AIO Husband forgets important dates, wife went on his phone
This week was mine and my husbands 3rd wedding anniversary (together for 10). He forgot and was reminded on the morning of it by a friend messaging us in a group chat. He printed a “card” out on printer paper and pretended he hadn’t forgotten. He then told me that he had ordered me a present days ago but that it hadn’t arrived yet.
I felt pretty suspicious because he’s got a bad track record of forgetting important dates. For example, he didn’t get me a Valentine’s Day card, and I had to remind him repeatedly about Mother’s Day. [important info - these aren’t the first instances of this and I have told him many times it makes me feel like an afterthought and that he doesn’t care about the things that are important to me and that it’s not about the materiality of it]
So anyways. I went to take him a cup of coffee and said you’re going to need to show me the date on the receipt of this hypothetical gift. I asked him to show me on his emails but he pulled up an Etsy confirmation which just had expected delivery dates on and not the actual order date, I tried to reach out to scroll but he pulled his phone away so I couldn’t.
That evening he was getting our toddler to sleep and had left his phone downstairs, so I went on it to see if he’d said anything to a friend. Lo and behold I find messages where he’s told his mate that he had totally forgotten and he feels icky but is proud of himself because he had photoshopped the Etsy page and tricked me. [more important info, I have never been on his phone before and didn’t flick through all his stuff, just the one conversation I knew I’d find an answer on]
He came back downstairs and I told him a found out he had lied, tricked me and then gloated about it. He asked how I found out and I said I went on his phone, he was so disappointed/angry/upset that I violated his privacy by going on his phone that he went out to have a few drinks.
Fast forward a few days of a very frosty environment at home and I have to sit him down to have another conversation about it. I’ve told him from my end that I’m sorry and that I won’t go on his phone again and that I didn’t realise how badly he’d react to it (I had wrongly assumed that because I’ve always said if he wants to go on my phone that he can, that it worked both ways)
He has apologised for missing our anniversary and explained that he had thought about what to get me, he just hadn’t got around to ordering it yet. My issue is that this is repeated behaviour where he says he will do better next time, but then doesn’t. It’s not so much about the actual anniversary, it’s that I’ve told him over and over that it’s important to me and that being ignored makes me feel like I’m being taken for granted.
He said he has no desire to “make it up to me” and isn’t going to make any effort to fix his mistake because it would be superficial and fake. He’s said that we’ll learn from this and grow as a couple, which I’m taking to mean that he’s taking for granted that I’ll stick around no matter how many times the same thing happens.
So we’re at a stalemate, am I overreacting? I want him to want to make it up to me, and would feel like I’m being walked all over if I just accept it.