Bf using my birthday gift with another woman

[Pookie21]

My bf got us tickets to my favourite musical for my birthday in January, unfortunately we broke up shortly after for 6 weeks, but have now been back together a month. The show is next week, I’ve organised my kids but bf told me yesterday as he couldn’t get a refund he asked friends & is now taking a female friend instead (I vaguely know of her). AIBU in thinking that as the tickets were my main birthday gift he should either have given me both to use or cancel taking the woman & take me as they were part of my gift & we are back together?
he says she helped him out by agreeing to come so doesn’t want to change her plans but if I were her I’d be happy to stand down as it was a special gift for us to enjoy together, it feels like he’s putting another woman’s feelings over mine.

@Pookie21 I'm afraid you've lost the tickets.

Now lose the 'boyfriend' permanently

"My bf got us tickets to my favourite musical for my birthday in January"

"but they are for my favourite musical, for us to go together, for my birthday present 😬 "

These were your birthday present? In which case, when you split up the tickets should have been in your possession not his - because they were no longer his, he'd gifted them to you.

"this is the second time he’s prioritised another woman friend over me & my feelings, when this happened last time he said he didn’t care enough about the whole situation to let it bother him so I should feel the same. I made it clear he had upset me & I felt my feelings were invalid to him but he just didn’t/wouldn’t get it so I think that’s also why this feels a bit ‘off’"
Jesus wept! Stop being such a fucking doormat and bin this oxygen thief! He is not worth your time. Every time you let him away with bhaving so shittily to you, you just give him permission to do it again.

Get rid.

Except they were her birthday gift so he should have given then to her. Who hangs on to godfather have given ?

I’d be more worried that he doesn’t seem bothered that you’re unhappy and he doesn’t seem to be prioritising you.

If he is trying to make amends for past behaviour I think I would expect him to show this by explaining the situation to the other friend he’s going with and saying this was OPs present. Yes she might be cross but for me that would be a price worth paying if I was really committed to making the relationship with OP work again.

And I would be really wary of people who tell you how you should be feeling and whether you should be ok with something.

He ignored your one rule regarding SA?

Dump him. He is not a good man.

Op this makes me sad for you. He is supposed to be proving himself and you will be sat at home while he is off enjoying your present with someone else. You only broke up for a few weeks...he could have given you the two tickets to let you enjoy your gift if he didnt think you woupd go together

This is not about random internet input its about you and your boundaries

He sounds like a guy who behaved really badly already and is now not showing much commitment to your happiness.

Please focus on whether or not this relationship meets genuine high standards of your own trust and happiness

For goodness sake just sack him off, he's not changed, he won't change, you deserve better.

Just to update, I sent him a voicenote yesterday saying actually, now I’d had time to process it, I wasn’t happy with the new arrangement & I still had work & childcare sorted & assumed we’d still be going together as it was his birthday present to me, for us to use together.
he said we could talk tonight as he was busy last night, so I was very brave (for me) said that fine but I hoped he understood & agreed with me as we both agreed to prioritise us & our relationship - I was very careful with my wording so he didn’t feel I was giving him an ultimatum or anything, more an assumption he would still take me.
he replied this morning saying yes he did agree with me & he would sort it all today.

thank you to everyone for your help advice & support, I understand it all sounds quite difficult & dramatic written in one place so I understand everyone advising me to leave. I’m not ready to do that but I will continue trying to be more assertive & also raise a few things with him when I see him in person because yes he definitely hasn’t been more caring towards me & that was one of the main issues before that he promised to work on.
thank you all xx

he replied this morning saying yes he did agree with me & he would sort it all today.

If by that he means he’s going to ask the woman back for her ticket I’m slightly embarrassed for him but on the bright side (for her ) she’ll probably ditch him as a friend tbh

Well it's not her ticket is it, it's OPs. It wasn't his to gift. If she does ditch him as a friend it should be because he was a dick to give it to her, not because he shouldn't be giving the ticket back to its actual owner.

I look forward to your update after this evening, and ' the chat / proposal of what he has sorted '

meanwhile, I would suggest that you don't get your hopes up.

as ' I was very careful with my wording so he didn’t feel I was giving him an ultimatum or anything '

is treading on eggshells...

100% he is going to come back and say the ticket is already in her name and non transferable or some rubbish.

No OP this is not how loving relationships should work. You are under no obligation whatsoever to do something for him that he loves if you don’t want to do it. No decent man would coerce you into doing something you don’t want to do. He is abusive. I wish you could realise this OP.

The tickets really are the least of your problems.

This ^

If he knows you don’t want to do it, that should kill his pleasure stone-dead. If he cared about you, he wouldn’t want you to do something that makes you so uncomfortable. He is a very selfish man and not worth hanging on to.

You've only been back together for a month...so how long did he stop asking for it for? a few days? A week?
How do you think he would have reacted if you hadn't 'reduced your boundaries' so quickly?

I do hope for you that he has now sorted this out. Please remember there a people to support you if / when you decide it is time to call time on this relationship. You deserve to be supported and heard.

