The annual Christmas ritual of reading DP the riot act

You are making a rod for your own back. You clearly resent the work and hassle involved in buying and wrapping all the presents so stop doing it.

About 5 years ago we stopped giving and receiving presents at Christmas. It was partly environmental and partly that I am trying to declutter my life and my house.

We told our friends and family about it and the response was pretty much unanimous - they all thought it was a great idea. Now the only gifts we buy are for little kids and our adult DC. Nothing for parents, siblings, mates, cousins or each other.

it makes for a WONDERFUL Christmas. We have a houseful of extended family every year and it's brilliant. Lots of lights and decorations, lovely food and drink, games, karaoke and dancing. No one seems to miss presents at all.

We aren't stingy at all. If I see something someone would like I buy it for them and give it to them regardless of the time of year but there is no longer any pressure to buy something for the sake of it because it's December 25th.

@StormingNorman and @MayaPinion - you both commented on @OhBling's post where they were basically saying what @Mugcake did in their first sentence of their post "Stop covering for him".

I'm wondering why you would have an issue with the way that @OhBling posted it and not @Mugcake ? Is it how they suggested stopping covering for this bloke's inadequacies?

If I were in your shoes @DBD1975 - I'd be telling DP/DH that I am no longer going to be providing the cover for him to the families at the respective gatherings. If people ask me what he got me, I'll answer honestly and say nothing because he didn't - I got my own present. If people ask what we're up to over Christmas and New Year, I'll answer honestly - I'm not sure but I'm doing X, Y and Z and he's sitting on the couch I guess.
He is welcome to change the narrative but you're not going to do it any more for him.

Leave him

Why don't you want better for yourself than this?

I don't understand this.

If he's only got his dad who are all the ILs?

What would he want to do?

God a million times this. I’m fed up seeing women being shouted down on here for being “needy” for wanting consideration including gifts. I don’t mean expensive but thoughtful and considered.

ive only got this far in the comments and had to stop to agree. Why on earth do you put up with this behaviour?

I’ll go back and RTFT now

Why are you buying him any presents when he doesn’t buy you any? If you’re doing it for show or to save face then don’t 🤷‍♀️ He’s not embarrassed to not buy you anything so don’t treat him like a kid and let him get away with it. Use the money you would have spent to treat yourself in the New Year.

He hates it. You hate it. Why are you doing it? ?!?

I wouldn't be doing the wrapping, fuck that. If I'm doing the brain work of thinking what presents to buy, DP does the wrapping.

Tips:

• Stop being a martyr - just do your share not his as well;
• Let people see his grumpy, unsociable behaviour;
• Ignore him while you enjoy time with your guests;
• Tell him he can opt out if he wants and spend the days elsewhere;
• Don't make excuses for him or cover up his selfishness.

In short. Why are you putting up with this s*?! He doesn't give a toss about you and you have to actually mentally prepare to give a grown adult a talking to about at a minimum being a civil respectful human being. Life is too short for that. But you won't leave you have said so I don't know what magic wand you are expecting people to suggest 🤷🏼‍♀️

I mean, you're making light of it but you need to reflect on why you're doing that. Your feelings are obviously hurt, you're martyring yourself buying yourself gifts and doing all the grunt work of Christmas, whilst he rolls his eyes at you. I fully appreciate that some people aren't into Christmas but when you're in a relationship you don't get to opt out of considering your partner's feelings or doing your fair share, at any time of year. Honestly? I'd bin him with the Christmas wrapping.

He won’t change unless you change your response. I agree that you should stop pandering to his pathetic behaviour, buy presents for your kids and your family, he will soon snap out of it if he realises you are not going to tolerate or enable his behaviour.

How is it ridiculous? The OP clearly does this every year and intends to keep doing it every year whilst complaining and eye rolling like a martyr.

Is he susceptible to being shamed? Maybe throw in a few comments about how your guests are dreading coming to you as he's always such a shit host..

Smells like strategic incompetence and deliberately being a dick to push you to step in and take on everything while he can sit back and watch you do all the work.
He’s being manipulative and you are making it worse by appeasing him.
Give him a choice, get his arse in gear or take his arse somewhere else for the holidays. Don’t let him reap the rewards of your efforts until he ups his game!
(or just leave the selfish lazy git)

Ridiculous!

Write a to do list and tell your dh to pick half of the tasks.
Make it clear that you’re not going to do them if he doesn’t.
As for socialising I wouldn’t worry, if people think he’s miserable then that’s on him.

I simply would not do it, if he doesn’t buy the gifts then his family don’t get gifts, if he doesn’t buy you anything then you may as well just buy what you want for yourself and use it straightaway, why wrap something for yourself to open? If he doesn’t like Christmas that’s fine, but he needs to understand that the people in his life do like it and part of being in a family is doing things to make other people happy.

It’s really not a “man thing”. My DH does most of Christmas. All the wrapping excerpt his own, sorts all the food/baking, does all the lights and decoration etc.

This is a very good question.

Is it just Christmas that 'upsets' his routine? Is he ok when it's someone's birthday for example or if there is an event that might disrupt his routine? Are those sorts of things ok with him? What if it's your birthday vs his birthday? Does he try to disrupt your birthday celebrations but is quite happy when the fuss is on him?

My SIL was married to a sulky man child just like this. We all breathed a sigh of relief when she divorced him because he was such a grumpy, rude, miserable sod. After her divorce she said to me ‘you tolerated his rudeness for my sake, didn’t you?’. She was right!

Scale it right back to the bits you truly love so much, you don't mind doing them without help.

I wouldn't host or scale that down to a mine pie and cuppa festive drop in.

He sounds awful to me but I think the main issue here is your Christmas and his Christmas is completely incompatible. You want the full festive song and dance. He literally wants to hide and is being shitty to try and facilitate his type of Christmas. Which is to be left alone.

You can't make him love and participate in Christmas. He obviously can't be like this the other 11 months of year else you wouldn't be asking for non LTB advice.

You knew what he was like within the first few Christmas's of being together? He isn't going to change. So either you can with how much work you do or accept its all on you.

This. I hate how people are forced/expected to be sociable at Christmas just because ‘that’s what people do’. We stopped hosting a long time ago, stoped buying gifts for extended family. We do visit people during the run up to Christmas but Christmas Day is stress free family time in our own home being ourselves and not pretending to be happy and nice to everyone.

If your DH isn’t into Christmas then that’s fine, if he doesn’t want to put effort into buying gifts then don’t buy his family gifts (he can tell them why he hasn’t bothered). Yes it’s annoying that women tend to be the ones that out all the work in but then that’s because we enjoy it more than men do and we also stress over it more. Do what you feel you need too but don’t moan at him for not being ‘into it’.

Nailed it! First post nailed it again.

My advice, let your family see him for the petulant teenager that he really is. Stop trying to cover for him. He clearly doesn't want to be involved so stop making him be involved. They'll ask questions for sure but you simply reply with the information that you've provided to us here - you bought your own presents as a pretend thing that he actually got up off his arse, put a bit of thought into getting you a gift, wrapped it and gave it to you, that you have had to cover for him all these years (I'm guessing that this isn't a single once off occurrence) and you've said "Fuck it. Enough is enough" and you've made a conscious decision to stop doing it.

Like @GinForBreakfast said, it's your decision at the end of the day.