My (39F) boyfriend Jack (37M) married his childhood sweetheart when they were 19 (they were “together” since they were twelve). She unexpectedly passed away when they were 27. I understand completely that losing her must have been so hard on him since they grew up together and everything. 

Jack and I met when he got a job at the company I worked at, and while he wasn’t really looking for a relationship at the time, I guess I grew on him since I would bring him coffee and check up on him. Eventually he agreed to a date and now we’ve been together for six months. 

I’ve always acknowledged that he’s going to have days where he misses her and that’s okay, but I also want to be respected and ask that he doesn’t bring her up around me and such. 

I always do a little surprise for him on our month anniversaries and so for our six months I wanted to do something a little extra special and asked his friend for a key to his apartment since he hasn’t invited me over yet, and I thought it would be really cute to clean up a bit, cook him dinner and get some flowers so that maybe he would warm up to the idea of us moving in together and maybe being intimate. 

Anyways, I took the day of our anniversary off from work, and told Jack to come over to my place in the evening. I went over to his apartment and started to clean up a few things that were laying around. That’s when I noticed a photo of him and his ex wife framed above the fireplace. It felt disrespectful but I decided to talk to him about removing it later, and continued cleaning. When I got to his bedroom I saw a travel booklet to this resort that I knew him and his ex wife went to for their honeymoon and I’ll admit, I got a little over-excited and assumed he was taking me there for our 6 month anniversary and might propose. At this point I didn’t really care about the photo and was just super excited. 

So fast forward to when he comes to his apartment after work. When he got inside I had candles set up and you could clearly smell the lasagna I made for dinner, but he didn’t even acknowledge any of that. He literally freaked out when he saw me. I got him to calm down a little and explained that I just wanted to do something special for him, and then I attempted to ease the tension by jokingly saying “I know its nothing compared to what you planned”. He asked me what I was talking about and I brought up the resort booklet. He literally paled and admitted that it wasn’t for us to go together and that he was going alone.

I asked him why and he said the 10 year anniversary of his exes death is coming up and he wants to feel closer to her by going somewhere where they were happiest. This broke my heart and I can’t lie I got really upset and accused him of loving her more than me and not being able to prioritize me. He started saying that she was his first love and they spent most of their life together and I would never understand how difficult that is. I got really mad and I picked up the photo from the fireplace and threw it onto the carpet (it didn’t even break or anything) and said that I was done being disrespected by him and that he could call me tomorrow, and then I left. 

I called one of my girlfriends and she said I was the asshole and that I need to apologize, but I think he’s the one who was in the wrong. So, AITA?