AITA for refusing to buy my husband anymore gifts?

A Reddit user shared their frustration with their husband’s hypocritical behavior around gift-giving. Despite his love for surprises, he’s often dissatisfied with the presents he receives, even when they align with his requests. This ongoing pattern led the user to refuse to buy him any more gifts, sparking an argument. Read the full story below to understand their dilemma.

‘AITA for refusing to buy my husband anymore gifts?’

I (35f) have been with my husband James (39m) for 12 years, and we have this argument like clockwork every single birthday and Christmas, but I’ve had enough. I hate surprises, and I hate surprise gifts even more because I lived in clutter with my parents and being forced to keep a present to not offend someone bothers me because then I grapple with frustration, guilt, and general annoyance because now there’s a thing taking up space that I don’t know what to do with.

James, on the other hand, loves surprise gifts, but he is super picky. He does this thing where he will tell someone ‘oh, I’m alright with anything!’ but when he gets that ‘anything’, he will make some remark about how he actually wanted XYZ, which dampens the mood and makes him sound so childishly ungrateful.

It drives me mad because the most hypocritical thing is that if I do that to him (i.e., say ‘oh I actually wanted XYZ’) he’ll get upset and say that I should be grateful (e.g., he bought me a dress he thought I’d like for my birthday, despite me telling him over and over and over and over and over again how much I would have liked a specific pair of earrings. 

gave a weak thanks and he was sulky all evening, especially when my friends bought me something else off my wish list and I was so happy). And it’s not about the price either, because the things he surprises me with are always either more expensive or around the same price as what I actually asked for.

Now, I’ve tried my hardest to figure out what he’d like, but I always somehow miss the mark. For instance, one year I managed to force him to tell me that he’d like ‘any (keyword there) Apple product’, but when I got him a new iPad to replace his old one, he said that he’d actually prefer AirPods. I returned the iPad and he got upset.

Another year, he told me he wanted jogging socks from a specific brand, but when he got them, he said that he actually wanted another variant of it. Another year, he kept talking about a specific type of wallet for 6 months straight – sending me posts about it, reviews, whatever – and I got it for him, thinking I’ve cracked the code. You know what he said? If you guessed ‘actually, I wanted something else’, then you are absolutely correct. Rinse and repeat.

This year, I tried to ask him again to at least give me a hint to work with, and he playfully told me to surprise him. Years of pent up frustration got the best of me and I told him that he’s an ungrateful child and I will NOT be surprising him. If he wasn’t going to tell me, then he gets nothing.

I also told him to stop surprising me with stuff I don’t even want, because he’s a h**ocrite whose feelings will get hurt if I don’t fall to my knees thanking him (I exaggerate) for something I don’t want. I’m done coddling him over gifts because it’s stupid and causing undue stress to me. As per the usual, he’s gone off to sulk, and I feel terrible for lashing out at him. AITA?

Let’s dive into the reactions from Reddit:

Infamous_Channel2910 −  Give him cash.

Goddess_of_Bees −  INFO: Have you two talked about this? So you’ve been married for over a decade, have had this pattern repeat over and over and over.. you have very clear reasons why you don’t want surprises, he has them for wanting them, and yet somehow, you haven’t worked it out?

Either you always play good weather and never told him how you felt about gifts, or asked him straight up. I’m not talking hinting at what you want, I’m saying sitting down and discussing the whole concept of gift-giving, why it stresses you out, why you feel like he’s disappointing you ánd why you feel like you’re disappointing him. And try to find an adult solution. Or, you did have this conversation and he’s a massive ass.

Pretty-Benefit-233 −  NTA. Id love to know what his deal is bc this makes no sense.

Chronoblivion −  NTA. I hate how Reddit usually misuses this word, but telling you he wants one thing and then saying “I didn’t want that” when you get it is actual g**lighting and is an abuse tactic. It might not be that he’s deliberately trying to manipulate you and that he’s just extremely immature and inconsistent in his wishes, but that doesn’t really make it any better.

There are ways to try to get to the bottom of it and try to reach some sort of compromise, but quite honestly I’m not expecting them to be fruitful. This is extremely unlikely to get ever get better give his age and how long you’ve been together.

AriasK −  NTA He sounds absolutely exhausting.

DinaFelice −  So, he refuses to get you the things you specifically request as gifts. Conversely, you have repeatedly tried to get him the specific things he is requesting (i.e. he asked for a surprise so you tried to surprise him, he asked for specific brands, you got the specific brands, etc.) And in both cases, you are left feeling like you cannot do anything right and special days are getting repeatedly spoiled.

I mean, sure, *maybe* YTA this time for lashing out instead of having a conversation about this (since you are categorizing your words as “mean”) But if you’d *calmly* had a conversation with him? Then that would have been perfectly reasonable.

However… I’m concerned for you that this may be part of a larger pattern of behavior. The very fact that you are spending so much time and effort trying to soothe his feelings when he is enacting double standards and shows little concern for *your* feelings is a red flag.

I’m going to encourage you to read this book… Now, hopefully, this behavior of his is truly limited to this specific issue and once you have an honest conversation *as a couple* about what you both *actually* want, this issue goes away. But like I said, I’m concerned he could be subtly using the same tactics in other areas of your life together.

MissingPerson321 −  I am going to go with NTA. I imagine years of trying to make him happy when he leads you with what he wants, simply to pull the football like Lucy, is maddening. Not even sure what the end game of that is.

EggShenIsMyBusDriver −  Jesus what a mess. You need to divorce this c**ep.

No_Philosopher_1870 −  NTA. By not telling you what he wants, he puts you in the position of always being wrong and not getting credit for getting it right if you do. It is a situation that puts you at a disadvantage. Expecting people to read your mind is a power play.

One thing that I learned about giftgiving is that it is very important to the recipient that they have something positive to anticipate, but they generally lack the imagination to do it for themselves. This makes giftgiving very frustrating. The gift is generally doomed to be an anticlimax because they’ve built it up so much in their minds, and even a good gift winds up being disappointing.

endor-pancakes −  Gifts should be a nice thing, but all too often they’re just stress and a cause of bad blood. Sounds like this is one of these cases. Deciding to skip presents (and saying so beforehand so there’s no awkwardness) is absolutely sensible in that case. NTA.