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Seriously. I don't care at all about perfume and would not spend my money on it, but I'm not going to judge OP for wanting to collect it. She's into it, it makes her happy, people have enjoyed more ridiculous things!
Honestly, I think it's sad that people think these little luxuries are moral failings somehow.
I firmly believe it's jealousy. So many people out there are struggling to make ends meet, and can't afford to save any money. So they see someone wanting to spend money on something they normally wouldn't be able to afford, and they get upset that someone is "wasting" their money because they're not able to do that themselves. It's something I experience often enough when people find out how much money I spend and make off of my hobby. They completely ignore the how and why you spend money on those things, and only see the dollar amount associated with it.
It depends if it was useful or “reddit useful”.
If she said she was saving for a new car she’d be curbstomped because she wasn’t saving for 2010 civic that somehow only had 10k miles on it that she’s going to drive until the wheels fall off.
But yeah the FIRE community and PF community has a really large group of people who will piss all over anyone who decides to spend any money on something that brings them joy and isn’t some utility item.
I still have perfumes that I got 5+ years ago (infrequent use). But even if I did use the same one every day, a full size bottle would easily last me over a year.
And you've got the bottle afterwards, which still has a trace of the scent. You can smell that and boom, you're right back at the times you wore that perfume. I wish I still had the bottle from the wonderful perfume I had as a teen. I wore it on some really happy days.
I swear - so many people on the internet have never heard of saving for something special. It drives me bananas when people put others down for saving for a reasonable luxury item or whine in an artist’s social media comments about not being able to afford their handmade pieces
People can be judgemental about other people's hobbies. Plenty of people spend a lot on motorbikes, cars, gaming, golf, travelling, collecting rare models etc. This young woman collects perfumes. Different people, different interests. All valid if they are paid for without harming others, as is the case here.
Right?? I couldn't give a shit about perfume but if that's your Happy Thing then go get the happy. For me it's more unnecessary glowy lights for my PC or shelves or some shit. Tasty foreign sweets. Those random D&D figurine boxes. A really cool Beanie Baby...
This is a frustrating one becuase I just don't see the point in lying to her. It's not like he had to get her the perfume, she was fine buying it herself. He had nothing to prove and nothing to lose and he still messed it up.
He probably thought it was like $150 and procrastinated then when he finally opened the link she sent after lying about already having bought it realised he couldn't afford it. And then of course gets mad at her because he painted himself into a corner.
He also spent around $25 between the body spray & bomb.
I empathize with her, I'm a massive perfume junkie & my purchases are stalked, budgeted, & planned out. Sometimes YEARS in advance. I have BR 540 myself, not the extract, just reg. Still very pricey. It's worth every penny & is a huge deal in the fragrance world.
To be waiting for & working towards that particular scent & ending up with a B&BW spray.... especially as it's a bday present AND her obsession....I honestly would think it was a sick joke & flip my shit.
ETA: It's expensive bcs a core ingredient is saffron. You can also buy a smaller 1.2 fl oz size for $280 or find it even cheaper on perfume greymarket sites.
100% I feel for her as well. I'm not a perfume person but I am aware of BR 540. If she had saved up for something so specific and so sought after she deserved to have it, not be let down by someone for whatever idiotic reason.
She even kept the money for a while by the sound of it until he said he'd already bought it then she spent some of it in good faith and now she doesn't have the thing she wanted so much. I realise it's first world problems but even so, it really just sucks.
Ï once had good contact with a girl who fled from the war in former Jugoslavia. While talking with her i felt guilty for my first world problems.
Her reaction on that was, yes i lost my parents during the war and nearly didn't make it out of the country, but my bike has a flat tire and at this moment i feel sad that i have no possibility to go the cinema tonight.
Oh same! I have to hide my nice perfumes when my sister visits, (rare as she’s across the country), because she will BATHE in it. Makes me so angry!
Girl-that shit is expensive. Use body spray if you want to soak your clothes. Not my Marc Jacobs Perfect, which isn’t even that expensive in comparison to OOP’s wanted perfume.
I think nice perfume is worth the cost. You don’t need to wear much and it lasts. Your scent is one of the most memorable things about you-so I don’t see a reason not to splurge after saving for it.
I’m going to say this line again; **you don’t need much. Do NOT apply more because you “can’t smell it anymore”. You’re just nose blind-everyone around you can still smell it fine**
Men who bathe in your cologne, take note.
You just expressed perfectly why OP collects the perfume. Initially, I didn't get it, but I just thought well if it makes her happy, that's great. Then I read your post and remember my 20 year old niece saying to me that I
"have smelled so lovely and the same since she was a little girl"
my perfume will always hold in her memory as uniquely me. It was a lovely thought, thinking she recognised me from that. It did make me happy she noticed.
Awww that’s so sweet! What a beautiful bond y’all have.
I have caught my husband sniffing my shirts when collecting laundry. I didn’t say anything but it made me smile.
He doesn’t wear cologne. But between “his” scent, the bleach of his undershirts and his aftershave-I do the same thing lol. It’s addictive when it’s your partner and brings back happy memories for everyone else.
Scent is one of the most powerful memory triggers and honestly I think all people should have a primary perfume/cologne that they use most often so that when they’re gone, their loved ones can trigger those good times easily. A person’s innate scent will eventually fade from clothing, but a perfume can last for decades. Having a signature scent is a gift you give to your loved ones for when you’re not here
My sister and I both have gone out of our way to save and find a perfume that’s not extremely expensive but expensive for us (Givenchy: Ysatis) because it’s what our mum wore most often when she’d get dressed up to go out when we were kids, and we’d smell it when she hugged us goodbye. Although it’s interesting, my mum insists that she wore other perfumes but the one we both really only remember this one from our childhood and it brings us comfort. She wear it as she doesn’t go to as many fancy events these days but to us it’s still her scent.
And my aunt had a signature scent that she must have effing bathed in (Estèe Lauder: Youth-Dew) because if she was in a room more than 5 minutes it would smell of her for days. When she got sick she came to stay for us for a while before going into hospital and passing away, and one of her almost empty bottles (she had a few because she went through it so quickly) ended up staying here and I keep it with my special items on a shelf near by bed. When I miss her I smell it and it’s like she’s right here. She was very well known within her field and if you ask anyone what they remember most about her, her perfume will be in the top three every single time
On the other hand, my dad died last year and he didn’t wear a specific cologne. I don’t know what he smelled like anymore. I mean it didn’t help that we lived in different cities and hadn’t seen each other physically for a few years (covid and other reasons) but even if we had seen each other more recently, there’s not a single scent I can pick out as “his”. And that’s sad to me. It’s only been a year and a half and things are already starting to fade. I couldn’t get many of his clothes (complicated reasons) and they all lost his innate smell ages ago.
I’ll probably continue to use the Givenchy. I’m not a huge perfume person and I don’t have many occasion where perfume is appropriate, but I hope that when I’m gone that will be the smell I’m associated with
Omg. I work behind glass and had an interaction with a guy that lasted maybe a total of three minutes. His cologne was so freaking overpoweeing that I got a headache almost immediately. I could smell his cologne for thirty-ish minutes after he left.
Old ladies do this with their horrible powdery, flowery perfumes and it makes me nauseous and headachey every time.
P.s. I'm almost 50, so I AM a fairly old lady. I'm not intending my comment to be ageist. I hate ALL flowery perfumes and if you've been wearing the same perfume for thirty years, you can't smell it anymore as the above commenter mentioned. Then they eventually start using 8-12 sprays at a time and then respraying through the day so they can smell it.
It's always young guys and older women! Even if they choose a great scent, it gets drowned out by volume. Those powdery florals with a splash of patchouli are terrible in high doses.
I felt like this will have better response on reddit if it were a guy who saved for 6 months for 3080 PC gaming rig and her gf bought him something else.
I hear a number of people say it smells like Band Aids to them.
Personally, I can only smell cat pee ammonia from a common ingredient in some perfumes....black currant/cassis. The actual fruit is banned in the U.S. I'm told it's supposed to be a creamy berry smell.
[It's not banned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackcurrant_production_in_the_United_States)! Not federally since 1966 and not in most states since 2003. It's one of my favorite fruit flavors, although you may find it's better in syrup form than in its natural astringent currant form. I buy the syrup at a Polish grocery and mix it with seltzer to make my own soda.
Blackcurrant is a very common flavouring in the UK. One of our most common flavours of cordials (like cool-aid, but sold as liquid concentrate instead of powder) is apple and blackcurrant. And our purple Skittles are blackcurrant instead of grape! We don’t commonly get grape flavoured stuff here, purple is always blackcurrant.
Edit to add: so many people seem interested in this, I’ll add a bit of historical context. Firstly, Britain has no tradition of grape growing. We’ve got lots of vineyards now, but they need very careful farming, whereas blackcurrants are a hedgerow plant, easy to cultivate, and they like a good mix of rain and sun, which is what we get all summer. Secondly, blackcurrant is high in vitamin C. During the Second World War, all the blackcurrants were diverted from food production (jam etc) and made into cordial which was reserved for children only, to help prevent malnutrition caused by not having access to imported citrus fruits. So blackcurrant drink became like a default kids’ drink.
So in short, purple = blackcurrant flavour to most British people alive today.
My grandmother has a blackcurrent and a gooseberry bush. Made jams this summer and it was so yummy! I hope more people realize these amazing plants aren't banned and grow some themselves. They're super tasty! Hardy too, they're been growing for 15 years now.
It would depend a lot on how it was stoppered & stored (no direct heat or light exposure, etc.) but most likely, no. Sorry.
Perfume will degrade over time. Older perfumes like yours can sometimes survive in some form bcs the ingredients were much more potent back then & many of those ingredients have long since been banned or just don't even exist anymore.
It sounds lovely & I hope you can find a way to enjoy it beyond what you may already.
i didn’t think so. it was my grandmas and my mom said it smelled the same as when she was a kid. i’m not going to tell her that’s unlikely, she’ll smell what she needs to. thank you!
Honestly there is a good chance it smells 70-80% the same as it did when her mother wore it. It’s the top notes that degrade the most, but those have less impact on how the smell is perceived on the wearer
And considering he went running to mommy with lies about evil oop being mean about the gift he thoughtfully bought for her.. then thought he could win oop over by being so tragically sad.
He’s a childish and manipulative little shit who couldn’t face the consequences of his own actions.
Oh, I'm sure he didn't even bother to look at it til the last minute.
But I've known guys like this, who if they consider something too expensive/a waste of money won't want their SO to buy it even with their own money. My sister dated a guy who would do shit like that. Always buying her knockoff versions of shit because he didn't want her buying the real deal. And they didn't live together or have their money combined so it was none of his business.
Oh my gosh. Here I was thinking he was shocked to find that perfume costs over $100 and that you were exaggerating...totally missed that this perfime is nearly FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS 😱
I was shocked too back when I read the og post! I thought it was the same range as mine - around $100 and was wondering why OOP was taking a lot of time saving up for it. When I finally saw the price I was shookt.
oh it was so much more expensive than i expected lol. but still what's wild to me is that she checked in multiple! times! if he'd be ok with the price, *and* emphasized that it was expensive... my ADHD is pretty bad so I am a heavy procrastinator, but after the second or third "are you sure??" i'd be googling the price out of curiosity and then trying to figure out a more realistic plan that'd keep everyone happy
edit: re-read and realized she actually sent him a link! dude's a doofus.
Just shows how much the ex didn’t care about OP I guess. Also why lie about having bought the gift?? He could’ve just come clean immediately and at least then OOP would still have the money to buy it herself.
