Boyfriend (M21) had a bad reaction to a birthday gift, we got in a huge fight, I (F20) don't know if I overreacted

We have been dating for over a year now (since November 2017) and overall the relationship is super solid. We exchange I love you's and have a ton of fun together. 95% of the time there is really no issue, but his reaction to certain things and how he deals with conflict have been a source of stress for me.

So his birthday happened recently and my mother had gotten him a gift. Now my mom is an overly generous person, and the oven in his apartment currently does not work, so she gets him a low end toaster oven. I thought this was a really cool and thoughtful gift. I ended up lugging it over to his house still in the box, but you could clearly see that it was a toaster oven as it was still in its original packaging.

He immediately looks at it and says, "That better not be a toaster oven."

My heart kind of sank, and I snappily replied, "Well, it is."

He seemed genuinely annoyed about the gift. He complained that it would not fit in his kitchen and he didn't know what to do with it. Which is actually valid, there really isn't a ton of space, but it wouldn't be impossible to find room either. At the time, however, I was just so bothered by his reaction that I aggressively walked into a different room to cool off.

Part of the reason I was so upset by his reaction was because this is not the first time he has acted ungrateful when opening a gift. A couple months ago, a local store was having a really nice deal on some copper mugs. He really enjoys making cocktails, and was excited to go and buy them. As it turns out, they were sold out by the time we got there, and he was disappointed by it. I wanted to take this opportunity to surprise him, and so I went to a different store about a week later and bought him a set of copper cups, and I was really excited to give them to him. He opened the gift and was pretty unamused/ungrateful. He complained about them for awhile, and even brought up other things I should have gotten him. This (I believe understandably) upset me, and I thoroughly communicated this to him. I got a lot of explanations for his behavior, but never an actual apology.

So when he reacted this way, I just felt this deep anger. I just think it was an entirely uncouth reaction to a thoughtful gift. I would have been find with mild complaints, but outright annoyance at the gift put me on edge. He ended up saying that he was totally grateful and appreciative of the gift (he also texted my mom a nice thank you), but I couldn't feel that. We ended up having a mini fight and it ended with him exasperatedly saying that he "didn't want to fight about his reactions to presents anymore."

This is where it gets bad/ I am potentially in the wrong. I was totally mopey after this argument, and I was being a total debbie downer. But honestly, I was just not feeling it, I was genuinely upset at his reaction/ invalidation of my feelings. We ended up grabbing a bite to eat at a restaurant. We were having a normal conversation/things were going fine until I (stupidly) brought up that I was kind of afraid to give him my gift incase he didn't like it. He totally snapped at me. Like straight up yelled at me telling me to leave in the middle of the restaurant because I was being a "debbie downer". It was so embarrassing. I ended up whisper yelling at him to stop, and he did. I know I probably should have just gotten up and left, but I told him I would be better and that I would stop moping. Unfortunately, now I wanted to sob because being yelled at by your boyfriend in public really sucks.

Anyways, we cooled off and I ended up apologizing later for bringing up the present thing in the restaurant. He forgave me, and gave kind of a half assed apology for "getting angry" at me. I brought up the fight again a few days later, just because how he had yelled at me kind of shook me up, but he got super annoyed and said "You need to stop overthinking things and bringing things up. Me and my family sometimes get in fights and say horrible things to each other, but we just cool off and it's fine because we love each other." That's fine, but that's not how i deal with conflict. I like to communicate how something made me feel so that we can avoid hurt feelings in the future. I ended up giving in saying that "That is not my resolution style, but I'm willing to do it your way." and that was that.

ALSO: I want to add that he isn't ALWAYS like this. Sometimes he is totally grateful for the gifts I give him.

So did I overreact? Am I the responsible for this fight? Feel free to be brutally honest, would love some perspective.

Thanks for reading this far. :)

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tldr: Boyfriend has history of being ungrateful/super honest about gifts. My mom gave him a nice gift for his birthday, he had a bad reaction and I was personally upset about it. We fought multiple times about his reactions to gifts, and I ended up just conceding and letting it go. I am just wondering if I am in the wrong about any of this/ if I could have handled it better.

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Submitted February 25, 2019 at 09:56PM by highpitchedloathing https://ift.tt/2UaMt9K