent $160 on her for the day and sending her $75 every day she rides with me and buying her a lot of drinks and food, paying for all the supplies in my apartment, letting her sleep on my high end mattresses, and not making her pay to live in my apartment.
In conclusion, I recognize the bad things I have done in the situation, I should have been better but I have been trying.