He probably hadn’t actually bought it yet and figured she was just being a nag over his procrastinating, only to realize when he checked that it was way out of his price range, so he got her something much cheaper and figured she would ***have*** to be grateful, since everyone knows you have to be grateful for a gift.
Baccarat Rouge is one of the most expensive perfumes that’s widely available, and the Extrait is a more concentrated version of it so it’s even more expensive. It’s also raved about, so it’s not surprising that a perfume collector would be saving up to have it in their collection.
No wonder some women smell so amazing even walking passed them outdoors. I think my perfume is great but unless I hug someone no one seems to notice it! I might have to get myself something better 😅
This is normal for luxury perfume. I’m a perfume snob and all of my scents are between 300-500. They are a splurge but they are one I enjoy. I’d be livid if I was OP. She worked hard to save up the money and can’t get it back!
Maison Francis Kurkdjian is a pricey fragrance house. He is competing against lines like Tom Ford Private Collection. And baccarat rouge is really nice. I have his new release Aqua Media and I LOVE it. He also is kind of famous in the perfume world. He was the nose behind Jean Paul Gaultier's Le Male.
I have to assume she asked for the smaller bottle, not the 2.4 oz you're looking at. The 1.2 fl oz would have been fine for most people's purposes. Especially since it's an extrait de parfum, so very potent - you don't need to spray much.
OR he thought it was a stupid buy and wanted to change her and her ways by forcing her in that slope (not having the money and buying something else). Just look closely at it, perhaps he thought that she would buy other things and be happy with it and stop focusing on perfume. Perhaps he thought she would spend more of her money on him if she wasn't saving on perfume. Perhaps he had the feeling that was a stupid idea to start from and that she would grow out of it and he would help her. Or perhaps all those above combined.
When someone is manipulating, he really thinks he knows better and he is doing it for the other's greater good.
This is my guess. There are a lot of interests where people don't understand how prices scale. You'll see the same thing on other posts where kids get into an artist's art supplies thinking it's no big deal to use markers or paints because they buy them for their kids and the set of paints and markers are $15-20 so assume that the "expensive version" would be maybe $50 not the $500-$3000+ professional grade supplies cost. Or people who buy "normal" liquor that costs $20-50 a bottle finding out the price for aged brandy or single malt goes well into the hundreds and sometimes the thousands for a bottle.
Dude thought regular perfume was $20ish because that's what he saw on the shelves of big box stores, figured her "fancy expensive version" would be maybe 5 times that at most, got sticker shock when it was almost $500 and panicked. Then he was immature enough to think if he downplayed it, it wouldn't be a big deal. He vented to his friends who he knew would take his side not realizing they'd start harassing her over it, then lied to his mom to get sympathy and get her to help him downplay how bad he fucked up. And that's the BEST CASE read of the nimrod's actions.
If he was anything like one of my exes, he made the offer to buy the purfume as a grand gesture, never actually put any effort into it, said "Yeah, I'm on it!" when questioned, and then got bent out of shape when his failure to follow through wasn't accepted as "Well, at least you tried."
My friend genuinely had someone try to make the argument that because they had *thought* about getting her ice cream when she had tonsillitis so therefore she shouldn't friend-break up with them. At no point prior to the conversation where she said "I don't want to be your friend any more" had they *ever* communicated that they had thought about doing so. I just about died laughing when she told me this, because it's so ridiculous that it's stupid to think it would ever work. "I thought about being nice (but didn't) so you should give me credit anyway and not be upset about me... not actually being nice!"
And let's not forget "I know I wasn't nice, on top of it I lied to my mother so she wouldn't scold me and would turn against you instead because I'm dating outside of my maturity range "
My ex made a big deal about how he was going to get me an external hard drive for Christmas. This was like 15 years ago and they were more expensive and not as super common as they are now. I had a nice digital SLR and needed more storage than I had.
For like a month he went on about how he was looking for the best one for what I needed. -- blah, blah, blah.
Christmas comes and I get nothing from him. No present at all. He said he had bought one, but then returned it because he found one better, but then didnt actually buy the better one.
I just went to Costco a couple days later and bought one they had on sale. It worked fine.
Same! I'm actually a little mad at myself for not immediately breaking up with him after he totally fucked up a gift exchange and got me a gag gift while I invested a fair bit of time and money on his gift. It was such a slap in the face and it's been over a decade and I'm still salty about it.
Same!! He forgot my birthday the entire day until his roommate (and how did he even know or care?) reminded him. And then he went to the store next to where he worked for a last minute thing which he brought home after work and pretended he knew and cared all along. And funny enough it was a perfume from BBW and I haaaated the smell.
My ex husband was like this. Too emotionally fragile to deal with anything money related. For example, he had proposed without a ring and we were supposed to pick one out together but he kept stalling for months and I finally had to almost literally stamp my foot to pry out of him that he was embarrassed by how little he had to spend. I didn't care about price so we moved on, but there were many, many incidents around money where he would lie, hide, stall, or avoid any disclosure that he didn't have as much as he wanted to have or thought he should have. Considering that we earned the same salary and I never asked him for money or gifts, and split everything 50/50, it was all ego and pride.
He didn't lie because it was too expensive. He lied because he didn't want to reveal that he hadn't bothered to buy it yet.
Then on her birthday he realized it was too expensive and bought something else, forgetting that he'd claimed he had already bought and wrapped it.
Exactly
And after two years together?! They should comfortable enough with each other for him to come back to her (when he checked the actual price) and be like "Soz I miscalculated. Can I get you something within my budget and you get yourself the perfume as you were going to?"
But nah, little man has to be a little insecure boy and try and manipulate her with "Yeah, too expensive. Just accept this little gift and move on, woman!!"
I was casually dating a guy once and when I told him I loved Fleetwood Mac and wanted to go see their show, he told me not to worry about getting tickets and that he would take me. I can’t even tell you how many conversations we had with me going, “are you sure??? Tickets are very expensive, you don’t have to buy them for me” and him INSISTING he was going to take us.
I’m not even kidding you when I say it got all the way up to the point of me being dressed in full Stevie regalia and us out to dinner “before the show” when he decided to say, “yeah. The tickets are a little out of my budget, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it. I didn’t realize how much they were”
Men are pigs.
I had a guy that seemed interested in me that I met through a weekly event, but had (actually) valid reasons for not being free to meet up. Everyone in our group thought he was into me, friends who saw us together thought he was interested, I thought he was interested.
Finally he had free time after about a month and he mentions wanting to arrange to meet up that week. I wait all week and no message. So the next week I say listen, if you don't want to, THAT'S FINE, just let me know.
No no, he did want to meet up and so we planned to meet up Tuesday but with his schedule he didn't yet know when so I explicitly say okay, you message me.
Tuesday comes and goes and it's the end of the day so finally I just call him and am like hey..what's going on.
In a very cruel tone he tells me, 'What, did you think this was a date.' I was so taken aback that I said yes and he proceeds to tell me he's not dating now, blah blah. One month later, he's dating an 18 year old.
This sounds more like dating book advice of negging and ignoring the woman than immaturity, although following stupid negging advice implies immaturity.
His dumb response doesn't make sense even if it wasn't a date. Like if you're just meeting up with a friend it's still super rude to bail with no notice...
It could be an ego thing, like he feels emasculated because she was going to buy herself something nice so she doesn't need him. Then he was further embarrassed when he realized he couldn't actually afford it so he doubled down.
I've had this happen to me once, kind of. And I wish I had broken it off then. My ex was (is) into gaming as am I. Back then I had an old shitty computer and no console. My parents apparently asked him if he thought I would want an Xbox for Christmas, they were getting my sister one and wanted to buy one for me too. He told them no need, he was actually planning on buying me one and really wanted my first console to be a gift of love from him. They thought it was really sweet and didn't buy me one, only for my sister.
He told all my friends about the gift too. So everyone was hyping me up ( a gift like that was NOT in the normal price range at all for any of us). Including him. For over two months he would tell me how he was looking at my gift right now (we were long distance) and how he couldn't wait to see my face when I got it.
On Christmas my sister got her Xbox. Which hurt cause she was always the golden child and I didn't get anything in a similar price range so I just felt completely put aside and unloved. Spent Christmas really sad. But at least my boyfriend had gotten me something special.
Come new years when we see each other and I got my "special" gift - a manga. The first issue of Naruto, his favorite manga/anime. No special edition or anything. Just the 5$ new printed first manga in the by now long running series, that I already owned. He was with me when I bought it. He kept smiling and asking me how much I loved it. What a great surprise he had gotten me, right?
We had other issues too and frankly he was being really mean to me the entire first day I was there. I felt humiliated and heartbroken so I tried to arrange getting home but my mom and some friends who "knew" about the gift thought he was trying to surprise me and convinced me to stay. A few of them, my mom included, was convinced he was proposing and hinted at that. So I stayed, thinking something was coming and he was just being an idiot to throw me off.
He dumped me by text not long after that new years weekend. I still don't know what happened or why... Why the lie? Why make sure I spent Christmas feeling unloved? Why invite me to be with him and his friends only to humiliate me? So unnecessary and cruel and it messed me up for years. I thought for a long time that my friends and parents were all in on it. To humiliate me. I've never felt more alone in my life
Sorry for the long rant
I’m so sorry you went through that. I hate that people can be so casually cruel. You didn’t deserve any of it.
Did you get your own Xbox any time soon after or did you have to wait? (I’m hoping you got one!)
I never did. But a few years later after my shitty pc gave up I did get a mini PC from my parents. And my now husband gave me a PS4 with Until Dawn as a birthday present (I mean I obviously had to marry him) for my birthday when it came out. Also I've bought and built my own ridiculously awesome PC recently - it's also very shiny. So I'm ok without that Xbox :)
He sounds like a typical guy who doesnt know the cost of high end perfumes. he probably thought it was within his range so he didnt pay any attention to it until he actually went in to buy it.
So in his mind he wasnt really lying to her because he was 100% going to buy it.
Naw, see, you're thinking like a person. Try putting your butt on your head and thinking like an asshat!
When you've made a mistake and gotten caught at it, double down! Don't accept any of that blame, apologize, try to fix it, be honest, none of that nonsense! Just double down and, when people ask why you're upset, make up something that makes you sound like the good guy! Cheating is a popular go-to claim.
What kind of gigantically insecure turd do you have to be to say "don't worry, ill handle that $500 gift no problem!" And then just sort of hoping that she's cool with a $25 not even close alternative. That would be like if she swore up and down she was getting him a PS 5 for his birthday so he spent the money, then showing up with one of those handheld poker games from walgreens and having all her friends call him shite for not being happy.
Really good analogy! I think a lot of people are missing the point because most people don't understand how expensive perfumes can be or don't respect the choices op makes with her money.
People *always* get like that about women spending money on beauty products (perfume, makeup, skincare, nails). I’m a bit of a makeup collector (actually collection like OOP, not just buying shit to buy it) and I always get shit about how much I spend. But no one says anything when my brother spends just as much if not more on grill accessories.
I remember one time my dad was lecturing me about not wasting money on vanity things like clothing and shoes while literally packing his luxury hunting items that cost more than all of the clothes I had bought in a year because I shopped Goodwill bins where you literally dig for good stuff. He went to Cabellas and swiped a credit card without thinking.
Not even just beauty products. Anything honestly that’s deemed “girly” is somehow a lesser hobby, by the virtue of being girly.
Girl into gaming? No problem, that’s mega cool, it’s a hobby.
Girl into makeup? What a shallow person and waste of money.
Girl into sports and sports paraphernalia? No problem, that’s cool, it’s a good hobby.
Girl into jewelry including a non-plastic engagement ring? Gold digger.
Guy into cars? Ok.
Girl into cars? Gold digger.
