My husband's reaction to the gifts I (or anyone else) give(s) him bothers me a lot, and, despite several discussions about the topic, we have not reached an agreement, and this topic is becoming a sore spot for us.
My husband is a wonderful and generous man, but he can be extremely blunt and hurtful at times. In particular, he has a really weird and tortured relationship with receiving gifts. Growing up, I was taught that if someone gives you a gift, whether you like it or not, you smile and say thank you.
My husband has the exact opposite reaction to gifts. No matter how perfect the gift is, he always has something negative to say about it. He will never tell me what he wants when I ask him, so I'm forced to guess by listening to him point out things he likes/wants. For example, when we first started dating, he mentioned that he loves the look of tie clips and didn't own any. For the first birthday we spent together, I got him a tie clip with his initials on the back of it. Along with that, he got a shirt and his favorite dinner. His reaction the tie clip and shirt was "What am I going to do with these? I only wear scrubs."
To celebrating him passing his licensing exam, I gave him AirPods because he loved using mine whenever I wasn't using them. His reaction was lukewarm, he said, "Why would you buy these? I'm just going to lose them. Also, did you even do your research on the best bluetooth headphones on the market?"
For our 6 month anniversary, I arranged six of his favorite chocolates in the shape of a heart on our dining room table with a card and a framed photo of us. I also made dinner. He seemed utterly annoyed by the whole thing and got upset at me later that night for "the distraction."
These are just a few of the many examples I could give you guys of his reactions to MY gifts, but what pissed me off was his reaction to my parents' thoughtful gifts.
When we got married, my parents gifted him an expensive designer watch. My mom lovingly picked it out after noticing that he loves to wear watches and didn't have one in that color. I warned her repeatedly that she better ask him exactly what he wants before spending that kind of money, but she didn't listen, and, predictably, his reaction when he opened it was barely passable. I'm talking, "Oh wow, thanks, but I don't like the color black." My parents definitely noticed that he didn't care for it and were understandably hurt.
It really bothers me, because its impolite and not classy and does not represent him well. It also hurts my feelings when he's rude about the gifts I select, but not giving him a gift isn't an option (I tried that once, and he was hurt). His explanation for his behavior is "If a person gives you a shitty gift, its an insult, and the way I see it is, fuck that person's gift."
I'm interested to hear people's suggestions on how to handle this conundrum and also anyone's thoughts on the psychology behind this response to gift giving. My husband grew up very poor, if that adds any context.
tl;dr: My husband is an extremely picky gift receiver and is rude to me and others who give him gifts. However, he wants to receive gifts but they have to be perfect or he gets upset. He can barely feign a socially polite response.
Submitted February 05, 2020 at 07:11PM by FJRC16 https://ift.tt/385215U
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