/For context, we don't live in the US so the numbers given below are altered to the US standards slightly for better understanding. /
Recently I've been pretty tied on cash and stressed about my spendings. I just started renting my own place and I've been trying to get my head around managing all the expenses. Long story short, I earn something like 3k-4k monthly and after all the bills are paid I'm left with 1.5k. This isn't much and I told my boyfriend that I won't be able to go out with him as often as before because I need to focus on both my spending and my savings account.
My boyfriend on the other hand doesn't have any financial issues and he's really into saving money wherever and whenever he can. He has a very good IT job position in which he currently earns 15-20k per month. He also lives with a roommate, not because he likes it, but because he wants to save as much as possible. When we go out he expects that we go 50/50 most of the time, because he doesn't want to lose money. He also encourages me to organise my finances and save money as well.
We've been together for 2 years and he has always been very strict about spendings - during this time I received no gifts from him, apart from birthdays, flowers only several times... he never actually organised a proper date, we simply go out and sometimes he surprises me by paying for me, but most often he takes pictures of all the receipts and keeps a tab on me in a savings application, so I can be notified how much I owe him. He always gets very stresses when people take too long to pay him back.
I've never had an issue with this until recently when my friends from work started making plans to go out to a sushi place. As we gathered a bigger group of people, we discovered that the minimum spend per person at the restaurant will have to be at least 90 usd. I did the calculations and I told them that unfortunately it's too much for me. They offered to lent me money, but as kind as it was of them, I rejected the offer - it wouldn't change much for me, I'd still be down 90...
Later that day I was talking with my boyfriend and I told him how sad I was, because I rarely go out with friends from work and I would love to go but it's so expensive. He told me that I'm thinking too much about it, that I should just go, because spending 90 once is not such a big deal. He got me thinking and we discussed it a little more but in the end I decided that going there and spending so much would be irresponsible of me and I told everyone that I can't go.
This decision made me really depressed about my life. I was in a bad mood for several days... My boyfriend stepped in and told me that I don't need to be so sad because he will gladly take me out for sushi and then we will pay even less than 90 per person. I understand that he had good intentions but for some reason this made me feel even more sad than before and I told him that it's never been about sushi and I'm not in a mood to go anymore.
Some time has passed, I moved on from that situation and then my birthday came up. My boyfriend took me out and as a surprise he made reservations at a sushi place. I didn't even know where we were going until we arrived and until I entered the restaurant. Was I surprised? Kind of. Was I happy? Well, sushi isn't even my favorite food and I told him that before. Of course I thanked him and he covered the whole bill but it left me second guessing both myself and him.
I started to think that maybe he could have given me the cash to go out with friends. I never asked him for money, I'd feel very bad about doing it but now I'm thinking that maybe I should have. Or maybe he should have offered helping me out just because. I'm disappointed and also angry at this whole situation, I feel like his behavior might be red flag-ish but I'm not sure why and I can't name it properly. I'm starting to feel annoyed with his "saving" obsession and I don't know what to think anymore, I don't want to come across as being problematic. Any thoughts?