My boyfriend and I have been together for over 6 years. And living together for the last 2.5. 

About 2 years ago I had bad luck with cars. I had 2 cars get totaled within 7 months of each other.  Neither accident was my fault, and the only reason both cars were totaled was because they were not worth enough. 

One car was my mom’s old car she passed on to me that had over 200k miles on it. I was hit from behind at a red light and the guys drove off. The other I bought used with the money from the insurance money, my savings, and a small loan from my parents. 

After the second car in less then a year was totaled from a deer running across the highway I felt I had to buy new this time. That way I get what I want in a car and if something else happens it will more then likely be covered to get fixed not automatically totaled. 

My boyfriend is against buying new cars. He sees them as a bad investment that just depreciate quickly over time. He would rather buy a clunker with +150k miles on it with no heat or a/c, and terrible suspension for $3k then pay +$30k for a brand new car with all the bells and whistles. I understand his logic but respectfully disagree with him and he does the same with me. 

He told me he would not be contributing/cosign with me on a loan when buying a brand new car. I said that’s fine. It’s my money, it’s my credit on the line, and it’s my car payment. My responsibility. 

I ended up getting a loan for only 1.6% with my work’s credit union and bought a brand new 2017 Toyota RAV4. And I love my car. I still stand by my decision to buy new. Very happy. We use my car all the time and my boyfriend only uses his to drive himself to and from work. He will often ask me to use it instead of his car. And I always say yes.

Fast forward to this past weekend. My boyfriend and I have bought a house together and we have been working on it. Fixing it up and whatnot. And I am the one with the big enough/reliable car that can do the hauling to the dump. That makes my car so dirty and I have started to notice more and more wear and tear on my 2 year old car. 

We had cut down a tree and that left a lot of wood shavings all over the place and my boyfriend wanted to use my car to haul it to the dump. I told him I really don’t want to use my car to haul stuff like this anymore because of the damage it’s doing and I ask him to please ask to borrow a friends pickup truck to do the run. 

Our friend isn’t available when my boyfriend wants to do this dump run and we have to get it done.  So we start loading my car up with the wood shavings and the bags are breaking, making a mess everywhere. 

We get the first load done and head home to get the last load. While loading up the second haul I notice there was damage done to the driver side rear wheel well. I flip out. I’m so mad that my car has damage on it and all the mess from the wood chips doesn’t help. I’m beyond pissed. My boyfriend doesn’t like to put up with my “fits” as he puts it and told me he will make the last dump run by himself. 

I realize from the beginning the damage on the outside was neither of our faults. It looks like a car cut too close and side swiped the back while I was parked in front of my house. It must have happened during the snow storm we had earlier this week. 

He leaves to finish the dump run and I go cool down and clean myself up. Once he is back, I’ve already filed a claim with my insurance to get the damage looked at. I explain to him later that the reason I was so upset was the fact we always use my car and it is causing so much damage to it. I tell him I’m going to need him to start helping me with taking care of my car or we don’t use it anymore. He instantly starts going off about how he never supported me getting a brand new car and it’s not his responsibility. 

I was more referring to him cleaning my car after using it to haul stuff in it. From my perspective, it’s like if you lend someone you trust your laptop and they return it with the fingerprints all over the screen and crumbs in the keyboard. 

Am I the asshole here? 

