The guy I been dating for 4 months birthday was like 4 days before Christmas. I asked him the week before, “what would be your ideal birthday, what would make it absolutely special for you?” Since he’s in his mid-30s now, he loathed ‘getting older’ and told me, “I never celebrate my birthday” flat out. Everytime I bought up his birthday, he responded about his loathing of getting older. When I texted him to wish him a Happy Birthday, he told me, “yes it’s today, boooooooo I’m getting older 
“
Now, the day before I inquired about his usual off days Wednesdays and Thursdays. Thursday was his birthday. He says, “Working today, but hopefully will get tomorrow (his birthday) off”.
Now, based on the above responses, who would be going out of their way to do something very special on their birthday? I didn’t know what to expect. So, the day of his birthday I bought over a couple of gifts he liked and wished him Happy Birthday the moment I walked in. We had dinner at his place and went to the movies.
Now, he’s going on that I showed up 4 hours after I texted him and that he expected me to arrive an hour after. That arriving at 8:45 was unacceptable and that he thought his birthday would be more ‘me centric’. Saying we had to rush thru the dinner to make it to the movie. Then he says he didn’t take off from work for Christmas weekend because he couldn’t justify doing so after his birthday was so bad??? Well you’ve worked on every fucking holiday this year Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years as it is!
I was like…I TRIED to make your birthday special and you showed very little interest in doing so! You hardly communicate with me outside of when we’re together and this is why 2 months ago I asked you, “please communicate with me more!” How the hell am I supposed to know what you want if you don’t tell me?
So now I’m here feeling like crap because he didn’t enjoy his birthday and I’m just finding this out now. I told him I was ready and willing to spend the whole day with him and go out of my way. It’s like all this time I’ve been trying to get him to communicate with me, asking him why he doesn’t initiate calls and dates, and then on his birthday he wonders why I didn’t do exactly what he wanted. Because he never expressed any desire to do anything.
I’m still willing to give us the chance to work things out, but I’m going to let him know for now on; he needs to speak up. Don’t sit there quiet and agree with everything I say and then take the anger out on me because you couldn’t verbalize how you feel. At the same time, the fact that he couldn’t ever express himself and then drops a bombshell later on makes me feel that all this time he’s been faking how’s he felt all this time. I just think the trust is a bit tarnished and there’s certainly going to have to be some improvements if I’m going to carry on with this.
