AITA for telling my boyfriend I would have preferred lunch over groceries when his card declined at the store?
Today, my boyfriend (30m) and I (30f) were working from home, and we didn’t have many groceries at home to cook a decent meal with. My boyfriend offered to go get me lunch as I was quite hungry but busy with work, a very nice offer which I joyfully accepted, asking for some $11 sushi from the grocery store. After a rather long period of time (the store is about 5 minutes away, and he came back after ~40 min), he comes back with a bag of groceries such as cherries, a block of cheese, Cheerios, milk, a jar of capers, a rather hodge podge grouping of items. He explained how his card declined as he’s been having some issues with incorrect fraud charges, so he called the bank etc but they couldn’t immediately authorize a larger charge. He only had $40 to spend on the car, so he got the groceries instead.
I listened to this tale, a bit impatient as I was quite hungry by this point, and had been expecting the meal he said he would bring. As he concluded his story, I said (likely in a notably disappointed tone) “got it. I would’ve preferred lunch, to be honest. I’m going to go get the sushi.”
Boyfriend got pretty upset right off the bat, immediately raising his voice to say I was being ungrateful and that he could have made lunch with the items he had bought. I left (probably with eye-rolling energy tbh) to acquire my lunch and figured he might cool off, as it wasn’t that a big of a deal in my mind (I was bummed that I he told me he would do a nice thing for me and didn’t follow through, he was annoyed I wasn’t more grateful for getting groceries). When I got back, he said I was being a b*tch and that he was doing a nice thing and I should be appreciative. My response was to laugh at that reaction and then just leave the room as it seems so preposterous to me to have that large of a reaction to saying “I would have preferred lunch” in the middle of a busy work day.
In my view, if you tell someone you’re going to get them lunch when they’re hungry, you prioritize delivering on that offer because you stick to your word (or at a minimum, you shoot them a text to say it didn’t work out). I also think it’s within reason to express disappointment, and then move on. In his mind, I’m being really rude and ungrateful for his initial offer. (Noting that we frequently buy each meals, so it’s not an uncommon offer on either side). AITA?
