Throwaway account because I don’t want him to see this.
The first 2 years we had been together, when we were still pretty young and our relationship was new, we bought Christmas gifts separately (except in some rare cases). But when we got pretty serious, we started making gifts from the both of us to other people. Since then, he has not once helped me buy the gifts. That includes gifts for my family, our friends, but even gifts for his family.
Occasionally, he would give me some ideas as to what the person would want, but that was still pretty rare and the ideas he gave were most of the time very vague. And even when he gave me ideas, I was the one that bought the gifts and went Christmas shopping alone. I was fine with it at the beginning as I really enjoyed gift giving and finding the perfect ideas for everyone, but it’s been 8 years of this and it’s getting pretty exhausting. I’ve also evolved in my career since we got together, and now have way less free time to spend buying gifts.
So last year I asked before the holiday season if he could help this year and we’d each buy some of the presents. Out of maybe 20 people we bought gifts for, he bought only one. And he told me that he would “take care of it” until the very last minute but eventually forgot, so I had to buy his sister and mother a present less than 24h before Christmas. After that, I told him that I now expected help because this could not happen again as it was mentally and physically exhausting for me.
So this year I bought half of the gifts and he was supposed to buy the other half. He didn’t. Yesterday I spent 7 hours at the mall trying to find the rest of the gifts and he was no help. I sometimes called him to ask if the person would like a gift, if they already had it, or what he thought and he mostly said “I don’t know”, “maybe” and “whatever”. I also have to add that I’m 6 months pregnant so this was extremely exhausting. When I got home I was angry and tired and while wrapping the presents I decided that since he didn’t help at all I wouldn’t put his name on the presents. Usually we write something like “from Mary and John” (not our real names), but I just wrote “from Mary”.
Today as we were packing all the gifts in the car to go to his parents’s house he noticed that his name wasn’t on it. I explained it to him and said that he didn’t help so he didn’t get credit for what I bought. He keeps saying that it’s unfair and that I’m gonna make him look bad, and asks that I change it. I don’t know if I should. Maybe this is petty but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve asked for help many times and I’m just afraid he’s never going to change. Should I put his name? Am I mean for this? How can I make him understand how much I need help?
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
I might be the asshole because this is a bit petty and might make him look bad
TOP COMMENT
I almost did, but I love my in laws and they’ve always been really good to me and I feel like it would make their Christmas kind of sad and I wouldn’t want them to get the consequences of his actions, it’s not really fair to me…
REPLY
That’s great that you have a great relationship with your in laws but to make this whole thing fair for you, you should just make a new rule that the other commenter mentioned, that you buy gifts for your family and he buys for his. And when he doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain and doesn’t buy anything, DO NOT GIVE IN. When you show up empty handed you tell your in laws the truth. It’s 100% on him. Sometimes we just have to let go of what we can’t control to make things easier on ourselves.
RESPONCE
Yep, let them know. If one of my brothers dropped the ball like this, I wouldn’t want them coasting on the work of their wives like he’s been doing. And he has absolutely no excuse – he could maybe play dumb last year, but this year he absolutely knew how draining it was, but he assumed he would have no consequences.