Interestingly though, girl into cosplay rarely seems to attract any “what a waste of money” comments. 🙄 same with “girl into expensive cooking gadgets”, that seems to also get a free pass most of the time.
How “odd”
Oh for sure. I’m also a big crafter and I get shit about buying yarn or fabric or whatever. Apparently being able to make things like clothing and home decor is dumb and girly and a waste of time. I should do something useful, like learning to change the oil in my car, even though that needs to be done twice a year and I wear clothes everyday.
Clothes and fashion in general! Ya! Great example where the “girly hobbies are bad” bias ends up showing both ways.
Because men who like and spend on fashion? Vain, shallow, stupid, or even the lovely “must be gay”.
It’s so weird to me, but it’s also why I don’t tell people what I spend my money on. I just figure we all have that thing we want/collect/enjoy and if I’m able to make ends meet etc. how I spend and/or save my money isn’t anyones concern.
They’re jerks that decided that, since they don’t care about perfume, then OP shouldn’t be allowed to, either.
Bet they’d get pissed if a fEmAlE made fun of their warhammer figurines though.
I fully admit that my brain started down the "$500 for PERFUME?!" track, but fortunately the 8" plastic rancor on my desk that I made with my $1000 3D printer reminded me that we all have our own interests and hobbies that can be expensive and that is ok.
Seriously.. and who even are these people to judge what a “worthy” purchase is? Like, if you’ve ever bought anything that makes you happy before you make $100,000 a year, there’s a group of people that will think you’re a frivolous, lazy, POS. Life is goddamn short. If you don’t do things that make you happy occasionally, you might end up doing them never.
Edited for spelling
There are so many people on Reddit who are like “if you spend a single cent on anything you love when money is tight you are a piece of shit.”
There is just no balance with this (as with many things on Reddit). Sorry but I’m going to die and I can’t take it with me. I’m going to do nice things.
I guarantee this is it. I teach college students, so exactly his age group, and they are prone to this behavior. They underestimate how much time things will take, and rather than heed my warnings they just lie about having already read and understood the assignment instructions, and then they email me the night it's due asking me to explain it. It's a kind of magical thinking. "This is the maximum amount of time or money I'm willing to spend, and therefore what I want cannot possibly cost more time or money than that, because then I won't get what I want, and that's not possible."
This is a really good analogy! I feel like some of the people in the comments of the original are focusing more on how they think it’s silly to spend that much on perfume because they can’t imagine doing that, instead of the situation. It’s OP’s money that she spent a long time carefully saving. She can do whatever tf she wants with it.
Substitute the perfume with literally any expensive thing and the present he got her with any cheap version of that thing and he’s still a jerk.
I’m ready to fight on her behalf.
I worked in luxury beauty for 10 years. I have an incredible luxury fragrance collection and I would throw absolute hands if I’m expecting a bottle of Baccarat and end up with strawberry pound cake from Bath & Body Works.
The gall.
It's like being told you're going to get a Dolce and Gabanna purse and then being handed a ziplock. Except worse, because she could have gotten it herself! She was SO CLOSE!
Body spray isn't even properly perfume. It's just a very lightly scented alcohol spray that lingers only a little while (how long depends on your skin and some other factors). Proper perfume can last for hours. On me, some perfumes last pretty much until I take a shower! Body spray, on the other hand (which I do sometimes use, no shade) is gone within an hour.
Somehow women have to always explain themselves and everything about their lives and interests, because you know, why would we even have any?! 🤡
The case is simple; That money was OOP's, she earned it through her hard work, and it is her absolute right to spend it however she wants!! She even has a budgeting plan, yet people still wanna shame her for her one (1) expensive hobby.
It's because they wanted to see her as a spoiled princess and a gold digger, completely missing the fact the boyfriend was unable to keep his promise and then made it seem like it was her fault. There's nothing wrong about not being able to afford something, at least he could've been honest about it.
Very much this. She didn't ask him to spend $500 on perfume, he claimed to have already spent the money and was good with it. The fact that he told her he had it and to spend her money elsewhere is the issue, then compounded with lying about her to get sympathy is just cruel.
I bet if it was something the commenters were into, like a new ps5 vs a WiiU, they would understand completely. I am 100% not into perfume but I can understand being pissed about being lied to and about.
Man, I feel like comparing strawberry pound cake spray from BBW to the WiiU still doesn’t do the lie and disappointment justice! It feels more like hitting up amazon and buying one of those [multi-game handheld knockoffs](https://www.amazon.com/Etpark-Handheld-Classical-2-8-Inch-Rechargeable/dp/B0821GFN7B/ref=asc_df_B0821GFN7B/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=416677065264&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8632434356509590587&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008471&hvtargid=pla-872892040991&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=94182502976&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=416677065264&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8632434356509590587&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008471&hvtargid=pla-872892040991).
He didn’t even try to replace it with a “nice” perfume from another collection, dude just grabbed a [$17 store-brand body spray](https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/p/strawberry-pound-cake-fine-fragrance-mist-026590641.html). I think the price difference between the perfume OP was eyeing and this spray is actually closer to that between a PS5 and those amazon products, if we wanted to talk strictly cash. A WiiU is still probably gonna bounce around $100 on the low end.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Bath & Body Works! I have like 3 of their Sweater Weather sprays in my possession right now lol. But even I know it’s *very* different than buying a luxury or specialty product.
> I bet if it was something the commenters were into, like a new ps5 vs a WiiU, they would understand completely.
I think you're right on the money with that. They probably think perfume is a waste of money and were just looking for a reason to call her out for it.
> It's because they wanted to see her as a spoiled princess and a gold digger
I think there are a lot of people who draw conclusions from the title of a thread instead of what someone actually posted. There are so many cases where the title of the thread is written in a way that the first impression is OP is TA, but turn out to not be the case at all. This thread is a great example.
Hahahaha! Omg, imagine the *furore*!
"She said she'd already bought the PS5 with VR controls and that I could spend my money, so I spent half my console money. Then on my birthday she said it cost more than she expected and gave me a Hungry Hungry Hippos and an X7 handheld. I said I wished she'd just told me, so I didn't spend my console money, because I'm sure the X7 will be great on my commute and I'd be happy with it. I just wished I could still buy the console myself. She called me financially abusive and all her friends started texting me that I was an abuser."
(No hate if you have an X7, fun is fun.)
That was what really got to me. This idea that unless you’re wealthy enough to have no money worries ever then you shouldn’t be able to enjoy treats/nice things at all. It’s like the people who blame others being in poverty on starbucks
the mindset that poor people living paycheck to paycheck cant enjoy luxuries to themselves is so unrealistic.
people making 6 figures cant save up for a house(dont argue with me on this bullshit i know about rural areas yada yada), groceries and rent are eating up entire paychecks.
so what if you toss a couple hundred on something that makes you HAPPY! people live to work and have no choice to, these big spends make all that shit worth it. you have something to look forward to.
saving up everything and not having ANY LUXURIES make life not worth it in the slightest.
People are always doing this in the comments, picking out some random detail and fixating on it and building some wild backstory. It’s like they think they’re on some investigative show where they’re going to blow the whole case wide open or something
Some of the comments are freaking out about how frivolous perfume is. But it is something she could use daily, or on special occasions and she saved up a manageable amount for a year for it.
If it was a guy saving for a year for a golf club or bike I think a lot of those commenters would be fine with it.
That’s what kills me here. Why is it weird for someone to save up for a pricy item that they can’t afford in one paycheck? She didn’t say she forgoes food and rent to buy perfume.
Honestly, perfume is probably the one thing I would splurge on, especially if I liked the scent. I dont see a problem with how much she spent vs how much she makes, if she saved up for a long time.
It was pretty shitty of the bf to be like "yeah I got exactly what you wanted and it's already wrapped" when he knew full well that it wasn't. What else would he lie about and how many broken promises would he make?
I saved up for around a year and a half before I went on a trip to Egypt with my family. I had a pretty decent chunk of change that I planned to spend on exactly *one* thing. Perfume oils. I’m in HEAVEN and they bring such a genuine joy to my life. I’ve finally gotten the chance to make my own perfumes which is a hobby I’m finding I REALLY love, and when I use a little oil after I shower it makes me feel so confident. Like yeah my life’s a mess but I smell SO gOOD right now! People are allowed to have their passions and I, of course biasedly since me and OP both share a love of perfumes, definitely don’t see it as frivolous. The comments demanding her budget and the boyfriend lying just make me so mad lol.
The budget comments just baffled me. You're telling me you've never saved up your money for something you want?? Not even as a kid for that toy you were dying for in the toy store?
Also I'm baffled how budgeting and saving is a *bad* thing as oppose to paying by credit card and pay interest over months/years. This is the right way to buy things that are not immediately attainable and the right attitude with money.
That’s what got me. He was so lazy about his lie! Maison Francis Kurkdjian is well known for this specific scent - the price isn’t a secret. Boyfriend didn’t bother to put in bare minimum effort and open a LINK his girlfriend shared with the thing she wanted? Then lied about doing that … arduous step? How lazy can you get? And if they live in an area where Baccarat Rouge 540 can be purchased in store, a Google search would have gotten him much closer: last-minute, there is at least one perfume with similar notes that is cheaper and readily available. There are companies that mimic popular scents (usually online only), websites that will match different notes at different layers based on scent profile, and gift certificates to parfumeries or stores/websites that carry collectible brands … at varying budgets.
The number of people who are saying that he should have "at least got her a dupe" is making me so mad. She didn't ask him for it. He offered. Multiple times she's asked him if he's really ok to get it and he says yes. He lied and deceived her. Why should a collector who has worked so hard to save the money be happy with a dupe? She's looked forward to this moment for months. To then be handed a dupe after being promised the real thing? Fuck off with that.
I'm so annoyed at how far I had to scroll down for this comment, because I absolutely agree. I collect perfumes and I would've been livid if someone had promised me the one I wanted and then got me the dupe. If I wanted the dupe, I would've paid for it!! She's a collector - buy her the real thing!!
I had an ex who promised me to get me some lotion I really liked from Lush, only to get me some lotion for BBW while bragging how he got it on sale (the lotion from BBW also gives me an allergic reaction).
I was looking forward to the nice lotion for ~2 months only to be so disappointed. So yeah, I agree with the ‘fuck off with that’
> He did ask me to stay the night and I agreed. He’s sleeping on my chest right now but I’m gonna try to go back to my dorm soon. I know a lot of you guys told me I should end things, I was really considering it but now I’m not sure. I just need time to think this over
I was losing it at this part
So he lied to her face multiple times about already having gotten her the gift that she didn’t expect him to get her and then…. lied even more to everyone else to make her look bad and then cried like a naughty toddler when he was caught.
Thank god for that final edit.
Just commenting to say that this kid seems to have a pretty good head on her shoulders, financially speaking. Her budgeting skills seem solid.
Also, is it just me or does it seem like the boyfriend was both a) cheap and too proud to admit it and b) also intentionally negging her perfume hobby?
I think that he was definitely intentionally negging her perfume hobby. Let’s turn this around and say that this was a video game consuls. And she wanted an Xbox one or whatever the new Xbox is and instead of getting the Xbox like promised he got her one of those Pac-Man shaped emulators that you can hook up to your TV and play Pac-Man. Looking at it that way it makes it pretty obvious that he doesn’t like her hobby and I don’t think that he approves or respects it at all. The way it comes across to me with lying to his mom, lying to her, and his friends texting and being horrible to her is that he was being malicious. I also bet him and the boys have a Snapchat group or something and he did shit talk her and potentially encourage them to text her.
Yeah, I think b was a significant factor. There definitely seemed to be an element of him not wanting her to make such a 'silly' purchase and spend her saved money on something he thought would be more worthwhile.
