Miserable on 40th birthday

You're not wrong - he is
He should want to do something amazing and special for such a milestone birthday
This is the person who is supposed to love you above anything else
And he can do it for his own brother ......

Firstly, Happy belated birthday !!
You wanted some effort and thought for your birthday which is not surprising.
I'm going to presume this is actually a culmination of a lot of things and this is not one isolated incident.
If you don't want to sort them out or you think he won't listen, I'd use yesterday as the realisation you need to do things differently. After another thoughtless mothers day, that's what I did.
I started doing stuff for me (it usually involved my young son too) and it took the expectation away because I was having fun anyway.
Yes....he is now my ex.

Beware the partner who wants you to remember your occasions for the wrong reasons.

I love this!

I’ve never bought into the whole ‘birthdays get less important/it’s immature to make a big deal of it’ thing.

After a particularly shitty big birthday I decided to plan a trip alone for subsequent birthdays and I’ve not been disappointed again since.

Happy January birthday 🎂🎉

This^^
I can’t remember anything special for my 40th. My birthday is just after Christmas, the worst time anyway, but all the milestones since have involved trips abroad to see NY in. So they’ve made up for all the others.
For a normal birthday year, I make the whole month of January my birthday month, organising small different events with family and friends.

Happy belated birthday. You shouldn't have to spell it out. I know with my husband I do though.

I would love for DH to organise something not just 'I'll pay you organise it'

My H was utterly shit on my 40th too. I wish I had left him then in retrospect, but had given birth 4 weeks earlier, had a baby who screamed all night ( that dealt with by myself whilst H slept soundly in another part of the house). I didn't want a big do, but was clear I wanted him to do something, but nada. He did take the day off work but used it to have a rest himself and never took the baby or any of 'my chores' to give me a rest, protesting angrily, ' Don't I get a rest?!'

Based on that, if I were you OP I would use this to re-evaluate if you want to stay with him at all. These events are a window into how things really are in the relationship and how they really view you, and themselves. .

Happy birthday 🎂

If you wanted something specific for your birthday, why were you not more vocal weeks before ?

That is really crappy OP

Absolutely rubbish of him and you deserve better. Does he even realise how poorly he behaved?

Belated happy birthday for yesterday, gift yourself time out doing what you want

I think 40 is like that for a lot of women. Then you sort out priorities and life gets better. Plus children grow older/parents die so you have fewer responsibilities which helps enormously.

My husband isn't fussed about birthdays at all, and is shit at making plans for anything. But even he will keep asking what I want to do for my birthday, and if I do want to do something, or want a specific present, he will organise what I've said I want. I do think it's shit your husband didn't even ask you, just assumed if you said nothing that you wanted nothing.

Though if he has form for this, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just say 'please can you organise a weekend away/ nice family meal / a night out with friends for my birthday'...yes it's sometimes shit to have to ask, when you do things for others without them asking. But it's not as shit as sitting at home with no plans feeling resentful. I'd rather feel resentful that I had to ask, but still had a good birthday, if that makes sense

My dh organised a meal out for my 40th and invited my parents, sister and niece.
It was nice but BIL and niece sat looking at their phones throughout and we paid for the lot despite being monumentally skint.

I told myself I'd built it up too much in my mind and it was just nice to see them.

Happy 40th op. I'm sorry it was shitty. I spent my 40th alone, having had a huge row with then DP the night before. He also hadn't organised anything (or ever did organise anything). That wasn't what the row was about but it probably should have been.
I took myself out to breakfast and whilst I was sitting there with my pot of tea for one, I asked myself : is this what I want for the rest of my life? Is this all I'm worth? And that answer to both of those was 'no'.

I took my DD's out to dinner that night and we booked a trip to New York. And the day after that I ended it with DP and I've never looked back.

Sorry Op that's really shit.

Really sorry for you OP he's a complete arsehole.

I've read so many similar threads on MN over the years and always so shocked by them, but the situations described generally seem to be the tip of the iceberg in the relationship.

It shows such a lack of care and love. I'd be re-evaluating. Sorry x

I went to Barcelona for my 40th. I’m not saying that to rub salt into your wounds but to try and highlight what I’d consider to be fairly normal couple behaviour. You need a big shake up and I don’t know what form that needs to take but something needs to happen.

I organised my own 40th - every little bit of it. I did get annoyed with DH as he didn't really help at all! But that's just him and that's just the way it is - he's not a party organisation type person.

Maybe that's just how it is with your DH and you should let it go - organise your own thing to avoid disappointment.

Why do you need to specify this? He's your dh, he can use his brains to think of something! For me this would a very wide eye opener to how little he thinks of you. For my 40th, I had a 3 month old and the last thing I wanted to do was leave the house. My dh organised is a whole weekend away at a luxury spa that catered for families. It turned out so special. If your dh can plan a 5day trip for someone else, he could have done it for you. Sorry you didn't have the birthday you planned op.

Is he usually this lazy and thoughtless? For a 40th he could have at least taken you out for lunch. Sorry no one made a fuss of you. Why did you have to pay for your parents food? I'd have thought they would have offered to pay if they could afford it for a 40th!

Book that hotel O/P and just leave a note saying Taken for granted so I've taken myself off for a few days for a luxury break .