To feel completely undervalued/insulted by a massive disparity in gifts

[jfh]

I'm the main breadwinner in our house. I'm lucky to earn a decent wage, but very little of it is disposable after all the usual stuff and then some - bills, pension, life insurance, groceries, cars, food, kids clubs, and not to mention school fees. To be honest, I'm hardly left with anything at all to spend on myself.

My OH has a independent source of income, nowhere near as big as mine. We agreed early on in our relationship that I would cover all of the 'mandatory' stuff, leaving them to earn whatever they liked and spend it however they liked.

My OH is very generous with our children, and spends an awful lot on them. Far more than I am able. My OH also spends a lot on themselves...shoes, bags etc....not cheap stuff either (we're talking more than one Mulberry here).

I recently bought my OH an Apple Watch for a combined birthday and anniversary present. They we're delighted with it and I was happy that they were happy. They also decided they wanted to buy a very nice extra strap for themselves...way out of my price range, and not far off the cost of the watch itself. But, hey, it's their money.

I got nothing in return until three weeks later when I had to fairly bluntly remind them that I was still waiting for my anniversary gift. I was presented with two cook books. To be fair, they were hardback and all that, £40 in total.... I don't have much time to cook when I get home from work (the only person who makes me meals is the au pair!), so I doubt I'll be getting much use out of them. Certainly much less use than my OH will get out of the £1000 food processor they've bought for their use only.

AIBU to be grossly insulted? I'm not a materialistic person, but this feels like a total slap in the face. It's not even the price of a tank of petrol (BTW which I also pay for!!).

All money to be pooled

You need to be reassessing your finances, he needs to be contributing in relation to what he is earni g, to the bills. Time to cut down what you spend on presents. It is not fair, that you pay the bills, and yiur oh, contributes nothing. Nice set up he has there.

Maybe start with - if you don't have any money for yourself, and feel sad about this fact, don't buy someone a £1000 present??

Work out the monthly joint finance need, and then calculate the percentage that you both need to put into the pot to cover this - based on percentage of your incomes - and the rest is yours to do what you want with. Simple.

So if you have an income twice what they do, and the joint money to cover all joint spend is £900 then you put £600 in and they put £300 in.

Is your partner the SAHP, with an income from either a legacy or a lottery win or something? I can see that having, sort of, made sense when you came to this arrangement of you being the breadwinner and DP spending his/her income as s/he chose: DP's contribution to the family would be doing the childcare and perhaps the bulk of the domestic work. But it does seem that the arrangement is no longer working out if you have no 'pocket money' while your DP has enough to buy him/herself fancy gadgetry.

Oh sorry, the food processor was £1000. I have no idea what an apple watch costs. I'll go look - £600 ish.

Don't recall being given a nice day out for the anniversary, would have been very happy with a trip to the seaside and a fish supper! So, not a lot of thought expended either.

True, the food processor is for all to eat the results of. Just feels my gift was like being the given the packaging as my present!

If they don't work and have an au pair there really is no excuse why they don't have both the time and financial means to be thoughtful

To be clear, they do work...I didn't marry a member of the landed gentry!

OH is not they.

They is plural unless you are living with more than one partner.

Is it relevent if your partner is he or she? I'd prefer it if you don't want to say .

Alternatively you are living with more than one partner ie

I'm baffled by the set up here - even if, as I assume, OH is not the parent of your DC (which is the only reason I can come up with as to why you're not expecting a financial contribution - if I'm wrong, then the set-up is even more insane), he/she is presumably living rent-free in a home you're funding. So just stop that happening - you need a regular contribution or they can find new accommodation pronto.

I personally don't consider kitchen equipment to be in the same class as posh watches. Since I do all the cooking and DH and DD eat more of what comes out of the kitchen than I do.

Why, again, do you think your financial situation is workable? Why the imbalance?

Any money brought in to the household should be shared equally. Why that doesn't happen in some households is beyond me

You are a partnership and in my eyes that includes finances.

Only one OH as far as I know. Don't know where we'd put all those cookery books if there was more than one....

Jane the singular they is perfectly acceptable. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

OP, is this set up predicated on the idea that you are in some other way benefitting e.g. this partner is staying at home so that you can work, and you are well supported to do that? (I don't mean to imply that this is ok, or not, just to work out what the emotional logic is.)

OP I once made a mistake trying to keep a thread gender neutral, it didn't help and it made things a lot more convoluted.

What's the problem with 'they'? I know several people whose preferred pronoun is 'they'. It's fairly common, for example, in the trans community, but elsewhere too. For many people it's no longer exclusively plural.

It sounds to me as if the cook book gift was quite insensitive, and there needs to be a general conversation about how finances are split. I would have been unhappy to receive two cook books from my OH too.

Do you think your OH thinks this system is fair and why?

Loving the gender mystery thing you've got going on here OP. Oh no - wait - I mean NOT loving it. It's boring and silly and presumptuous of you. Yawn.

Ignoring the pettifogging about gender, I reckon you're dead right to be upset. I'd be foully hurt. Also, I suspect the reason you're knocked back so much is that you secretly think OH is using you for money. Well, a lot of us on here agree with you - not so secretly.

They are not staying at home, they do work. The original set up was on the basis that they would be full time childcarer at some point, so it was a financial discipline we imposed upon ourselves. As it happens, they have managed to build up a reasonable body of freelance work, and hats off to them for doing so.

You are in an unfair financial arrangement.

Set up a joint account for the mandatory stuff, for both of you to put the same amount into?

Then have a discussion about "thoughtful" gifts.

It sounds like you're the skivvy and your partner is spoilt!

So you came to the arrangement on that basis and things are now different. Set aside an evening to sit down and look at your household income and outgoings.

Fuck, wiki is not always correct. They is/ are plural.

My OH has a independent source of income, nowhere near as big as mine. We agreed early on in our relationship that I would cover all of the 'mandatory' stuff, leaving them to earn whatever they liked and spend it however they liked.

Why on earth would you agree to an arrangement like that? I realise if she is earning much less than you that a 50:50 split might be impossible or unreasonable by what kind of a mug are you that you get to pay for everything mandatory and she gets to spend her money on what she likes without any accountability at all? Really, really bizarre set up and you need to renegotiate this arrangement.

And why aren't you allowed to use the food processor? Or is it that you just have no interest in doing so?

I can see why the cookbooks seem like a thoughtless and inappropriate gift if you she knows you have no interest in cooking. For me it would be less about the value of the gift and more about the fact that she seems to have put little thought into what you might actually like and want.

And unless you are married to a man with a Mulberry handbag and shoe fetish it's obvious she's a woman so please for the love of God, just say 'she' and stop all this 'they' nonsense. There really is no need for it.