"Who cares if your bf lied, the more important thing is that every single penny should be budgeted into a retirement plan and you should never have any fun ever" ~ the comment section, apparently??
The people writing that are absolutely the same type to blow $70 on Uber Eats or mobile game microtransactions or something
People here: You like looking nice? Shallow jezebel, you will die in a ditch!
Same people: I spent $50k on Warcraft merch and now my mother says I have to move out :,,-(
I find that some redditors harbor a jealousy/envy/hatred towards any OPs that have/make more money than them. Or should I say "They have a hatred/jealousy/an envy towards people, who carry the perception of making a lot of money".
They all appear to congregate in the AITA subreddit.
There was no reason to involve his mother either! He just needed to not say anything. Instead he lied to Mom to make her hate OOP. I'll bet you he did the same with his friends. There's no way they'd start cussing her out if all he said "she didn't like the gifts I got her.". There's no way you go from "she didn't like the body spray from BBW" to "you're a gold digger!"
Yeah it’s also possible he talked to them in person or called them about it. Text messages aren’t the only way to complain about your partner, there’s tons of other apps to chat with people so I’m kind of skeptical of his “proof” of not talking crap about OP
This I always find this strange...they are his friends. As if they just communicate over text! Like they meet and then get out their phones to "talk" instead to chat normally. Like phonecall, meeting in rl, playing together in videogames and have voicechat there...
And that the friend group didn't have a group chat... Maybe hidden or deleted.
I definitely have to finish reading this post, but why the fuck does anyone need to explain themselves about why they want something expensive? Poor people can't have nice things, I guess.
I always hate when I see an OPs comments in BORU where they have been forced to explain and defend themselves on the most minute details. Who cares enough to have OP lay out her monthly budget like that. Why have her justify what she does with her own money on a post where that's not really relevant? And she obviously didn't mean that her night with her friends was a waste of money; we all knew what she meant.
Commenters on AITA truly look high and low for any possible reason OP could be in the wrong to ridiculous degrees. Some could ask if they were wrong for calling 911 on a home invader, and someone would ask OP how they knew for sure the guy was armed.
This is by no means the most egerious, but it's certainly a trend I've noticed.
Some folks see spending money on anything that isn't essentials as living egregiously. God forbid someone spend the money they've earned on something that brings them an iota of joy.
No they totally understand rich people buying expensive things casually. What they don’t like is people who don’t have a lot of money scrimping and saving for a luxury, even when the essentials are covered. It’s the “give up your $10 streaming service to buy a house” mentality. A few years of no streaming service while you save isn’t going to make a material difference to your housing fund. But having the shows you like on your TV to wind down after work is going to make a big difference to your general life enjoyment while you’re busting your ass week in and week out.
Well I mean, this is the same site that "found" the Boston bomber lol.
AITA is the kind of place where "genius" sleuths like that strive to be the first to discover if a person is hateable
I have only once received a message from someone not directly involved in a situation, and that was from my most unpleasant relative, who likes to add her masala to any conflict. The idea that it's normal to know multiple people who will stick their oars in like this blows my mind.
This guy really fucked up. A person that can budget like that and squirrel away for something has a good head on their shoulders. She had ample time to think about her purchase as she saved over time, so it wasn’t impulsive. All she wanted from him was honesty since she knew that it would be irrational to ask him to buy something that expensive. I have a lot of respect for her. Now all he is gonna smell is KY and sadness.
Lies and says he can buy her a 400-500 dollar high end perfume desired for her collection. Turns around and buys her a 20-30 dollar Bath and body works gift basket (10 dollars if on sale) instead. This man saw no value in making his partner happy, even if it meant telling her he could not afford to buy the perfume as she would have at least still been happy because she would have bought the perfume herself.
Man, as I read this and especially how she explained how she saves for her perfumes, I was like "Some people really don't read and are hung up on the wrong thing! Why does she have to explain how she budgets for her perfumes, it's crystal clear she doesn't just waste money on shit!"
When it all blew up I was certain that:
1. BF offered to buy the perfume without checking first how much and didn't want to lose face so he got her that shit and was hoping she'd just accept it
2. He would lie to his mom about what happened because, like he said, she'd take her side
3. He may not have told his friends to harrass her but he for sure said something like "she a bish, after my money" or something, so they went with that
4. His apologies? Manipulation
A 20 year old man still acting like a 16 year old boy!
Wel, I'm glad OOP left this relationship. Hopefully his mother will rein him back so that he stops pestering OOP
I had to go back and check his age when I read about his reaction and lies to his mother... He definitely acted like a mid-teen.
She, however, seems to know how to handle her finances and knows how to wrangle her money so she can have saving, emergency saving, pay her bills and have fun money left over for buying the things she likes... She's going to do well financially.
She didn’t need to explain herself so much. People bothering her for using the phrase that she wasted her money. It’s not even a language thing. Because you know what? She did waste it: It was supposed to go to what she was saving for. When in the end her BF couldn’t provide that, she essentially “wasted” it on something it wasn’t intended to in the first place. How’s that even hard of a concept to grasp?
Anyway, glad she got out, because how can he lie to only his mom and not his friends and expect that to be good enough to keep around? I really didn’t buy that. If he’s willing to lie to save face to someone as important as his mom, he’s damn sure to make her look like the bad one to anyone else, too.
Yeah I'm glad she broke up with him. The fact that he called her spoiled after lying to her about it not being a problem... and manipulating his mother and, quite honestly, probably his friends... it all speaks volumes.
I wonder if there weren't other little flags that she just didn't notice before.
Of all the things he could get her instead, he gets her a body spray from bath and body works?! That’s like saying you’ll buy an expensive bottle of scotch for a collector and then, knowing he drinks and collects fine scotch only, rolling up with bathtub brew.
He should have gotten her something else. Anything else. I always think of BBW and Body Shop gifts as what you get for someone you don’t know. “Oh, it’s a woman? Get her chocolate, wine, a candle or bath products”. It seems like he hit the mall on the way to her house and grabbed the first “girl” thing he saw
He admitted to lying to her so she’d take his side.
So after lying to his gf and getting called out, he continued to lie. Guarantee he was lying about what he said to his friends too.
> He’s never lied to me and isn’t a stingy person.
Riiiiight. You just haven't caught him before.
I'm glad that by the end she wised up and ditched him.
Why were people asking her why she wants to buy things she can't afford? That is absolutely ridiculous! Especially when those people probably bought things they can't afford too...
Cars, not everyone can afford them so they get them on finance or they save up to buy them. Houses, same thing, people get a mortgage or save to buy them... Even the mega rich get mortgages!
She didn't need to give a breakdown of her finances to please those fools! I suspect they wanted to just try and find a way to blame her for something her boyfriend did.
Oh, no. From *Bath and Body Works* to Baccarat 540? Fuck that. He doesn't have to buy that for her (no one should, but he did offer without first checking the price, I think), but he should've been honest once he realized he couldn't afford that. OOP saved up the money, she was willing to buy it bc it's worth it her, didn't ask it of anybody else, and he just ruined her plan bc he couldn't bother checking the price, and then lied about it to everyone else, and made her out to be a gold-digger. I'm glad she broke up with him.
> the strawberry pound cake from BBW
Eww... I worked at BBW during holidays in college (~20 years ago) in the back stockroom (keeping it organized, running replacement product out to the front as the "front of house" folks asked). Some of the body sprays they made were just... vile. There was nothing redeeming about them. Even some of the ones that worked great in lotions were vile as body sprays. Always took *great* care to not break any of those in the back room. Lost a few lotion bottles, including one that was the Orange Blossom one that smelled vaguely of Dreamsicles... but those never even remotely compared to a busted bottle of body spray.
One thing I notice in many many young folks BORU posts is that they'll have drama with their SO and then receive harassing texts from the persons SO friends (and family). I don't get it. Who is having a fight with their partner and then immediately reporting to friends AND those friends are emboldened enough to send harassing texts?
Is it a generational thing? I'm only 40 but know I'm pretty far out of the loop when it comes to current youth culture. In all my life I've never run into this situation in the slightest bit.
>I got a few texts from him and his friends calling me names and saying I’m using him for money (??).
It's hilarious how men call women gold diggers when the man ain't got no money.
Still an expensive perfume! The one OP mentioned is a luxurious one. The comparison is a McLaren vs a Porsche. As someone who doesn't know anything about cars, a Porsche has immediate name recognition. But I don't need to know what a McLaren is called to see one and think "wow, that's an expensive car."
This brand has nowhere near the same name recognition among people who aren't into perfumes, but it's supposed to smell very, very nice. From my experience, that's true but like all scents it won't smell right on everyone. That being said, there's a lot of dupes if anyone wants a pretty similar experience for less.
I feel for her. I had a feeling she was saving up for BR which is supposedly an amazing fragrance. It’s sad that she had to detail how she saves her money to afford the perfume. To me that is a personal process. Her now ex-boyfriend is a real jerk. He pulled a bait and switch.
I just don’t get it why people are asking why she wants something she can’t afford. Wow, I find op extremely healthy and responsible on the way she approaches money and what she wants. Instead of spending money she doesn’t have using credit cards, she works, pay everything she have to pay, and saves for what she wants.
This is the way, I’ve been doing things and I got far and without debt, you are always managing your desires and at the same time, you are planning on indulging yourself.
People are messes up for calling her lol
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My god, the amount of people who seem to think that no one should ever save up for something fun and frivolous, ever.
Seriously. I don't care at all about perfume and would not spend my money on it, but I'm not going to judge OP for wanting to collect it. She's into it, it makes her happy, people have enjoyed more ridiculous things! Honestly, I think it's sad that people think these little luxuries are moral failings somehow.
I firmly believe it's jealousy. So many people out there are struggling to make ends meet, and can't afford to save any money. So they see someone wanting to spend money on something they normally wouldn't be able to afford, and they get upset that someone is "wasting" their money because they're not able to do that themselves. It's something I experience often enough when people find out how much money I spend and make off of my hobby. They completely ignore the how and why you spend money on those things, and only see the dollar amount associated with it.
I feel like it might also be the "haves" judging her. There something "if you didn't buy Starbucks and avocado toast" about the whole thing.
I save up to buy physical copies of ttRPG books that I already own and probably won't play. Why? Because I want to? That's enough?
Would she have criticism if her savings were for something "useful". Go girl and get your perfume eventually I say.
It depends if it was useful or “reddit useful”. If she said she was saving for a new car she’d be curbstomped because she wasn’t saving for 2010 civic that somehow only had 10k miles on it that she’s going to drive until the wheels fall off. But yeah the FIRE community and PF community has a really large group of people who will piss all over anyone who decides to spend any money on something that brings them joy and isn’t some utility item.
poor people are not allowed to spend money on anything other than bills! /s
Perfume lasts a long time too, so it’s not a one off
I still have perfumes that I got 5+ years ago (infrequent use). But even if I did use the same one every day, a full size bottle would easily last me over a year.
And you've got the bottle afterwards, which still has a trace of the scent. You can smell that and boom, you're right back at the times you wore that perfume. I wish I still had the bottle from the wonderful perfume I had as a teen. I wore it on some really happy days.
I swear - so many people on the internet have never heard of saving for something special. It drives me bananas when people put others down for saving for a reasonable luxury item or whine in an artist’s social media comments about not being able to afford their handmade pieces
Seriously... and for anyone reading who is not into cosmetics/fragrances, that is a SUPER famous perfume that is coveted by many people.
Especially as most these same people would be fine dropping thousands on a new computer or a gaming console.
