Passive agressive christmas presents

[AwakeandResentful]

This is an odd post. It is 1am and I'm laying in bed unable to sleep. I've been with my husband for 13 years, married for 10.

18 months ago I found out that he was having a relationship that was outside of the norm for our marriage - sat next to and worked with this woman for 2 yrs and shared a job, but he kept her a secret. Turns out they saw themselves as 'special friends'. An emotional affair in all likelihood.

He was a loving, generous and kind husband. He went above and beyond with very thoughtful gifts and not always limited to birthdays and anniversaries - just little things here and there. For some stupid reason I cant sleep as I keep running over xmas day 2018. I find his gifts passive agressive in hindsight, but I'm not his biggest fan nowadays. Normally, I'd say that a gift is someone thinking of you and would be happy for it. Not this time, and Im stuck between feeling spoilt and entitled vs feeling stung by what feel like low blows. Ive asked him and he got upset, saying he put a lot of thought into the gifts and only meant them kindly.
Gifts were: nice ipad cover for my work ipad (many chats that year about me wanting to resign as hated job where expected to be tethered like a goat 24 hrs a day to emails, I worked long hours and he knew I hated that bloody ipad), marie kondo book on organising/cleaning (?), a pink trowel for the garden (he resented gardening in new house, big space, I wanted the bigger garden) and lingerie (having asked him to stop buying for me as it was piling up in drawer).

I get that this is an odd Q, at a silly time, but Im trying to understand what the hell happened to my marriage and this day keeps popping up in my head and making me feel furious.

Am I going nuts, am I being entitled, or are these presents passive agressive? I'd like your 2am views! Thanks.

Passive-agressive, just like the Christmas after I got married. DH & DM each gave me bathroom scales.😂

Hmmm, yes passive aggressive. But your H may be unaware of this, if he was in the excitement of a possible EA.

Hmm I wouldn’t say PA (but I think it’s a really overused phrase anyway!)

iPad cover could be interpreted as trying to help you make the best of it

Trowel as saying he supported your desire to garden

Kondo book is a really odd present unless you’d been talking about it

Lingerie is just lazy

I think it’s really easy to overinterpret things. Esp at 2am

He doesn’t sound like a keeper OP. He was a kind generous man, sounds like he had his head turned by OW..

You are not going nuts. Don’t dismiss your feelings, he isn’t being thoughtful at all. You asked him not to buy you lingerie, he knows you hate your job. The other presents are thoughtless.

Xmas day 2018 was my worst too. I had saved and got DH lots of thought out presents,including a rather expensive musical instrument. He gave me a phone charger! This was so out of the ordinary as previously I had always had lovely things.
Guess what ? His head was elsewhere, as I discovered in January about his EA and subsequent cheating.
So ,yes,I too, constantly think about it and often mention it when we are trying to discuss what we should do now.
Dreading Xmas this year.

I find the presents deteriorate as the mind wanders.

My exH was always crap at gifts at the best of times and a miserable receiver of gifts. No matter how hard I tried he made it plain he wasn't satisfied with the gifts he got. His to me were always typical last minute wilko shit bought on xmas eve,

My parents used to get him lovely clothes but stopped getting him anything because he was always so churlish about it.

But as his mind started wandering on fetish clubs and the women there everything dried up, gifts, flowers, my birthday. I should have seen the signs really.

With any kind of OW or similar type of situation the first thing to go is any kind of consideration of you.

I used to love Downton Abbey, watched every episode in the run up to Christmas on catch up. DH went with DD(4) to buy me the boxset of Downton Abbey. DD blabbed to me and I kindly told him since I had watched them all very recently I didn’t really want a box set of them to rewatch a month later? He returned the box set and it was a little joke,
Next year I got the boxset of Downton Abbey for Christmas. X

When my DH was having an affair, he bought me a handbag for Christmas that I didn't like. I tried to look pleased in front of everyone and then quietly asked if I could change the colour - turned out it couldn't be changed, he got the huff and used it s a reason to hate me and we argued about if for months. Of course if I had known about the affair at the time, I would have known it was about that, not just about the handbag.

Slightly off topic, but i guess what I think about your presents is that they are not too bad, but of course you are going to take a negative meaning in the context of an EA.

They don't sound too bad. What type of thing has he got you in the past?

Gosh I’m not sure he put that much thought into it. If he isn’t passive aggressive or one to make digs, I wouldn’t presume this at all. My dh Is clueless but it sounds as if you’re is a bit better.

Maybe the ipad case was to give you happy vibes and stand in solidarity with you, the MK book and trowel because you’re in a newish home and the lingerie because that’s what he always does and he didn’t think.

He’d have to be a really petty person to have gone to so much hassle to buy such a lot of gifts to piss you off.... the EA is a different story. Is that ended? If it is you need to get past this otherwise it’s a life sentence for him and you and neither of you deserve that.

What is the Kondo message ? Get rid of anything that doesn't bring you joy ? Sounds like your H .

Wether true or not (I personally think it’s a reach), if you have got to the point to where you believe your H is communicating via PA gift giving then your relationship is in trouble.

