Husband doesn’t appreciate gift

[MrsM101]

I’m pretty upset and feeling unappreciated. I’ve saved for 3 years for my husband’s 50th birthday to make it a special one. I spent months researching and planning and booked Dubai for his birthday, really spent a lot more than I’ve ever done before to show my appreciation and make his birthday special, also purchased a watch he had been after on top of it all which cost a bomb. I just really wanted to celebrate him. Firstly he is annoyed that I didn’t allow him to hand pick the watch himself even though he told me that’s the one he loved, secondly he is annoyed that I planned a holiday and he wasn’t involved in the planning and doesn’t want to go. I have shed so many tears and feel so unappreciated. I didn’t see it going this way. I just don’t understand what I’ve done wrong

I understand why he was upset. He had a mental image of what it would be like to go into the shop, be shown respect by the shop assistant and buy the watch. He's now lost out on that experience. Similarly, planning a holiday is part of the fun. But he should have hidden his feelings of disappointment and should have shown gratitude to you.

Exactly. He's not "a little disappointed", he's acting like a spoiled child.

There’s absolutely no way I’d be going on this holiday with my husband if he behaved the way the OP’s husband has (he wouldn’t, because he’s not 7). The whole thing would be tainted by his petulant sulking. If I couldn’t get my money back I’d try to find a friend or family member to take instead.

Whether any of the posters on here would want to go to Dubai or not is entirely irrelevant really, it’s on the DH’s bucket list so we can probably safely assume that he does want to go to Dubai.

He's an ungrateful scrote.

I think it's a terrible post- really cruel and spiteful. OP is well aware that her husband was disappointed- she doesn't need a lecture or to be told she has taken something away from her husband. If the husband were a decent person then he would be able to put his mild disappointment about not getting smarmed over by a shop assistant to one side in order to appreciate the fact that his wife saved for THREE YEARS to get him the watch he wanted. That's part of being an adult. He's behaving like a spoilt child.

If he's incapable of feeling gratitude and pleasure when something is only 99% perfect and not 100% perfect then he will never be satisfied, and that's on him not OP. I suspect if OP had instead arranged to go shopping together he'd be grumbling about the fact that she hadn't surprised him, or maybe the shop assistant was insufficiently obsequious, or perhaps his preferred model would have been out of stock and he'd have had to wait.

So he should have been thrilled by the surprise!

I agree. If you’d said “you pick the holiday we’re going!” And “you pick the watch I’ll come!” It would look like you’d done nothing wrong

My husband did that for my 40th. He printed a load of things I could do and said “pick one” and it felt like he’d done it that morning when panicking that he hadn’t got me anything.

Your husband is being a miser. Is he anxious about getting older and taking it out on you?

Why not say that to the poster ? I’m entitled to my opinion in agreeing with what they wrote but your points should be aimed at them.

Yes, I agree!

I 'm afraid I agree with him. I don't like getting expensive presents chosen by somebody else. They've spent all that money and you might well not get what you want. I would hate a holiday in Dubai. And I wouldn 't want a watch chosen by somebody else. You meant well but it wasn't very sensible to spend all that money on something that obviously wasn't right.

But he does want this particular watch and a holiday in Dubai and has said as much in the past. I also would hate a watch and to go to Dubai but he’s into those things. I’m honestly astounded at the amount of people on here who are so ungrateful. Someone getting you things you actually want as a surprise is a huge amount of effort, why not just appreciate that? It would be a different conversation if she’d surprised him with things he’d never given any indication of wanting, but that isn’t what’s happened

Oh dear OP, I am feeling sorry for both of you.

For you because you have been building this surprise for three years, and in your heart and head the reveal and the response you hope for and imagined was going to make all your hard work and planning worth while.

For him because he has also had a dream in his head and part of his dream was the planning and the buying and by you building your surprise and dream you have inadvertently destroyed his.

I think you have both lost out by not communicating what you both wished for. I hope you can both reconcile to the miscommunication and come to understand what happened.

It reminds me of the O’Henry story about the poor couple who wanted to give each other meaningful gifts.

How was she to know in advance that it ‘wasn’t right’ though? She bought him the watch that he said he wanted, and a holiday to the place he said he wanted to go to.

The flip side to that is that if she wasn’t sure it was right she shouldn’t have spent thousands of pounds without checking first.

DP booked me a holiday for my 30th. I (hopefully) did a much better job of hiding it, but honestly, I was fairly gutted. For me, half the fun of a holiday is the anticipation, the planning, the finding things to do and where to stay.

Just having a holiday sprung on me just feels like half a holiday to be honest.

With the watch, it's harder to say if he's being unreasonable or not. Personally I'd check with DP for any big purchase like that, making sure she's got what she actually wants is more important than the surprise

This will be part of his disappointment, that it feels like she didn't understand what he wanted at all.

I agree with this!

At first I thought you'd randomly chosen a watch and holiday destination, but if that is the exact watch he liked and Dubai is somewhere you know for sure he wanted to go to then he is being an absolute arsehole.

I mean some things are about the experience though not just the end product. Especially if it’s not something you do very often. He is still being ungrateful he should be miffed privately.

I can understand him being gutted though.

She hasn't taken anything from him. He can still buy a watch and plan a holiday.

They probably have a hotel or two they want to try or an area they want to stay or place they want to be in walking distance of!

It doesn't actually say he was really ungrateful or that he made a big fuss. The OPs words are that he was annoyed that he didn't get to hand pick the watch and that he is annoyed he didn't get to plan the holiday.

This could be he simply said, oh I would have liked to have chosen the watch for myself, buying from X is all about the experience.

The OP has then gone off crying about it, which is where the whole surprise thing fails, as there was a post about how surprise parties etc usually are more about the person planning them than the receiver.

Hopefully they have both calmed down today and can both see why the other side was disappointed.

Bloody hell, he’s a grown adult.

I don’t think it would occur to many people that someone might actually want to do the tedious bit of booking flights and hotels. I’m assuming OP hasn’t scheduled every day of the holiday so he still can research and plan things to do while there. I’d be absolutely delighted if someone delivered me items or experiences I wanted on a plate without me having to do any of the mental load, so it would never cross my mind that someone might felt they’d missed out by not having that.

On the flipside, if my partner was of that mindset and said ”I’m taking you to XXX, let’s sit down and plan together” I would STILL be delighted even as someone who hates planning because I’d be grateful and appreciative of the effort. I might privately wish they’d done all that already, but I would never say so.

She was sure it was right though. She bought him the exact watch he wanted and the exact holiday he wanted. Why would she have thought it wasn’t going to be right?