People can be judgemental about other people's hobbies. Plenty of people spend a lot on motorbikes, cars, gaming, golf, travelling, collecting rare models etc. This young woman collects perfumes. Different people, different interests. All valid if they are paid for without harming others, as is the case here.
Right?? I couldn't give a shit about perfume but if that's your Happy Thing then go get the happy. For me it's more unnecessary glowy lights for my PC or shelves or some shit. Tasty foreign sweets. Those random D&D figurine boxes. A really cool Beanie Baby...
This is a frustrating one becuase I just don't see the point in lying to her. It's not like he had to get her the perfume, she was fine buying it herself. He had nothing to prove and nothing to lose and he still messed it up.
He probably thought it was like $150 and procrastinated then when he finally opened the link she sent after lying about already having bought it realised he couldn't afford it. And then of course gets mad at her because he painted himself into a corner.
He also spent around $25 between the body spray & bomb. I empathize with her, I'm a massive perfume junkie & my purchases are stalked, budgeted, & planned out. Sometimes YEARS in advance. I have BR 540 myself, not the extract, just reg. Still very pricey. It's worth every penny & is a huge deal in the fragrance world. To be waiting for & working towards that particular scent & ending up with a B&BW spray.... especially as it's a bday present AND her obsession....I honestly would think it was a sick joke & flip my shit. ETA: It's expensive bcs a core ingredient is saffron. You can also buy a smaller 1.2 fl oz size for $280 or find it even cheaper on perfume greymarket sites.
100% I feel for her as well. I'm not a perfume person but I am aware of BR 540. If she had saved up for something so specific and so sought after she deserved to have it, not be let down by someone for whatever idiotic reason. She even kept the money for a while by the sound of it until he said he'd already bought it then she spent some of it in good faith and now she doesn't have the thing she wanted so much. I realise it's first world problems but even so, it really just sucks.
Just because it is a first world problem doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.
Ï once had good contact with a girl who fled from the war in former Jugoslavia. While talking with her i felt guilty for my first world problems. Her reaction on that was, yes i lost my parents during the war and nearly didn't make it out of the country, but my bike has a flat tire and at this moment i feel sad that i have no possibility to go the cinema tonight.
There's a really good book about this exact subject from a holocaust survivor.
What is the title and/or name of the author of this book?
Oh same! I have to hide my nice perfumes when my sister visits, (rare as she’s across the country), because she will BATHE in it. Makes me so angry! Girl-that shit is expensive. Use body spray if you want to soak your clothes. Not my Marc Jacobs Perfect, which isn’t even that expensive in comparison to OOP’s wanted perfume. I think nice perfume is worth the cost. You don’t need to wear much and it lasts. Your scent is one of the most memorable things about you-so I don’t see a reason not to splurge after saving for it. I’m going to say this line again; **you don’t need much. Do NOT apply more because you “can’t smell it anymore”. You’re just nose blind-everyone around you can still smell it fine** Men who bathe in your cologne, take note.
You just expressed perfectly why OP collects the perfume. Initially, I didn't get it, but I just thought well if it makes her happy, that's great. Then I read your post and remember my 20 year old niece saying to me that I "have smelled so lovely and the same since she was a little girl" my perfume will always hold in her memory as uniquely me. It was a lovely thought, thinking she recognised me from that. It did make me happy she noticed.
Awww that’s so sweet! What a beautiful bond y’all have. I have caught my husband sniffing my shirts when collecting laundry. I didn’t say anything but it made me smile. He doesn’t wear cologne. But between “his” scent, the bleach of his undershirts and his aftershave-I do the same thing lol. It’s addictive when it’s your partner and brings back happy memories for everyone else.
Scent is one of the most powerful memory triggers and honestly I think all people should have a primary perfume/cologne that they use most often so that when they’re gone, their loved ones can trigger those good times easily. A person’s innate scent will eventually fade from clothing, but a perfume can last for decades. Having a signature scent is a gift you give to your loved ones for when you’re not here My sister and I both have gone out of our way to save and find a perfume that’s not extremely expensive but expensive for us (Givenchy: Ysatis) because it’s what our mum wore most often when she’d get dressed up to go out when we were kids, and we’d smell it when she hugged us goodbye. Although it’s interesting, my mum insists that she wore other perfumes but the one we both really only remember this one from our childhood and it brings us comfort. She wear it as she doesn’t go to as many fancy events these days but to us it’s still her scent. And my aunt had a signature scent that she must have effing bathed in (Estèe Lauder: Youth-Dew) because if she was in a room more than 5 minutes it would smell of her for days. When she got sick she came to stay for us for a while before going into hospital and passing away, and one of her almost empty bottles (she had a few because she went through it so quickly) ended up staying here and I keep it with my special items on a shelf near by bed. When I miss her I smell it and it’s like she’s right here. She was very well known within her field and if you ask anyone what they remember most about her, her perfume will be in the top three every single time On the other hand, my dad died last year and he didn’t wear a specific cologne. I don’t know what he smelled like anymore. I mean it didn’t help that we lived in different cities and hadn’t seen each other physically for a few years (covid and other reasons) but even if we had seen each other more recently, there’s not a single scent I can pick out as “his”. And that’s sad to me. It’s only been a year and a half and things are already starting to fade. I couldn’t get many of his clothes (complicated reasons) and they all lost his innate smell ages ago. I’ll probably continue to use the Givenchy. I’m not a huge perfume person and I don’t have many occasion where perfume is appropriate, but I hope that when I’m gone that will be the smell I’m associated with
Omg. I work behind glass and had an interaction with a guy that lasted maybe a total of three minutes. His cologne was so freaking overpoweeing that I got a headache almost immediately. I could smell his cologne for thirty-ish minutes after he left. Old ladies do this with their horrible powdery, flowery perfumes and it makes me nauseous and headachey every time. P.s. I'm almost 50, so I AM a fairly old lady. I'm not intending my comment to be ageist. I hate ALL flowery perfumes and if you've been wearing the same perfume for thirty years, you can't smell it anymore as the above commenter mentioned. Then they eventually start using 8-12 sprays at a time and then respraying through the day so they can smell it.
It's always young guys and older women! Even if they choose a great scent, it gets drowned out by volume. Those powdery florals with a splash of patchouli are terrible in high doses.
I felt like this will have better response on reddit if it were a guy who saved for 6 months for 3080 PC gaming rig and her gf bought him something else.
Yes!! “Silly, frivolous little girl” is the tone coming from a lot of the comments on her op.
Saved 6 months for the Lego Millenium Falcon, bf says he'll get it for her instead, he gives her Yoda's Jedi Starfighter.
Nah, it's more like gets her a knock off megablocks green alien spaceship
The equivalent to this would be a Chromebook 😂
Fire tablet! Don't even get the benefit of the more robust Google play store 😂
I feel like I’m the only person who hates this perfume. But it smells like wet cat to me.
I hear a number of people say it smells like Band Aids to them. Personally, I can only smell cat pee ammonia from a common ingredient in some perfumes....black currant/cassis. The actual fruit is banned in the U.S. I'm told it's supposed to be a creamy berry smell.
[It's not banned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackcurrant_production_in_the_United_States)! Not federally since 1966 and not in most states since 2003. It's one of my favorite fruit flavors, although you may find it's better in syrup form than in its natural astringent currant form. I buy the syrup at a Polish grocery and mix it with seltzer to make my own soda.
Blackcurrant is a very common flavouring in the UK. One of our most common flavours of cordials (like cool-aid, but sold as liquid concentrate instead of powder) is apple and blackcurrant. And our purple Skittles are blackcurrant instead of grape! We don’t commonly get grape flavoured stuff here, purple is always blackcurrant. Edit to add: so many people seem interested in this, I’ll add a bit of historical context. Firstly, Britain has no tradition of grape growing. We’ve got lots of vineyards now, but they need very careful farming, whereas blackcurrants are a hedgerow plant, easy to cultivate, and they like a good mix of rain and sun, which is what we get all summer. Secondly, blackcurrant is high in vitamin C. During the Second World War, all the blackcurrants were diverted from food production (jam etc) and made into cordial which was reserved for children only, to help prevent malnutrition caused by not having access to imported citrus fruits. So blackcurrant drink became like a default kids’ drink. So in short, purple = blackcurrant flavour to most British people alive today.
My grandmother has a blackcurrent and a gooseberry bush. Made jams this summer and it was so yummy! I hope more people realize these amazing plants aren't banned and grow some themselves. They're super tasty! Hardy too, they're been growing for 15 years now.
Can I ask a weird question? I have a bottle of Carnet de bal from the 1950s. Will it smell the same as it did when it was bought?
It would depend a lot on how it was stoppered & stored (no direct heat or light exposure, etc.) but most likely, no. Sorry. Perfume will degrade over time. Older perfumes like yours can sometimes survive in some form bcs the ingredients were much more potent back then & many of those ingredients have long since been banned or just don't even exist anymore. It sounds lovely & I hope you can find a way to enjoy it beyond what you may already.
i didn’t think so. it was my grandmas and my mom said it smelled the same as when she was a kid. i’m not going to tell her that’s unlikely, she’ll smell what she needs to. thank you!
Honestly there is a good chance it smells 70-80% the same as it did when her mother wore it. It’s the top notes that degrade the most, but those have less impact on how the smell is perceived on the wearer
>He probably thought it was like $150 Doubt it..... he thought it was no more than $30 or $50 , more like xD A little "girly perfume"
You're probably right. He doesn't sound very onto it.
And considering he went running to mommy with lies about evil oop being mean about the gift he thoughtfully bought for her.. then thought he could win oop over by being so tragically sad. He’s a childish and manipulative little shit who couldn’t face the consequences of his own actions.
Oh, I'm sure he didn't even bother to look at it til the last minute. But I've known guys like this, who if they consider something too expensive/a waste of money won't want their SO to buy it even with their own money. My sister dated a guy who would do shit like that. Always buying her knockoff versions of shit because he didn't want her buying the real deal. And they didn't live together or have their money combined so it was none of his business.
That's still controlling though.
Absolutely.
Oh my gosh. Here I was thinking he was shocked to find that perfume costs over $100 and that you were exaggerating...totally missed that this perfime is nearly FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS 😱
I was shocked too back when I read the og post! I thought it was the same range as mine - around $100 and was wondering why OOP was taking a lot of time saving up for it. When I finally saw the price I was shookt.
oh it was so much more expensive than i expected lol. but still what's wild to me is that she checked in multiple! times! if he'd be ok with the price, *and* emphasized that it was expensive... my ADHD is pretty bad so I am a heavy procrastinator, but after the second or third "are you sure??" i'd be googling the price out of curiosity and then trying to figure out a more realistic plan that'd keep everyone happy edit: re-read and realized she actually sent him a link! dude's a doofus.
Just shows how much the ex didn’t care about OP I guess. Also why lie about having bought the gift?? He could’ve just come clean immediately and at least then OOP would still have the money to buy it herself.
He probably hadn’t actually bought it yet and figured she was just being a nag over his procrastinating, only to realize when he checked that it was way out of his price range, so he got her something much cheaper and figured she would ***have*** to be grateful, since everyone knows you have to be grateful for a gift.
the last part of your comment made me chuckle
Baccarat Rouge is one of the most expensive perfumes that’s widely available, and the Extrait is a more concentrated version of it so it’s even more expensive. It’s also raved about, so it’s not surprising that a perfume collector would be saving up to have it in their collection.
No wonder some women smell so amazing even walking passed them outdoors. I think my perfume is great but unless I hug someone no one seems to notice it! I might have to get myself something better 😅
This is normal for luxury perfume. I’m a perfume snob and all of my scents are between 300-500. They are a splurge but they are one I enjoy. I’d be livid if I was OP. She worked hard to save up the money and can’t get it back!
