Women being forgotten on special occasions

[Draconis]

Why does this happen so often?
Women who put effort into their partners and dcs special days, so it obviously means something to them, yet when it's their birthday, Mother's Day and even Xmas, their family does nothing for them.

When I was small, I used to take flowers that I'd see growing because I desperately wanted to give my mum something and most of my friends were similar.

It doesn't seem like that anymore.

It's sad reading those posts. Is it common or are they the exception?

Women have always been socialised to be more mindful of others, this is not new.

Many boys are still not encouraged to be thoughtful to others e.g. sending a birthday card to a friend.

It’s not the case for me. My children get very excited about getting me presents for birthdays, Christmas and Mother’s Day, and my partner plans treats and surprises for my birthday. I know plenty of other women who have similar experiences. The children get less excited as teenagerdom consumes them a bit and their brains fog over but I don’t see that as anything personal, and they still care once prompted by their dad (or me, for his birthday).

I wonder about this too. It is such a clever way to hide being nasty.

Not everyone, my DH spoils me rotten on my birthday, anniversary and Christmas. My kids used too when they lived at home.

Women are socialised to remember and celebrate people’s birthdays and other occasions - and to see the effort they make as directly proportional to their love for the person celebrating, or how caring a person they are. So there is huge pressure to make birthdays and holidays special and thoughtful and magical, or they’re a shit friend / mother / partner / daughter. You see this on here all the time.

So it follows that women also feel utterly unloved and humiliated when their own special days are not celebrated in the way they feel obliged to celebrate others’.

In my social circle, most men honestly don’t give a shit about their birthday or Father’s Day or whatever. It all feels like pressure. They don’t want any more stuff, they certainly don’t want a party, they don’t want to be the centre of awkward attention. They don’t want a pub lunch with the whole extended family and heartfelt messages in well chosen cards. They kind of submit to having celebrations foisted on then by their female partners, who would feel bad (and/ or be judged badly by friends & family) if they didn’t do something.

My solution would be to get rid of celebrations and the expectation of specialness altogether. Few couples / families / friendship groups seem to be able to get this right without generating hurt and offence, even when the relationships are solid.

I’ve trained my husband to buy presents for birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas. I always get presents from DC and GC. Husband couldn’t care less about his birthday and wishes everyone would just ignore Father’s Day.

It doesn’t need to be all or nothing though. My husband organises a nice present from him and our children and my kids and he wrote a card each. I often get breakfast in bed or a lunch out with them.

We do basically the same for each other. I know my husband loves the cards that the kids write.

I think maybe social media (again! The root of all evil!) makes us think that celebrations have to be huge and over the top, but it can still be thoughtful and kind without being ostentatious.

From the posts I read, the women aren't expecting much at all.
Just the bare minimum acknowledgement, a token gift, a card, breakfast would make them happy but they are usually totally ignored or get an arsey comment because they look miserable or some rushed thoughtless acknowledgement at the very last minute or when the day is over.

When married (now divorced), I asked my PP if we could go do a parachute jump together for my 40th birthday (exciting/something different to mark the occasion). By age 42, he’d still not arranged anything. My adult DD told him it was not fair on me, for him to not have put any effort in, by 2 years down the tracks. By this point, the excitement of the prospect had begun to lose its sparkle for me tbh. I didn’t feel valued by him anymore. The moment had passed. He then arranged the experience, but refused to jump with me, so we arranged for him to sit on the beach to wait for all the participants to land and get a photo of me landing to share with family/friends. I was second to last to land, so there were plenty of others ahead of me landing for him to know I was due too. He spent all the time smoking a cigar and playing with images saved on his camera however and didn’t get a single photo of me, despite my waving like crazy/happily coming into landing in the beach!

Also: Just after this last XMas, I asked him what he’d sent his elderly DM for XMas (she’s in the UK/him in AU), as I’d always organised all gifting when we were married. We’ve been divorced for a while now. His reply totally flabbergasted me however as he said that now his DM has dementia, he sees no point in bothering, and hadn’t even sent her a XMas card, let alone a present. This woman has supported him throughout his entire life…

No wonder he's your ex @Ratatouee!
My husband always spoiled me on my birthday, and Mother's Day he helped the kids make me breakfast and we'd go out for a meal. He always bought Xmas presents for his side and wrote the cards to his friends/family.

I think that's the problem though isn't it? There's an awful lot of nothing

No ones complaing their husband didn't organise a marching band and balloon arch, it's often not even a present or a cake

Personally I think the absolute basic you can do for your partner is a nice card, a present, a nice meal and a cake (if that's their sort of thing). Your partner is the person you share your life with, quite frequently the mother of your children. It's not difficult to do the basics for someone's birthday and show a bit of love and care.

And often this will then be passed onto their sons, who then also start to treat their mother like crap.

@Ratatouee that is awful of your ex. To not even greet you after your amazing achievement and get a picture! Just shows what horrible people most of those inconsiderate-on-special-days really are.

In our house, we always do a favourite breakfast (nothing extravagant but better than standard toast and cereal) a gift and a dinner of choice. If one those can't happen for whatever reason, then there are always other choices to make them feel special.

I hope I've taught my dc that even making a nice breakfast for someone can mean something.

