My girlfriend 26F bought me 28M a fake cologne for Valentine’s Day. Would you want your partner to say anything?

For Valentine’s Day this year we agreed on a $50 budget as we just moved in December and still are putting money aside to furnish the place. She expressed that my gift won’t be here till after Valentine’s Day and that she’s so excited for me to have it and open it. Almost every day leading up to it she’s mentioning that she is so happy and excited for me to get it.

Fast forward to when the gift arrives I close my eyes and she puts it in my hand and to my surprise it’s a cologne that I’ve been talking about and thinking about buying for almost a year at this point, and it’s WAY out of the $50 budget. I’m ecstatic but also telling her how she spent so much more than what we agreed on and how she shouldn’t have.

She then tells me she didn’t spend retail on it so it was a little bit cheaper than what I thought originally and that raised red flags to me because this is a highly faked cologne. I open the box and sprayed it and instantly I knew it was fake. It smells similar to the real one, but not quite the same. It also only lasts about 30 minutes.

I haven’t told her that it’s fake and she got scammed because I don’t want to hurt her feelings or make her feel stupid for getting scammed, I’m thinking about just buying the real one and switching it out so she will never know the difference. Everyone I’ve talked about it says I should just tell her that it’s fake but I hadn’t seen her that excited and happy in a long time and I just know she thought she was giving me the greatest gift of all time.

Would you tell your partner or just let them keep that happy excited feeling?