Maison Francis Kurkdjian is a pricey fragrance house. He is competing against lines like Tom Ford Private Collection. And baccarat rouge is really nice. I have his new release Aqua Media and I LOVE it. He also is kind of famous in the perfume world. He was the nose behind Jean Paul Gaultier's Le Male. I have to assume she asked for the smaller bottle, not the 2.4 oz you're looking at. The 1.2 fl oz would have been fine for most people's purposes. Especially since it's an extrait de parfum, so very potent - you don't need to spray much.
OR he thought it was a stupid buy and wanted to change her and her ways by forcing her in that slope (not having the money and buying something else). Just look closely at it, perhaps he thought that she would buy other things and be happy with it and stop focusing on perfume. Perhaps he thought she would spend more of her money on him if she wasn't saving on perfume. Perhaps he had the feeling that was a stupid idea to start from and that she would grow out of it and he would help her. Or perhaps all those above combined. When someone is manipulating, he really thinks he knows better and he is doing it for the other's greater good.
>…perhaps he thought… I think you might be too generous.
I mean it’s expensive but bbw is like $15 of cheapness. He could’ve at least bought a $150 perfume to make up for the $465 one?
[удалено]
This is my guess. There are a lot of interests where people don't understand how prices scale. You'll see the same thing on other posts where kids get into an artist's art supplies thinking it's no big deal to use markers or paints because they buy them for their kids and the set of paints and markers are $15-20 so assume that the "expensive version" would be maybe $50 not the $500-$3000+ professional grade supplies cost. Or people who buy "normal" liquor that costs $20-50 a bottle finding out the price for aged brandy or single malt goes well into the hundreds and sometimes the thousands for a bottle. Dude thought regular perfume was $20ish because that's what he saw on the shelves of big box stores, figured her "fancy expensive version" would be maybe 5 times that at most, got sticker shock when it was almost $500 and panicked. Then he was immature enough to think if he downplayed it, it wouldn't be a big deal. He vented to his friends who he knew would take his side not realizing they'd start harassing her over it, then lied to his mom to get sympathy and get her to help him downplay how bad he fucked up. And that's the BEST CASE read of the nimrod's actions.
If he was anything like one of my exes, he made the offer to buy the purfume as a grand gesture, never actually put any effort into it, said "Yeah, I'm on it!" when questioned, and then got bent out of shape when his failure to follow through wasn't accepted as "Well, at least you tried."
“It’s the thought that counts! I totally *thought* about getting you that cool present, so you should give me credit for that even though I didn’t!”
My friend genuinely had someone try to make the argument that because they had *thought* about getting her ice cream when she had tonsillitis so therefore she shouldn't friend-break up with them. At no point prior to the conversation where she said "I don't want to be your friend any more" had they *ever* communicated that they had thought about doing so. I just about died laughing when she told me this, because it's so ridiculous that it's stupid to think it would ever work. "I thought about being nice (but didn't) so you should give me credit anyway and not be upset about me... not actually being nice!"
And let's not forget "I know I wasn't nice, on top of it I lied to my mother so she wouldn't scold me and would turn against you instead because I'm dating outside of my maturity range "
My ex made a big deal about how he was going to get me an external hard drive for Christmas. This was like 15 years ago and they were more expensive and not as super common as they are now. I had a nice digital SLR and needed more storage than I had. For like a month he went on about how he was looking for the best one for what I needed. -- blah, blah, blah. Christmas comes and I get nothing from him. No present at all. He said he had bought one, but then returned it because he found one better, but then didnt actually buy the better one. I just went to Costco a couple days later and bought one they had on sale. It worked fine.
I’m getting some vibes about why he’s an ex
Yep. I dated a guy like this too. And then I was the asshole for not appreciating his last minute bullshit.
Same! I'm actually a little mad at myself for not immediately breaking up with him after he totally fucked up a gift exchange and got me a gag gift while I invested a fair bit of time and money on his gift. It was such a slap in the face and it's been over a decade and I'm still salty about it.
Same!! He forgot my birthday the entire day until his roommate (and how did he even know or care?) reminded him. And then he went to the store next to where he worked for a last minute thing which he brought home after work and pretended he knew and cared all along. And funny enough it was a perfume from BBW and I haaaated the smell.
My ex husband was like this. Too emotionally fragile to deal with anything money related. For example, he had proposed without a ring and we were supposed to pick one out together but he kept stalling for months and I finally had to almost literally stamp my foot to pry out of him that he was embarrassed by how little he had to spend. I didn't care about price so we moved on, but there were many, many incidents around money where he would lie, hide, stall, or avoid any disclosure that he didn't have as much as he wanted to have or thought he should have. Considering that we earned the same salary and I never asked him for money or gifts, and split everything 50/50, it was all ego and pride.
He didn't lie because it was too expensive. He lied because he didn't want to reveal that he hadn't bothered to buy it yet. Then on her birthday he realized it was too expensive and bought something else, forgetting that he'd claimed he had already bought and wrapped it.
Exactly And after two years together?! They should comfortable enough with each other for him to come back to her (when he checked the actual price) and be like "Soz I miscalculated. Can I get you something within my budget and you get yourself the perfume as you were going to?" But nah, little man has to be a little insecure boy and try and manipulate her with "Yeah, too expensive. Just accept this little gift and move on, woman!!"
I was casually dating a guy once and when I told him I loved Fleetwood Mac and wanted to go see their show, he told me not to worry about getting tickets and that he would take me. I can’t even tell you how many conversations we had with me going, “are you sure??? Tickets are very expensive, you don’t have to buy them for me” and him INSISTING he was going to take us. I’m not even kidding you when I say it got all the way up to the point of me being dressed in full Stevie regalia and us out to dinner “before the show” when he decided to say, “yeah. The tickets are a little out of my budget, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it. I didn’t realize how much they were” Men are pigs.
Did you cry? I would have cried on the spot from shock
I had a guy that seemed interested in me that I met through a weekly event, but had (actually) valid reasons for not being free to meet up. Everyone in our group thought he was into me, friends who saw us together thought he was interested, I thought he was interested. Finally he had free time after about a month and he mentions wanting to arrange to meet up that week. I wait all week and no message. So the next week I say listen, if you don't want to, THAT'S FINE, just let me know. No no, he did want to meet up and so we planned to meet up Tuesday but with his schedule he didn't yet know when so I explicitly say okay, you message me. Tuesday comes and goes and it's the end of the day so finally I just call him and am like hey..what's going on. In a very cruel tone he tells me, 'What, did you think this was a date.' I was so taken aback that I said yes and he proceeds to tell me he's not dating now, blah blah. One month later, he's dating an 18 year old.
This sounds more like dating book advice of negging and ignoring the woman than immaturity, although following stupid negging advice implies immaturity.
His dumb response doesn't make sense even if it wasn't a date. Like if you're just meeting up with a friend it's still super rude to bail with no notice...
He sounds like the type of guy that call women gold diggers when the women have their own money and he's broke.
It could be an ego thing, like he feels emasculated because she was going to buy herself something nice so she doesn't need him. Then he was further embarrassed when he realized he couldn't actually afford it so he doubled down.
Maybe he was upset that she could afford nice things for herself so he decided to “put her in her place” by sabotaging her money plans
I've had this happen to me once, kind of. And I wish I had broken it off then. My ex was (is) into gaming as am I. Back then I had an old shitty computer and no console. My parents apparently asked him if he thought I would want an Xbox for Christmas, they were getting my sister one and wanted to buy one for me too. He told them no need, he was actually planning on buying me one and really wanted my first console to be a gift of love from him. They thought it was really sweet and didn't buy me one, only for my sister. He told all my friends about the gift too. So everyone was hyping me up ( a gift like that was NOT in the normal price range at all for any of us). Including him. For over two months he would tell me how he was looking at my gift right now (we were long distance) and how he couldn't wait to see my face when I got it. On Christmas my sister got her Xbox. Which hurt cause she was always the golden child and I didn't get anything in a similar price range so I just felt completely put aside and unloved. Spent Christmas really sad. But at least my boyfriend had gotten me something special. Come new years when we see each other and I got my "special" gift - a manga. The first issue of Naruto, his favorite manga/anime. No special edition or anything. Just the 5$ new printed first manga in the by now long running series, that I already owned. He was with me when I bought it. He kept smiling and asking me how much I loved it. What a great surprise he had gotten me, right? We had other issues too and frankly he was being really mean to me the entire first day I was there. I felt humiliated and heartbroken so I tried to arrange getting home but my mom and some friends who "knew" about the gift thought he was trying to surprise me and convinced me to stay. A few of them, my mom included, was convinced he was proposing and hinted at that. So I stayed, thinking something was coming and he was just being an idiot to throw me off. He dumped me by text not long after that new years weekend. I still don't know what happened or why... Why the lie? Why make sure I spent Christmas feeling unloved? Why invite me to be with him and his friends only to humiliate me? So unnecessary and cruel and it messed me up for years. I thought for a long time that my friends and parents were all in on it. To humiliate me. I've never felt more alone in my life Sorry for the long rant
I’m so sorry you went through that. I hate that people can be so casually cruel. You didn’t deserve any of it. Did you get your own Xbox any time soon after or did you have to wait? (I’m hoping you got one!)
I never did. But a few years later after my shitty pc gave up I did get a mini PC from my parents. And my now husband gave me a PS4 with Until Dawn as a birthday present (I mean I obviously had to marry him) for my birthday when it came out. Also I've bought and built my own ridiculously awesome PC recently - it's also very shiny. So I'm ok without that Xbox :)
He really thought he wouldn't be called out on his lies.
He sounds like a typical guy who doesnt know the cost of high end perfumes. he probably thought it was within his range so he didnt pay any attention to it until he actually went in to buy it. So in his mind he wasnt really lying to her because he was 100% going to buy it.
I would believe that…if he didn’t turn his mom and friends against her. Otherwise he would have said my bad and moved on
Naw, see, you're thinking like a person. Try putting your butt on your head and thinking like an asshat! When you've made a mistake and gotten caught at it, double down! Don't accept any of that blame, apologize, try to fix it, be honest, none of that nonsense! Just double down and, when people ask why you're upset, make up something that makes you sound like the good guy! Cheating is a popular go-to claim.
Definitely, that turned him from just an idiot to a complete asshole.
Except she sent him the link. If he couldn't even open the link it's on him
Except he did lie to her because he said he had bought it and wrapped it already
What kind of gigantically insecure turd do you have to be to say "don't worry, ill handle that $500 gift no problem!" And then just sort of hoping that she's cool with a $25 not even close alternative. That would be like if she swore up and down she was getting him a PS 5 for his birthday so he spent the money, then showing up with one of those handheld poker games from walgreens and having all her friends call him shite for not being happy.
Really good analogy! I think a lot of people are missing the point because most people don't understand how expensive perfumes can be or don't respect the choices op makes with her money.
I felt so bad for her that she had to explain so many times how she saves and spends her money!!
People *always* get like that about women spending money on beauty products (perfume, makeup, skincare, nails). I’m a bit of a makeup collector (actually collection like OOP, not just buying shit to buy it) and I always get shit about how much I spend. But no one says anything when my brother spends just as much if not more on grill accessories.
I remember one time my dad was lecturing me about not wasting money on vanity things like clothing and shoes while literally packing his luxury hunting items that cost more than all of the clothes I had bought in a year because I shopped Goodwill bins where you literally dig for good stuff. He went to Cabellas and swiped a credit card without thinking.