My ex, who is in his 30's, his Mum not only buys all his cards for special occasions but she even writes them for him as though he is a toddler. She even buys her own cards. As you can imagine he is a very spoilt & selfish, self centred man.
I do agree with pp that occasions in general are very very overdone and that a lot of men would rather do without them completely. I hate overdone occasions too but I think a card and a small gift for those who clearly want one really isn't hard. Really should be a compromise.

@Draconis many of these women are in bad relationships with arseholes, and that often emerges in the backstory.

But some might be in basically good relationships with men who just don’t get how emotionally important a token gesture would be. Someone who doesn’t ‘get it’ emotionally, will only ever ‘get it’ cognitively, and needs telling plainly and directly what to do and why it’s important (and probably reminding). And that doesn’t feel very romantic, and might feel lonely, and can absolutely cause resentment that our own presents and celebrations end up back on our own to-do list. But if the rest of the relationship is good, I think it’s often a social communication incompatibility - and it feels much worse than it needs to when we interpret it as lack of love, or passive aggression.

I still think that if women were under less pressure to martyr themselves and celebrate the shit out of everyone else all the time, it wouldn’t feel so deeply hurtful not to have our efforts repaid on these high stakes official days of celebration.

If I ruled the world, birthday celebrations would be very different. Why do other people, even if they are our loved ones, get to chose and plan things to celebrate our own birthdays?

For example, DH is very focused on presents and surprises, caring much much more about the effort than any result. As a consequence, his two adult sons (my DSS) are also focused on 'making an effort' and show their love and appreciation with ...

Well, I have a drawerful of things that they have given me over the years, until I felt secure enough to explain my preferences, which is 'nothing that needs to be dusted'

Oddly enough, DH 'DM' use to write to him every year, timing the letter to arrive just in time for him to buy and send something to her for her birthday. He hated that she never trusted that he would remember on his own. Sigh.

If I ruled the world, birthday celebrations would be planned, executed and funded by the birthday person themselves. They would get exactly what they wanted, how they wanted and when they wanted.

They might buy themselves a present, or save up big purchases to coincide with their birthday. Have a big or small party or celebrate delightfully by themselves. It would be acknowledged as their choice.

Anyone invited to join them would be free to join in or not as they liked

There would be no concept of birthday presents, a card given or sent would be the most anyone could do for anyone else.

Parents would cover the costs until DC independent, with more and more of the choice and any planning done by the child as they got older and more capable.

Think about how much is spent by others over the course of a year. That could be saved up and splurged on getting exactly what you want. How often do we get that now? Very seldom. That could be a regular annual cost neutral event.

Seems like bliss to me.

@FinallyHere I want to live in your world!

@Bunnyhair there do seem to be an awful lot of them!

Possibly, many women focus on celebrations and making someone feel special because it gets us away from the drudgery and dullness of every day life.
For someone else to think of you and appreciate you means a lot and it gives you a break from having to think about what to do on your own day because you're fed up of thinking of everything else constantly
(Mental load and so on)

DS will often come back from being out with DH or grandparents with a beach pebble that looks like a heart, a flower from the back garden, a feather he thinks is beautiful and say this is for you mummy because I love you. I will very much encourage him to keep that mindset!
We always do dinner of choice out for the birthday person, cake (even a small one of just the 3 of us) and a gift. DS loves to make birthday cards for friends and family. DH didn't think much of birthdays when we were first together, but because he's enjoyed the efforts I make he reciprocates. Next year we are away for my birthday and he said but what about the cake you have to have a birthday cake! I'll try and find a bakery or something locally before we go.... So I think it's embedded now! It only takes some perspective taking and a small amount of emotional intelligence to see what's important to someone you love. Those that regularly don't bother, when their partner enjoys a celebration, don't care how the other person feels.

@Draconis oh, I’d love people to make a fuss of me, if it came with no strings attached!

But I hate the pressure of having to think of the perfect present / gesture for others. I came from a family where many people (specifically women) had expectations around being surprised and delighted on their special days, and it was impossible for anyone ever to get it quite right, and there was always hurt and guilt and misery. And you had to be OTT grateful for the gestures and presents they offered you, and no amount of gratitude was ever enough.

And I can see where this came from: these were women who’d been culturally expected to serve their husbands and children first and foremost. They desperately wanted their sacrifice to be recognised, and it felt totally annihilating when it wasn’t. But of course no amount of celebration could make up for their not really having freedom to be who they were in their own right.

If those women had had more autonomy and equality, I don’t think celebrations would have had to carry the weight of everything else they were missing.

So I suppose when I read these posts about all the effort women make and how nobody makes any effort for them, it feels like my own miserable childhood family dynamic all over again. I prefer my family now, where we just don’t bother, and trust we love each other, and try to communicate as directly as possible.

Your special breakfast tradition sounds lovely ❤️

Hand on heart in this house we’ve forgotten more mothers and fathers days than we’ve remembered, our birthdays are the same week and we usually agree to ignore. But DH makes my breakfast most days, I change what I’m cooking so he only gets what he likes, we go for a special meal when we fancy (I.E new place opens or we’ll be in the vicinity of a fav restaurant). The “special day” stuff feels like a bit of a cop out because it covers for all the other days where you aren’t being thoughtful and kind. We make a fuss of the kids but they’re getting older and would just rather have the stuff and not sit through cake and happy birthday.