Receiving birthday gifts from family, friends, and lovers makes you feel special. They may not receive precisely what you intended, but the sentiment is what counts. However in this story the wife was quite upset with her husband’s gift for her. Read the story and what are your thoughts on this.
Source: Reddit
My 39th birthday was last week. Months ago I was talking with my mom about a part of our state that I love to visit and she mentioned that she has never been there. I told her we should go together sometime and we started planning it. We ended up deciding on going there for my birthday. During the planning we realized that my mom, my brother, and I had never been on a trip together, just the 3 of us, so we invited my brother too. My husband was fully supportive of us taking this trip and would be staying home with our 3-year old son and our dog.
Before we left last week my husband gave me the gifts he bought me for my birthday. He got me some comfy pajamas, a sun hat, and some good wine and cheese to bring with on the trip. Normally, I would be totally OK with that gift as we don’t really splurge on bday gifts anymore. But he had been talking about getting me a smart watch and new luggage for my trip ever since we started planning it.
He knows I can be kind of picky about gifts as I have exchanged some of the gifts he’s got me in the past for different colors or options. But this time I told him to just pick something out for me as I want those things for the trip. He offered instead to go shopping with me so that I could pick out exactly what I want because if I take them on the trip and don’t like them, it’s not likely I could return or exchange them. I thought that was a good idea, but life got busy and before I knew it, it was the week of our trip and we hadn’t had a chance to actually go shopping together.
So the time comes for us to leave and part of me was expecting my husband to surprise me with a new watch or weekend bag, but he didn’t. I admit I was pretty disappointed that he didn’t take the initiative to just get me those things on his own. I tried not to let it bother me during the trip, but it was always kind of in the back of my mind.
After we got back, I mentioned to him that I was disappointed that he didn’t get me the watch and bag like he said he would. He told me that he thought we had agreed to do it together but I told him he knew how busy we were and it wouldn’t have been much effort for him to just do it on his own.
He got offended and told me that I just spent thousands of dollars on a nice, relaxing trip with my family while he stayed home and took care of everything, and I’m complaining about a watch and a bag? I told him that he knew how much I was looking forward to having those items for my trip and I’m just disappointed that he didn’t realize that and take the opportunity to do something special for me.
He apologized for “ruining my trip” but I know it wasn’t sincere and he’s just telling me what he thinks I want to hear. I offered to go shopping with him sometime to pick them out and he told me to just go do it myself.
Now I feel like crap and I know he’s mad at me for being ungrateful for the things he did get me and for allowing me the opportunity to have a trip like that with my family.
What do you think about this situation? Any advice for the wife… Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
