A person who is in love with a significant other would do anything for them, but what are the statutes of limitations when it comes to generous acts?
One individual found out the hard way that spending a sizeable amount of money on the person they love could backfire epically.
After their generosity affected their relationship, they visited the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITA) subReddit to seek judgment from strangers online.
There, Redditor Abject_Guarantee_349 asked:
“AITA for secretly paying off my girlfriends debt?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“Recently I’m having a big fall out with my girlfriend of four years and I don’t understand why she’s angry. I have this amazing girlfriend we’ll call Amy. She’s the best girl you’ll ever meet she’s kind, understanding, and makes the best omelette in the world.”
“She’s very poor though has always been she was raised by a single mother and they struggled all her childhood. I come from the opposite type of style I know I’m very privileged but me and her have been friends for years after a chance meeting.”
“She has always been a great girlfriend and we don’t argue often but when we do it’s about money not as you would think she just doesn’t like when I spend money on her and I can’t understand it. I would gift her nice jewelry and she always seemed to dislike it.”
“Me being love struck upgraded and I brought her a new car we got in a big argument that time and she told me she didn’t want me to waste money on her she’d rather me spend that type of money on something important but she is important and I want to spoil her.”
“I learned that she appreciated things more if they were directly given to her. If I brought myself a necklace and didn’t like it she would accept it so I started buying her things pretending they were for me and I didn’t want them she would accept and things were going good.”
The OP continued:
“I want to propose soon but she wants to pay off her debts first so we have a clean slate to start on. I’ve known this since the beginning she works hard to pay them she doesn’t pay rent or any utilities in my house I don’t let her even if she tries.”
“Last week with the help of her mother I paid off her student loans I thought it would be a nice gift to her considering it was her birthday but once everyone left she blew up on me like never before.”
“I’ve never seen her so angry she told me I crossed a line that she was working hard to pay it off and I ruined that and I was a jerk for involving her mom in my schemes. What she really said that stuck with me was.”
‘You can’t understand why I’m angry because you’ve never had to struggle and you’ve never felt the pride of finally doing something yourself.’
“And even then I didn’t understand she ended up leaving and she’s at her mom’s house. I can’t understand why I’m losing her I can’t I pay the debt but I don’t want to lose her. I just want her to live in comfort and I want to marry her.”
“Now that a few days have passed I’m getting anxious and I’m starting to feel like a real jerk for invading her privacy. Our whole house is decorated to her taste and it smells like her but she’s not here each time I realize that I feel more and more stupid.”
“I’ve never felt like such a jerk before even if I don’t think I did anything wrong so am I the a**hole for paying off my girlfriend’s debt without consulting her.”
Anonymous strangers weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
People shared their varied judgments.
“Ok love. I understand you want to give the world as you know it to your gf and that your gf wanted to accomplish this goal before getting married. You doing this without talking to her comes off as manipulating her into your world without her consent.”
“AT THE SAME TIME, hyper-independence is a trauma response of always having to work HARD for everything in your life and not trusting anyone to help you. And most importantly, it’s from learning the hard way and deeply believing that nothing comes for free, she will feel like its pity or charity, or she now owes you. That’s why she might struggle with you doing nice things for her.”
“The answer is apologize and tell her that you want to understand and then truly listen and genuinely be curious about her reasoning. Then tell her that giving her things makes you feel happy and it’s how you like to show you care for her, ask her if there are things she can simply let you do for her.”
“Stop pretending things are for you and do not lie, that will only break the trust she’s slowly building.”
“No A’s here. Wishing you the best.”
“Edit to add: NAH and OP, please read the notes below about therapy (together and individually) and striving to understand. Good luck!” – Aiywa
“OP wants to do a really nice thing for her but because they don’t come from a poor background, they don’t understand how important it is to feel self-sufficient. OP needs to understand that and to understand that when one has always struggled to keep things afloat, it feels like a waste of money to buy stuff that isn’t necessary.”
“You are right: OP needs to make a heartfelt apology and to listen to her; they need to understand about the pride involved in paying off debt: it’s hard, it takes years but when you’ve done it it is a truly amazing achievement. (source: done just that!) It’s a validation of your success, determination, responsibility.” – ShineAtom
“Okay YTA but it seems like you genuinely don’t know why so I’ll explain…”
“You and your gf have extremely different life experiences and because she grew up without money and you apparently have lots of money, that’s something she’s self conscious about (probably, putting myself in her shoes as a person who grew up poor).”
“You keep paying for things for her and it’s easy for her to think you see her as some kind of charity case. Plus she doesn’t want to put herself into a position where your loved ones and friends could possibly call her a gold digger (not saying they would do that but she’s trying to avoid even the chance of it).”
“She has told you, by the sounds of it more than once, that she DOES NOT want you spending lots of money on her. You did it anyway so not only did you completely disregard her request you stomped on a goal she was trying to meet through hard work and determination (paying off her debt). Yes you did it for what you thought was for good reasons but you did it for you, not her.”
“You assume she wants fancy jewellery and a flash car but guess what, when you grow up poor that stuff can make you feel really uncomfortable and ill at ease.”
“The fact you cannot see her perspective at all, despite being with her for four years, tells me you have done nothing to truly understand her life and her mentality towards money and wealth.”
“And to rope her mum in to help you do it in secret (because you knew she’d never accept it, come on let’s be honest) makes it even worse. Now you have her distrusting her only parent because she went behind her back and colluded with you.” – chasingkaty
“Like 99% YTA. Her part of it is so small that I’m going to leave it at YTA.”
“She has made it clear that she doesn’t want big expensive gifts time and again. You just made it obvious that a marriage with you will just be more of you ignoring what she wants in favor of what you want to give her. No means no, even when it’s financial. If someone specifically told you not to help then it’s not helping when you step in to assist anyway.”
“Her tiniest of smidges of being the issue in this situation is that she needs to accept that part of being in a relationship is to be able to depend on each other in many ways including financially. People who had to make do with less because there was no help available often have issues with accepting help when it becomes available, even to their own detriment.”
“However, you don’t get to dictate when she decides she is comfortable with that. It’s possible that all she wanted was to pay off her own loans herself and then she would move forward with you as a unit and not as individuals. You didn’t want to wait for that and used your money to rush the process and now she has no personal metric to decide you are entering the next phase of your lives on equal grounds.”
“If it’s not clear, she’s upset that she specifically told you to stay out of it and you didn’t. For someone that claims to love her, you don’t seem to actually care about how she feels as long as other people can look at her situation and think she’s doing well. As her boyfriend you should have cared more about how she’s doing emotionally and not care about how other people think she’s doing financially.” – Duncan_sucks
Overall, Redditors didn’t view the OP favorably for not being mindful of her previous protests in spending money on her.
To go behind her back and conspire with her mother to alleviate her financial burden just made things worse and was seen as a huge betrayal.