He did try & use the ‘we broke up’ argument last night but thanks to a lot of people on here advising me, I said we chose the date of the tickets together early Jan, they were my birthday present, he could have given/sold me my ticket & does that mean I could have taken his birthday/xmas gifts back or ask him for money towards what I spent taking him out for the day for his birthday…he agreed no, that would be a dickhead thing to do & unreasonable.
He asked if we’d have stayed broken up would I have expected him to take me & I reiterated that actually I think he should have offered me my ticket or even sold it to me, but actually that didn’t matter because we WERE back together, so it’s kind of a moot point
he said as he was letting his friend down he would be taking her out for the day so I said I hoped he had an alternate day out for us if I hadn’t used my ticket…
I told him I felt he’s been uncaring & unsupportive since the incident at the weekend & he apologised, and asked how best to support me/show me he cared in the future- obviously the weekend incident is (hopefully) a once in a lifetime experience so he will never have to support me/show he cares for something like that again, but I explained more how I deal with stress & some ideas/ways he could be there for me. We also realised that due to his race & location (which are very different to me) we’d ’crossed Wires’ with what he said/how he said it vs how I took it/understood it so hopefully that part is cleared up & in the future we both understand each other better.
I explained more about my ocd/anxiety/MH (I’m also diagnosed with borderline personality disorder & depression, but I’m not ready to share that) & how that affected eg the incident from the weekend but also my life in general, it’s the first time a man has actually asked me to explain so they could try & understand me better & the first time I’ve felt comfortable to go into detail (due to ex husband using my wobbly MH as a weapon to threaten to take my kids away if we broke up/tell me I’m crazy) so that might not be a big deal to some but to me that’s huge.
I also told him it’s unreasonable to keep throwing at me ‘but you broke up with me’ because I feel like his behaviour pushed me to do that & it’s very unhealthy when we are supposed to be trying to work on things to keep going back to that as some kind of competition of who hurt more. He apologised again (he did try the ‘sorry you feel that way’ BS but I said that wasn’t a proper apology & he changed it). I said I know it hurt him & that because of that he’s scared to trust our relationship/tell me how he feels but if we are going to move on we both need to shelf the blame etc & put effort into the future.
he is a lot more emotional than he says he is, I definitely need to take this into account but that’s quite hard when he’s telling me one thing because he was brought up saying men don’t cry or talk about their feelings but actually feels another way, he’s also still learning it’s ok to have emotions & also that I won’t throw it back in his face /try & wind him up if he does show me emotions.
i reminded him a massive part of us trying again was for him to work on his empathy/show me he cares & he agreed he needs to still work on that & asked how best to do that in certain situations.
all in all, it was a very helpful talk, we did butt heads a bit over a couple of things but eventually we talked it out & (hopefully) solved the main issues.
however…I am still taking into account everything some people said as I can see why they said it. I know our relationship isn’t perfect but I do think there’s more positives than negatives at the moment & whilst that is the case I want to keep trying. Hopefully I won’t regret it & everything he does to change/support me will encourage me to be more assertive if/when I need to be, so I can walk away with my head held high, knowing I tried everything if it comes to that. I am absolutely not going to get to the stage I was the last couple of months of our relationship previously.
thank you again to everyone for the advice & support as it really helped me

Nope. This man is no good. He won’t change and you’re so vulnerable.

I explained more about my ocd/anxiety/MH

so you gave him an excuse to behave badly 🙄

It sounds like you just gave him a whole lot of ammunition to use against you and lots of ideas for gaslighting you in the future.

Just to be clear, you are choosing to stay with a man who sexually coerces you, abandons you in times of stress, takes another woman out for your birthday and has to be told how to show empathy for you because he has none.

Do you have any friends or family in real life you can talk to, OP? I think you could really use a good friend.

' crossed wires ' oh yes ! not !!!

is the theatre tonight ? and is it you that is going with him

and his female friend is being taken out for the day, one day, instead ?

OP, would you want your partner to do something sexually that you knew made them uncomfortable or triggered a trauma response?

Would you still be aroused and turned on by your partner doing that thing sexually knowing they didn't really want to, were uncomfortable and upset by it and were only doing it because you like that specific sex act?

Of course not.

Because you're not a horrible, nasty, selfish cunt.

He wants to do something sexually with you that he knows you aren't comfortable with. If my partner knew that a sex act made me anxious, uncomfortable and stressed then he wouldn't remain turned on by doing that sex act with me.

The thought of me being anxious, uncomfortable and stressed would be more than enough to make him not want me to do it at all, even if he had enjoyed it with previous partners. Because he cares about me and respects me. That's nothing special, it should be a basic expectation in a relationship.

I'll ask you again - would you want your partner to do something sexually that you knew made them uncomfortable or triggered a trauma response?

I think it’s weird he feels he needs to take his friend out for a day, sure she’s a friend? All a bit strange.

Yeah, that feels off too. Presumably the arrangements to go with her were made in the 3 weeks you weren't speaking. Which is very fast. It feels more like that he thinks you're going to break up with him again and he's setting her up to be the rebound.
He shouldn't need to 'make it up to her' if they're mutual friends and she had the unexpected surprise of being asked to go, he's not letting her down as there were no obligations or expectations in the first place,bits just something a mutual friend suggested that fell through. No foul.
If he insists he has to make it up to her that would make me apprehensive, if he really feels he has to then it should be to take her out to lunch / dinner or something, with you invited as well to be transparent and show how he's taking your feelings into consideration more.

I'm also concerned about the wanting to know the Why's behind your behaviour, I get where you feel the way you do, as you're used to cold-heartedness, but some manipulators will go the other way and want to know that stuff to use against you and gaslight you further, which is the vibes I'm getting from him.