Grr. DH always spends a fortune on his DB- why?!

[ProperLush]

Once again, it's the time of year when DH, feeling oddly guilty about the fact his DB is abroad and 'alone' (single, elderly parents gone) compensates by buying relatively expensive and un-needed gifts for his DB (the bloke in question is 58 and wants for nothing having inherited the family home, having never paid a day's rent in his life, having never had a wife & kids to support... and owning 9 rental properties).

FWIW DB's just hooked up with a 'lady-friend' so is technically also 'not alone' BUT DH who is a crap present-giver (I buy every present within this family, even my own!) spends £60 odd on his DB. This year it's a Photo book (which I spent hours compiling...). I may get £25 'spent' on me!

DH is 8 years younger than his DB and isn't terribly close so that's perhaps a factor he's compensating for... But we did spend £8000 at Easter going to Oz to, high among the priorities, visit DB with the nephews!

I won't be a churl and make a public fuss but I wanted a little rant.

£60 is hardly a fortune.

If your husband only has one brother, it's not unreasonable to make an effort at Christmas. Surely you didn't spend £60 on a photobook though?

They do take hours of work, so I can sympathise there - although I'd have made my husband put in the hours.

If you are buying all the presents anyway, just spend more on yourself - that'll teach them!

It sounds as though he's trying to compensate for something. Do you get lavish gifts from DBIL, which he is trying to compete with? Perhaps he is scared of being left alone if anything happens to him, as he is his only close living relative?

I think it is mean to not spend the same amount or greater on you though. You are his next of kin. What puzzles me, is if you buy all the presents including your own because DH is crap, why don't you buy yourself the expensive gift and choose something for DBIL for £25? I think you tell DH that you deserve that if he expects you to do all the shopping. He seems quite disrespectful of you, quite frankly. Also stop doing all the donkey work, he wants his bro to have a photo book, he should do the compiling himself, and take it to the post office and pay all the postage etc himself. What do you spend on DH, I'd halve that and spend the other half on myself!

The answer is simple! Take over buying the present for your DH's brother. But some discounted tat from groupon/amazon/play but say it was from NOTH, spend what's left of the £60 'supplementing' your own gifts.

Thing is- and I'm in danger of MN moving this over to 'Relationships' ( ), there is no doubt about it, there is some psychology going on...

DH and I don't really 'do' presents, and it's never been part of my family culture. A cake and a £10 gardening voucher is the sort of birthday thing my family do as adults; maybe a T shirt or gloves. DH and I are in a reasonable financial position (and I should add with very similar spending habits- care and rectitude being the buzzwords!) so we tend to buy stuff for ourselves that we really want, as and when, during the year, but there's not a vast amount of that goes on as we aren't big spenders.

We also have joint accounts for everything so there's no 'his money' and 'my money' so pushing the boat out would 'harm' me as much as him- besides which, I don't feel the need to be lavished upon! Our love is expressed via gestures and care rather than diamond rings, iyswim. And on another note, I'm also a tiny bit uncomfortable with the Big Personal Present thing, like an unexpected diamond ring- as to me it smacks of 'keeping the little lady happy', sort of thing. I don't need it and our relationship doesn't work like that! I have spent £68 on a winter coat for DH (he chose it) because he needed and wanted one. I am also getting some new crockery (my choice!) for Xmas so I guess that'll come to around £80 all up.

DH's family, whilst they wouldn't necessarily spend out ££ on presents, used to make as much fuss about say family birthdays for a 43 year old as what I would for a 9 year old. DH and I would be in big trouble if we'd double booked such weekends! There were no DCs in the family at that time as ours are 10 and 12. DBIL lived at home all his life and was very close to his parents who both died about 10 years ago. DH hadn't lived any closer than 70 miles to his family since he was 17. He was emotionally 'close enough' but found his DB and mum's 'relationship' bordering on weird. NOT that we ever actually came out and discussed it as DH is uncomfortable with his family, sort of feeling he should feel closer than he does. He and DB Skype every Sunday night but they're talking footy within 3 minutes.