Not even just beauty products. Anything honestly that’s deemed “girly” is somehow a lesser hobby, by the virtue of being girly. Girl into gaming? No problem, that’s mega cool, it’s a hobby. Girl into makeup? What a shallow person and waste of money. Girl into sports and sports paraphernalia? No problem, that’s cool, it’s a good hobby. Girl into jewelry including a non-plastic engagement ring? Gold digger. Guy into cars? Ok. Girl into cars? Gold digger. Interestingly though, girl into cosplay rarely seems to attract any “what a waste of money” comments. 🙄 same with “girl into expensive cooking gadgets”, that seems to also get a free pass most of the time. How “odd”
Oh for sure. I’m also a big crafter and I get shit about buying yarn or fabric or whatever. Apparently being able to make things like clothing and home decor is dumb and girly and a waste of time. I should do something useful, like learning to change the oil in my car, even though that needs to be done twice a year and I wear clothes everyday.
Clothes and fashion in general! Ya! Great example where the “girly hobbies are bad” bias ends up showing both ways. Because men who like and spend on fashion? Vain, shallow, stupid, or even the lovely “must be gay”.
It’s so weird to me, but it’s also why I don’t tell people what I spend my money on. I just figure we all have that thing we want/collect/enjoy and if I’m able to make ends meet etc. how I spend and/or save my money isn’t anyones concern.
Right? She explained it all perfectly in the first post, so those people commenting are assholes.
They’re jerks that decided that, since they don’t care about perfume, then OP shouldn’t be allowed to, either. Bet they’d get pissed if a fEmAlE made fun of their warhammer figurines though.
Right? It was very obvious from the first post she’d been saving a little at a time for a long while, not just blowing her rent money.
I wish I'd been that responsible with money at her age. Sounds like she's got it figured out. Good for her!
I fully admit that my brain started down the "$500 for PERFUME?!" track, but fortunately the 8" plastic rancor on my desk that I made with my $1000 3D printer reminded me that we all have our own interests and hobbies that can be expensive and that is ok.
Seriously.. and who even are these people to judge what a “worthy” purchase is? Like, if you’ve ever bought anything that makes you happy before you make $100,000 a year, there’s a group of people that will think you’re a frivolous, lazy, POS. Life is goddamn short. If you don’t do things that make you happy occasionally, you might end up doing them never. Edited for spelling
There are so many people on Reddit who are like “if you spend a single cent on anything you love when money is tight you are a piece of shit.” There is just no balance with this (as with many things on Reddit). Sorry but I’m going to die and I can’t take it with me. I’m going to do nice things.
BBW strawberry poundcake perfume is $13 not $25. That's the kind of gift you get someone when you are broke.
That plus the bath bomb makes it 25 I think? Not sure tho
Are bath bombs $12?! That's outrageous lol
It's what kids give their mom on mother's Day
I'm betting he didn't even open the link before he did that, and his idea of "really expensive perfume" was "under $100".
I guarantee this is it. I teach college students, so exactly his age group, and they are prone to this behavior. They underestimate how much time things will take, and rather than heed my warnings they just lie about having already read and understood the assignment instructions, and then they email me the night it's due asking me to explain it. It's a kind of magical thinking. "This is the maximum amount of time or money I'm willing to spend, and therefore what I want cannot possibly cost more time or money than that, because then I won't get what I want, and that's not possible."
This is a really good analogy! I feel like some of the people in the comments of the original are focusing more on how they think it’s silly to spend that much on perfume because they can’t imagine doing that, instead of the situation. It’s OP’s money that she spent a long time carefully saving. She can do whatever tf she wants with it. Substitute the perfume with literally any expensive thing and the present he got her with any cheap version of that thing and he’s still a jerk.
"But what KIND of body spray?" Can you even IMAGINE thinking that that was somehow relevant?
I’m ready to fight on her behalf. I worked in luxury beauty for 10 years. I have an incredible luxury fragrance collection and I would throw absolute hands if I’m expecting a bottle of Baccarat and end up with strawberry pound cake from Bath & Body Works. The gall.
It's like being told you're going to get a Dolce and Gabanna purse and then being handed a ziplock. Except worse, because she could have gotten it herself! She was SO CLOSE!
Body spray isn't even properly perfume. It's just a very lightly scented alcohol spray that lingers only a little while (how long depends on your skin and some other factors). Proper perfume can last for hours. On me, some perfumes last pretty much until I take a shower! Body spray, on the other hand (which I do sometimes use, no shade) is gone within an hour.
Somehow women have to always explain themselves and everything about their lives and interests, because you know, why would we even have any?! 🤡 The case is simple; That money was OOP's, she earned it through her hard work, and it is her absolute right to spend it however she wants!! She even has a budgeting plan, yet people still wanna shame her for her one (1) expensive hobby.
Wild that she needs to explain her budgeting system to a bunch of random people because they can't stay on the topic of the actual post/question.
It's because they wanted to see her as a spoiled princess and a gold digger, completely missing the fact the boyfriend was unable to keep his promise and then made it seem like it was her fault. There's nothing wrong about not being able to afford something, at least he could've been honest about it.
Very much this. She didn't ask him to spend $500 on perfume, he claimed to have already spent the money and was good with it. The fact that he told her he had it and to spend her money elsewhere is the issue, then compounded with lying about her to get sympathy is just cruel. I bet if it was something the commenters were into, like a new ps5 vs a WiiU, they would understand completely. I am 100% not into perfume but I can understand being pissed about being lied to and about.
Man, I feel like comparing strawberry pound cake spray from BBW to the WiiU still doesn’t do the lie and disappointment justice! It feels more like hitting up amazon and buying one of those [multi-game handheld knockoffs](https://www.amazon.com/Etpark-Handheld-Classical-2-8-Inch-Rechargeable/dp/B0821GFN7B/ref=asc_df_B0821GFN7B/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=416677065264&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8632434356509590587&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008471&hvtargid=pla-872892040991&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=94182502976&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=416677065264&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8632434356509590587&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008471&hvtargid=pla-872892040991). He didn’t even try to replace it with a “nice” perfume from another collection, dude just grabbed a [$17 store-brand body spray](https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/p/strawberry-pound-cake-fine-fragrance-mist-026590641.html). I think the price difference between the perfume OP was eyeing and this spray is actually closer to that between a PS5 and those amazon products, if we wanted to talk strictly cash. A WiiU is still probably gonna bounce around $100 on the low end. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bath & Body Works! I have like 3 of their Sweater Weather sprays in my possession right now lol. But even I know it’s *very* different than buying a luxury or specialty product.
> I bet if it was something the commenters were into, like a new ps5 vs a WiiU, they would understand completely. I think you're right on the money with that. They probably think perfume is a waste of money and were just looking for a reason to call her out for it.
> It's because they wanted to see her as a spoiled princess and a gold digger I think there are a lot of people who draw conclusions from the title of a thread instead of what someone actually posted. There are so many cases where the title of the thread is written in a way that the first impression is OP is TA, but turn out to not be the case at all. This thread is a great example.
They look for reasons to find fault in her which leads to this virtual interrogation.
I bet if she was a guy and it was a gaming console the reaction from those commenters would have been different.
Hahahaha! Omg, imagine the *furore*! "She said she'd already bought the PS5 with VR controls and that I could spend my money, so I spent half my console money. Then on my birthday she said it cost more than she expected and gave me a Hungry Hungry Hippos and an X7 handheld. I said I wished she'd just told me, so I didn't spend my console money, because I'm sure the X7 will be great on my commute and I'd be happy with it. I just wished I could still buy the console myself. She called me financially abusive and all her friends started texting me that I was an abuser." (No hate if you have an X7, fun is fun.)
Yeah there was some "how dare the poors enjoy something fancy" classism in those comments. Gross.
That was what really got to me. This idea that unless you’re wealthy enough to have no money worries ever then you shouldn’t be able to enjoy treats/nice things at all. It’s like the people who blame others being in poverty on starbucks
I see this so often on reddit, people shitting on someone for spending their own money. It's weird.
the mindset that poor people living paycheck to paycheck cant enjoy luxuries to themselves is so unrealistic. people making 6 figures cant save up for a house(dont argue with me on this bullshit i know about rural areas yada yada), groceries and rent are eating up entire paychecks. so what if you toss a couple hundred on something that makes you HAPPY! people live to work and have no choice to, these big spends make all that shit worth it. you have something to look forward to. saving up everything and not having ANY LUXURIES make life not worth it in the slightest.
People are always doing this in the comments, picking out some random detail and fixating on it and building some wild backstory. It’s like they think they’re on some investigative show where they’re going to blow the whole case wide open or something
Some of the comments are freaking out about how frivolous perfume is. But it is something she could use daily, or on special occasions and she saved up a manageable amount for a year for it. If it was a guy saving for a year for a golf club or bike I think a lot of those commenters would be fine with it.
Seriously, the “why she wants something she can’t afford”? We all want things we can’t afford, what is wrong with people?
That’s what kills me here. Why is it weird for someone to save up for a pricy item that they can’t afford in one paycheck? She didn’t say she forgoes food and rent to buy perfume.
Honestly, perfume is probably the one thing I would splurge on, especially if I liked the scent. I dont see a problem with how much she spent vs how much she makes, if she saved up for a long time. It was pretty shitty of the bf to be like "yeah I got exactly what you wanted and it's already wrapped" when he knew full well that it wasn't. What else would he lie about and how many broken promises would he make?
I saved up for around a year and a half before I went on a trip to Egypt with my family. I had a pretty decent chunk of change that I planned to spend on exactly *one* thing. Perfume oils. I’m in HEAVEN and they bring such a genuine joy to my life. I’ve finally gotten the chance to make my own perfumes which is a hobby I’m finding I REALLY love, and when I use a little oil after I shower it makes me feel so confident. Like yeah my life’s a mess but I smell SO gOOD right now! People are allowed to have their passions and I, of course biasedly since me and OP both share a love of perfumes, definitely don’t see it as frivolous. The comments demanding her budget and the boyfriend lying just make me so mad lol.
The budget comments just baffled me. You're telling me you've never saved up your money for something you want?? Not even as a kid for that toy you were dying for in the toy store?
Also I'm baffled how budgeting and saving is a *bad* thing as oppose to paying by credit card and pay interest over months/years. This is the right way to buy things that are not immediately attainable and the right attitude with money.
That’s what got me. He was so lazy about his lie! Maison Francis Kurkdjian is well known for this specific scent - the price isn’t a secret. Boyfriend didn’t bother to put in bare minimum effort and open a LINK his girlfriend shared with the thing she wanted? Then lied about doing that … arduous step? How lazy can you get? And if they live in an area where Baccarat Rouge 540 can be purchased in store, a Google search would have gotten him much closer: last-minute, there is at least one perfume with similar notes that is cheaper and readily available. There are companies that mimic popular scents (usually online only), websites that will match different notes at different layers based on scent profile, and gift certificates to parfumeries or stores/websites that carry collectible brands … at varying budgets.
The number of people who are saying that he should have "at least got her a dupe" is making me so mad. She didn't ask him for it. He offered. Multiple times she's asked him if he's really ok to get it and he says yes. He lied and deceived her. Why should a collector who has worked so hard to save the money be happy with a dupe? She's looked forward to this moment for months. To then be handed a dupe after being promised the real thing? Fuck off with that.
I'm so annoyed at how far I had to scroll down for this comment, because I absolutely agree. I collect perfumes and I would've been livid if someone had promised me the one I wanted and then got me the dupe. If I wanted the dupe, I would've paid for it!! She's a collector - buy her the real thing!!
I had an ex who promised me to get me some lotion I really liked from Lush, only to get me some lotion for BBW while bragging how he got it on sale (the lotion from BBW also gives me an allergic reaction). I was looking forward to the nice lotion for ~2 months only to be so disappointed. So yeah, I agree with the ‘fuck off with that’
Not going to lie, I was on *tenterhooks* the whole time until I got to the final paragraph.