Some people are just crap at buying presents. An ex-boss of mine once bought his wife car tyres for HIS car for HER 40th birthday. She hated the family car, heavy to drive and falling apart, so she'd starting using his car when not ferrying the kids around, maybe once a week. He genuinely thought the tyres were an absolutely inspired idea that she'd totally appreciate and 4 tyres, 4 decades, 40th birthday! Genius. She called himself something really quite different when she found out.

I wouldn’t appreciate the trowel but I don’t think I would read anything into the presents tbh.

What’s the position with this woman now op?

I don't think the presents are passive aggressive unless he'd made previous digs about you being untidy or not having sex with him as much. However, I think they're more highlighting how his mind was elsewhere and so he put little thought into what to buy you. "Oh...she likes gardening so I'll buy her a pointless pink trowel", "she tidies the house...I'll buy her a book about tidying the house".

I honestly think that if you're this upset and hurt by the presents even all this time later then you need to think about whether or not you can actually stay with him due to the resentment you feel about his EA. Because ultimately this isn't about presents. It's about your eyes being opened to what he's really like.

Thanks for replies. There are many worse points in last 18months, but this was the firs time I can pinpoint I knew something was badly wrong.

The xmas before I bought him mostly orange presents, sounds odd, but its his favourite colour and I went to great lengths...orange cashmere scarf, neon orange boot laces, orange calvin kleins etc. These are things I know he loves. It turned out that he took the (reaching!) In-joke between us and shared it with his OW, he bought her a neon orange bottle of gin for her leaving present. She left his office 2 weeks before xmas 2018. The gifts he bought that xmas for me felt full of resentment and simmering anger.

@ButteryGarlic our sex life was non existent. 3 young kids, youngest 12months that year. He bought me lingerie constantly over the years, every month or so. I hated it as what was a thouggtful (and useful) gift to start became a silent reproach. I told him how I felt, he ignored me and the lingerie piled up in the drawer.

@flouncyfanny your view on marie kondo book isnt something I had considered. I dont like clutter and have to keep on top of it with 3 kids. The gift felt very pointed, not really sure why but can see ot as a subliminal message now you have said it!

Mostly...he is a v thoughtful gift buyer. These gifts most certainly took some thinking...but not in a good way.

To the comments re OW, he denies any EA. He says it was just a secret friendship bit even if it was normal for her (and he wasnt a secret to her husband, just another colleague) he clearly didnt feel like that towards her.

Is he still in contact with her?

What are your ongoing issues with him?

Mil bought me a necklace for £2.75.
We are nc now!!. Saved her a fortune haven't I??

Ok now you’ve explained more, I see your thinking. Do you have any idea what he will buy you this year? What is the state of your marriage now? Is she completely out of the picture?

She is out of the picture, but finding out about her opened a can of worms turns out he had consistently hidden friendships with women at work for 13 yrs we have been together. Just female colleagues, but he was going to a huge amount of effort to edit them out of his day when he got home. Ie how was yr day? ...great, I had lunch with Dan/John/ Stuart etc and then edited out any social coffees or lunches with female colleagues. He says now that he did this as he thought I might be jealous. To me, he did it to have his cake and eat it.

I dont like this man. He isnt anything like the person i believed my husband to be - the most honest...the most decent....the most respectful. This man is a selfish, entitled and dismissive pig.

I went through a major family bereavement shortly after my d-day and it has left me reeling and frightened. Everything I know as fixed points in my life have changed overnight. We still live together as a result, I suspect, but Im grieving and sad. I think he is too, and he wont 'give up' on his marriage. Looks to me like he never really believed he was married in the first place.

OP I think whilst the gifts could have been more thoughtful I don’t think they were passive aggressive as such. Perhaps the lingerie was a bid to try and coax you into giving more sex which actually backfired on him spectacularly because that was the furthest thing from your mind with 3 young children (they honestly don’t get it so they?!)

I don’t think this is about gift giving primarily. More that he’s lied to you and been secretive about women at his work with no real excuse for doing so. It has made you think less of him and in fact left you wondering if he was relentlessly pursuing these women which is why he kept them a secret. You already know he was being inappropriate with one so the remaining lies look to be minimised!
I would advise counseling sessions to help you work through your grief and then perhaps think about separation until you’ve worked out what you want to do about your marriage.

I'm so sorry about your bereavement. And finding out about any degree of disloyalty is a loss of sorts. Each is enough to make you question everything you thought you knew. Combined, the effects are much stronger, which explains where you are, but doesn't make you feel better.

May I gently suggest individual counseling? Having help to work through your emotions with someone objective will help you so much more than the tortured thinking at 2am. By seeing someone, it may help you find peace and put events into perspective. A therapist's office can be your safe place, and in time you may be able to bring your husband in to talk about the effects of his behaviour on you in a way you can't discuss with him now. (Men don't tell us about things because it will make us jealous? When in fact, it's the hiding that triggers suspicion.)

I genuinely think you'll find some degree of peace with counseling.

If he makes you this miserable put your happiness first and divorce him let him have secret friendships with whom ever his heart desires while you are done with his bullshit