As I've said, DBIL is, partly as a result of never having taken on any 'adult' responsibilities and in inheriting the family house, frankly loaded. He 'puts money in our foreign account' for Xmas, birthdays etc so I buy the boys presents on his behalf for about £12 each (and photograph/Skype them so the DSs can say thanks personally)

So, bearing in mind what sort of present givers we are (sensible priced, no sweeping gestures), I don't understand why the apparent need for DH to spend £60 on his brother! Last year it was a £45 shirt (bloke is a builder who wears Woolies style polos and very short shorts (he's a Kiwi...!)); year before that, instead of cashing some store-shares over there we had, DH gave the lot to his DB. £90 worth. Which he let expire...

I don't expect to ever really understand as it's not something DH and I talk about, oddly- his family's foibles have always been a leetle 'sacrosanct' but I also do practically all the present buying for and between the members of own family without having to agonise over HIS family!

I went on a bit there, didn't I?

Very cathartic, mind...

So what if it's more than your present will cost? You DH has his reasons for buying something you think is too expensive for his brother, and as long as he's not running up huge debts trying to please his brother and it's making your DH happy to do so, let him get on with it.

I think it's a bit sad that your comparing how much everyone's presents cost.

No, no, no. Not at all- I am not 'making comparisons', as such, just trying to create 'a feel' for the type of present buying we are involved in.

When I get off here I am going to buy the house a rug for Xmas, for instance- so it's not really a 'it's not fair', it's more I don't understand why DH does it. The presents concerned are not carefully chosen, agonised over, analysed, personalised (OK, the photo book is but I did that cos DH has the artistic capability of a carrot and if we're chucking that much ££ at a book (that'll be glanced through once, approved of, but then left under a pile of papers on the unused study desk) at least I'd like it done properly!) - they're just 'that'll do'ed', really.

FWIW, though we joke about it, there is a tiny element of '£20 will do' for my DB's present and we see him every week! It is a joke as DH knows that I will spend what's necessary to get my DB a carefully considered present but he knows I won't head out and buy him a £500 electric guitar, for instance. But when it comes to DH's own DB, it has to have cost ££ relative to every other present and I don't understand it!

I understand your pain!

Dh is not close at all to his brothers, yet forks out big time for them at Christmas. I just don't get it. And more often than not they don't even say thank you. Every year I try to suggest that we knock adult Christmas presents on the head/have a Secret Santa/have a £10/£5 limit, but dh gets terribly angry and upset and insists on going ahead and buying things. Grrr - I'm on a roll now! One year he bought eldest brother a year's subscription to The Week magazine. After a few months he asked his brother if he was receiving it. Sil chimed in "Oh - that - we thought it was junk mail and have been binning it." And still dh won't budge.

Yes, gramercy- it's the 'not understanding', really! As I said (at great length ) above, DH and I don't come to verbal blows about it but there has certainly been 'an atmosphere' when I have suggested that something smaller, or even 'jokey' would really suffice, in the past.

Dh used to buy all his family's presents until I realised that he was spending £50+ on each person!

I try to spend £10-15 per person on my side.

I think for him it was because he only had a few to buy for (compared to all the presents I had to buy), so he didn't see the costs mount up. He also couldn't be bothered to hunt around for something cheaper more suitable.

Now I buy them all and everyone gets suitably cheap priced gifts

It's a good point- I wonder if I left all the gift buying to DH he'd spend £60 on everybody? But I only really 'notice' the extravagance because he only buys the one present?

I understand too. My 2 brothers and my SIL,and DH's own brother and his wife don't get presents from us, nor we from them.
Yet DH insists on buying his half sister and her DH a present. each.
I suggested buying perhaps a bottle of wine or a box of biscuits this year, and therefore spending less.
You'd have thought I'd said "lets wrap them in christmas lights and hang them from the forth road bridge"

Last year he spent £35 each on them. We spend £20 max on each of the 6 parents we have between us

Oh well if you can afford it and BIL will love it carry on!