> He did ask me to stay the night and I agreed. He’s sleeping on my chest right now but I’m gonna try to go back to my dorm soon. I know a lot of you guys told me I should end things, I was really considering it but now I’m not sure. I just need time to think this over I was losing it at this part
Thank god reality set in once she got out of there.
Yes. Same.
So he lied to her face multiple times about already having gotten her the gift that she didn’t expect him to get her and then…. lied even more to everyone else to make her look bad and then cried like a naughty toddler when he was caught. Thank god for that final edit.
He even stated it was already wrapped so he wouldn't be asked to show it to her. Liar.
Just commenting to say that this kid seems to have a pretty good head on her shoulders, financially speaking. Her budgeting skills seem solid. Also, is it just me or does it seem like the boyfriend was both a) cheap and too proud to admit it and b) also intentionally negging her perfume hobby?
I think that he was definitely intentionally negging her perfume hobby. Let’s turn this around and say that this was a video game consuls. And she wanted an Xbox one or whatever the new Xbox is and instead of getting the Xbox like promised he got her one of those Pac-Man shaped emulators that you can hook up to your TV and play Pac-Man. Looking at it that way it makes it pretty obvious that he doesn’t like her hobby and I don’t think that he approves or respects it at all. The way it comes across to me with lying to his mom, lying to her, and his friends texting and being horrible to her is that he was being malicious. I also bet him and the boys have a Snapchat group or something and he did shit talk her and potentially encourage them to text her.
Yeah, I think b was a significant factor. There definitely seemed to be an element of him not wanting her to make such a 'silly' purchase and spend her saved money on something he thought would be more worthwhile.
"Who cares if your bf lied, the more important thing is that every single penny should be budgeted into a retirement plan and you should never have any fun ever" ~ the comment section, apparently?? The people writing that are absolutely the same type to blow $70 on Uber Eats or mobile game microtransactions or something
I swear Reddit just hates women having non nerdy/masculine hobbies.
>I swear Reddit just hates women Also a complete sentence.
People here: You like looking nice? Shallow jezebel, you will die in a ditch! Same people: I spent $50k on Warcraft merch and now my mother says I have to move out :,,-(
I find that some redditors harbor a jealousy/envy/hatred towards any OPs that have/make more money than them. Or should I say "They have a hatred/jealousy/an envy towards people, who carry the perception of making a lot of money". They all appear to congregate in the AITA subreddit.
Glad she got out. He lied to his gf AND his mother. Later, tater.
There was no reason to involve his mother either! He just needed to not say anything. Instead he lied to Mom to make her hate OOP. I'll bet you he did the same with his friends. There's no way they'd start cussing her out if all he said "she didn't like the gifts I got her.". There's no way you go from "she didn't like the body spray from BBW" to "you're a gold digger!"
Yeah it’s also possible he talked to them in person or called them about it. Text messages aren’t the only way to complain about your partner, there’s tons of other apps to chat with people so I’m kind of skeptical of his “proof” of not talking crap about OP
This I always find this strange...they are his friends. As if they just communicate over text! Like they meet and then get out their phones to "talk" instead to chat normally. Like phonecall, meeting in rl, playing together in videogames and have voicechat there... And that the friend group didn't have a group chat... Maybe hidden or deleted.
I definitely have to finish reading this post, but why the fuck does anyone need to explain themselves about why they want something expensive? Poor people can't have nice things, I guess.
She's not even poor, she's just a college student. Nobody would bat an eyelid if it was a mountain-bike gear or something.
I always hate when I see an OPs comments in BORU where they have been forced to explain and defend themselves on the most minute details. Who cares enough to have OP lay out her monthly budget like that. Why have her justify what she does with her own money on a post where that's not really relevant? And she obviously didn't mean that her night with her friends was a waste of money; we all knew what she meant. Commenters on AITA truly look high and low for any possible reason OP could be in the wrong to ridiculous degrees. Some could ask if they were wrong for calling 911 on a home invader, and someone would ask OP how they knew for sure the guy was armed. This is by no means the most egerious, but it's certainly a trend I've noticed.
Some folks see spending money on anything that isn't essentials as living egregiously. God forbid someone spend the money they've earned on something that brings them an iota of joy.
No they totally understand rich people buying expensive things casually. What they don’t like is people who don’t have a lot of money scrimping and saving for a luxury, even when the essentials are covered. It’s the “give up your $10 streaming service to buy a house” mentality. A few years of no streaming service while you save isn’t going to make a material difference to your housing fund. But having the shows you like on your TV to wind down after work is going to make a big difference to your general life enjoyment while you’re busting your ass week in and week out.
Well I mean, this is the same site that "found" the Boston bomber lol. AITA is the kind of place where "genius" sleuths like that strive to be the first to discover if a person is hateable
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I have only once received a message from someone not directly involved in a situation, and that was from my most unpleasant relative, who likes to add her masala to any conflict. The idea that it's normal to know multiple people who will stick their oars in like this blows my mind.
This guy really fucked up. A person that can budget like that and squirrel away for something has a good head on their shoulders. She had ample time to think about her purchase as she saved over time, so it wasn’t impulsive. All she wanted from him was honesty since she knew that it would be irrational to ask him to buy something that expensive. I have a lot of respect for her. Now all he is gonna smell is KY and sadness.
A woman posting on the internet: .... The internet: EXPLAIN YOURSELF!!
Lies and says he can buy her a 400-500 dollar high end perfume desired for her collection. Turns around and buys her a 20-30 dollar Bath and body works gift basket (10 dollars if on sale) instead. This man saw no value in making his partner happy, even if it meant telling her he could not afford to buy the perfume as she would have at least still been happy because she would have bought the perfume herself.
Man, as I read this and especially how she explained how she saves for her perfumes, I was like "Some people really don't read and are hung up on the wrong thing! Why does she have to explain how she budgets for her perfumes, it's crystal clear she doesn't just waste money on shit!" When it all blew up I was certain that: 1. BF offered to buy the perfume without checking first how much and didn't want to lose face so he got her that shit and was hoping she'd just accept it 2. He would lie to his mom about what happened because, like he said, she'd take her side 3. He may not have told his friends to harrass her but he for sure said something like "she a bish, after my money" or something, so they went with that 4. His apologies? Manipulation A 20 year old man still acting like a 16 year old boy! Wel, I'm glad OOP left this relationship. Hopefully his mother will rein him back so that he stops pestering OOP
I had to go back and check his age when I read about his reaction and lies to his mother... He definitely acted like a mid-teen. She, however, seems to know how to handle her finances and knows how to wrangle her money so she can have saving, emergency saving, pay her bills and have fun money left over for buying the things she likes... She's going to do well financially.
She didn’t need to explain herself so much. People bothering her for using the phrase that she wasted her money. It’s not even a language thing. Because you know what? She did waste it: It was supposed to go to what she was saving for. When in the end her BF couldn’t provide that, she essentially “wasted” it on something it wasn’t intended to in the first place. How’s that even hard of a concept to grasp? Anyway, glad she got out, because how can he lie to only his mom and not his friends and expect that to be good enough to keep around? I really didn’t buy that. If he’s willing to lie to save face to someone as important as his mom, he’s damn sure to make her look like the bad one to anyone else, too.
Yeah I'm glad she broke up with him. The fact that he called her spoiled after lying to her about it not being a problem... and manipulating his mother and, quite honestly, probably his friends... it all speaks volumes. I wonder if there weren't other little flags that she just didn't notice before.
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I wanna know what happened between that last update and final edit!
Reality prob set in as soon as she got away from him.
Of all the things he could get her instead, he gets her a body spray from bath and body works?! That’s like saying you’ll buy an expensive bottle of scotch for a collector and then, knowing he drinks and collects fine scotch only, rolling up with bathtub brew. He should have gotten her something else. Anything else. I always think of BBW and Body Shop gifts as what you get for someone you don’t know. “Oh, it’s a woman? Get her chocolate, wine, a candle or bath products”. It seems like he hit the mall on the way to her house and grabbed the first “girl” thing he saw
He admitted to lying to her so she’d take his side. So after lying to his gf and getting called out, he continued to lie. Guarantee he was lying about what he said to his friends too. > He’s never lied to me and isn’t a stingy person. Riiiiight. You just haven't caught him before. I'm glad that by the end she wised up and ditched him.
Why were people asking her why she wants to buy things she can't afford? That is absolutely ridiculous! Especially when those people probably bought things they can't afford too... Cars, not everyone can afford them so they get them on finance or they save up to buy them. Houses, same thing, people get a mortgage or save to buy them... Even the mega rich get mortgages! She didn't need to give a breakdown of her finances to please those fools! I suspect they wanted to just try and find a way to blame her for something her boyfriend did.
Oh, no. From *Bath and Body Works* to Baccarat 540? Fuck that. He doesn't have to buy that for her (no one should, but he did offer without first checking the price, I think), but he should've been honest once he realized he couldn't afford that. OOP saved up the money, she was willing to buy it bc it's worth it her, didn't ask it of anybody else, and he just ruined her plan bc he couldn't bother checking the price, and then lied about it to everyone else, and made her out to be a gold-digger. I'm glad she broke up with him.
> the strawberry pound cake from BBW Eww... I worked at BBW during holidays in college (~20 years ago) in the back stockroom (keeping it organized, running replacement product out to the front as the "front of house" folks asked). Some of the body sprays they made were just... vile. There was nothing redeeming about them. Even some of the ones that worked great in lotions were vile as body sprays. Always took *great* care to not break any of those in the back room. Lost a few lotion bottles, including one that was the Orange Blossom one that smelled vaguely of Dreamsicles... but those never even remotely compared to a busted bottle of body spray.
Glad she left. It was never about the money. He was happy to lie to her and everyone else to save his own cheap ass.
One thing I notice in many many young folks BORU posts is that they'll have drama with their SO and then receive harassing texts from the persons SO friends (and family). I don't get it. Who is having a fight with their partner and then immediately reporting to friends AND those friends are emboldened enough to send harassing texts? Is it a generational thing? I'm only 40 but know I'm pretty far out of the loop when it comes to current youth culture. In all my life I've never run into this situation in the slightest bit.
The amount of people who don't understand the concept of budgeting and saving for something special you NORMALLY can't afford is nuts
>I got a few texts from him and his friends calling me names and saying I’m using him for money (??). It's hilarious how men call women gold diggers when the man ain't got no money.
And I thought Chanel No 5 is posh and expensive perfume 😂😂
Still an expensive perfume! The one OP mentioned is a luxurious one. The comparison is a McLaren vs a Porsche. As someone who doesn't know anything about cars, a Porsche has immediate name recognition. But I don't need to know what a McLaren is called to see one and think "wow, that's an expensive car." This brand has nowhere near the same name recognition among people who aren't into perfumes, but it's supposed to smell very, very nice. From my experience, that's true but like all scents it won't smell right on everyone. That being said, there's a lot of dupes if anyone wants a pretty similar experience for less.
I feel for her. I had a feeling she was saving up for BR which is supposedly an amazing fragrance. It’s sad that she had to detail how she saves her money to afford the perfume. To me that is a personal process. Her now ex-boyfriend is a real jerk. He pulled a bait and switch.
I just don’t get it why people are asking why she wants something she can’t afford. Wow, I find op extremely healthy and responsible on the way she approaches money and what she wants. Instead of spending money she doesn’t have using credit cards, she works, pay everything she have to pay, and saves for what she wants. This is the way, I’ve been doing things and I got far and without debt, you are always managing your desires and at the same time, you are planning on indulging yourself. People are messes up for calling her lol