But BIL hardly seems that fussed himself!

It's as if a boxed is ticked. Fair enough but does that box have to be so expensive relative to its 'joy' value??

I can see your point but what I don't understand is how does a photo book cost £60. Is a hard cover book and you have to send the photos to the company to do the book? DD1 did one of her's and her DH's holiday to Thailand but that only cost £30

Hmmm, I wonder if your dh thinks that he has to spend a lot so that he doesn't look as if he minds your BIL being loaded??? I've done a bit of that in the past.

I'd bought DBIL a Countryfile calendar (as usual), plus this photobook cost £40 and the lot cost £12 to post.

I don't think DH minds DBIL being loaded, as such (otherwise he might have not allowed his DB to have the family house, now worth about £400,000 whilst he himself inherited his father's shares which are worth sweet nothing, really (they do generate £120 a year... for him )).

I think in some ways DH feels a bit sorry for his DB, the lack of ambition which sees him, up until now, living alone and rattling around a huge house on his own, socialising with his parents' elderly friends, his inability to find 'the right girl' (mother put paid to that, I'm told!) and, truth be told, esp seeing as his new woman is 12 years older than himself (70), probably facing a bit of a lonely old age.

OK, if BIL isn't bothered by whatever gift he receives, just that he receives one, could you take charge of buying his gift, and choose something that looks much more expensive than it actually is? It seems that DH family used to go all out for birthday and Christmas presents, so maybe it's a hard habit to break.

I'd definitely raise the subject next year but not at Christmas. I'm sure DH has his reasons for not disclosing his family secrets, but a great shame he doesn't feel able to confide in you. I think he might find it liberating to get it off his chest.

Yes, I feel I will have to take over that present buying next Xmas on the basis of not stressing about that which we cannot fix but having the courage to fix what we can!

Mm- secrets. Not sure really. More of an uncomfortableness, really. Interestingly, we 'explored' this a bit when we had to do a 'preparation for marriage' course. You had a drawing like an archery target where you had to mark with a cross, among other things, where you thought your own family were for 'closeness'- the outer ring being 'merely sharing the same roof, little interaction, little sense of 'family'', the inner 'joined at the hip', then mark your fiance's family's position. We both independently put his family as more or less 'joined at the hip', and we agreed, then, that it wasn't so much 'really close and supportive and caring', it was more that Mother was in Charge and brooked No Dissent. To this day DH has trouble appropriately pitching reaction to our DSs' normal day to day disputes and bickering as None was Allowed in his family home. I believe he spent a good part of his youth quietly reading alone in his bedroom, tbh!

BIL is a regular Joe, what you see is what you get, maybe not the brightest spark in the chandelier. DH is a far more introspective, intelligent and analytical person. I doubt for a moment BIL ever saw his family as being a bit 'odd' (ref: his unnatural closeness to his mother, well into his late 40s!) whereas I know DH never knew how to feel- he recognised the 'odd' and was a bit embarrassed by it in public but could never, never discuss it or openly analyse it. Even now, when his DB says something particularly daft or racist (on Skype, for instance), DH lapses into awkward silence or evasively 'agrees', whereas if MY DB were to say it, later on, to me, DH would push the boat out in piss-taking. Somehow his family are a bit 'sacrosanct', not be be mickey taken despite many opportunities!

There's certainly 'stuff' going on there!

I think that might be best for your stress levels to choose DBIL's gift. He more than likely thinks that you do anyway, because women are in charge!

I also think that DBIL is probably a lot happier than DH thinks he is. I've known a few people who've only really come into their own once controlling parents aren't around any more. It's obvious the brothers have completely different personalities, which can cause difficulties in any family; if all you have in common is the fact that you're related by birth and have no shared hobbies or interests. I thought you were going to say that DBIL was the favoured child who got spoilt and their mother always took his side.