Submitted by ThrowRAthink_happy t3_zw44qj in relationship_advice
tl;dr: My spouse didn't get me anything for Christmas, and I don't know how to be okay. How am I supposed to not feel unloved?
My spouse and I [both mid-thirties] have been married 14 years, together for 16. Every year the gift-giving situation from them gets worse, and each time, I feel hurt and resentful. We've even talked before about how gifts don't need to be expensive or even purchased at all. I don't give gifts to get gifts, and I don't expect gifts, but I think it's okay to want some show of affection on a special day like my birthday, our anniversary, or Christmas. As much as I love giving gifts, for some of these special days recently I've not given them a gift because I know I'll be blamed for causing hurt feelings, for focusing on gift-giving knowing they have trouble with it. I got them gifts for Christmas, and it was thrown in my face. I hate that because giving gifts makes me happy.
My spouse has untreated adult-diagnosed ADHD. They say they think about buying me gifts, they want to buy me gifts, they just...can't. And they want me to give them a list of stuff they could get me. I will not make a Santa list for my own spouse. In my opinion, if they don't know what to get me after all this time, then don't bother.
We've been on a break from work for over a week, and two days before Christmas, they said, "I HAVE to go out today." I knew what they meant, that they needed to go get me a gift. Because of their whiny tone, I replied what I knew they wanted to hear, "Don't bother." And they didn't. I got nothing. Not a gift. Not a stocking stuffer. Not a card. Not a box of chocolates. Nothing. My empty stocking was left hanging alone on Christmas morning. This was the first year I got literally nothing, each year getting gifts with less and less thought until there's nothing. I said that next year, maybe I'll have to donate an organ to them because there's no less than nothing to get, I'll have to give more.
I spent all my time the past week buying/wrapping gifts for our children with no input from my spouse, doing all the shopping for a Christmas dinner, and doing all the cleaning and laundry to prepare our home for visitors. (Our visitor plans got canceled, so it ended up being just us and the kids.) They didn't even help me carry the kids' gifts down to the tree. And then on Christmas Day, I had to field questions from our kids about why I didn't get any gifts to open. It hurt. I spent most of the day alone in my room. Feeling pathetic. Feeling guilty for being away from my kids on Christmas. Feeling lonely.
It seems the only way forward is to tell myself this is how it is and not feel bad, just ignore it. Because my spouse absolutely refuses to change. We've done this dance before, and it's always viewed as me being the one causing problems because I'm the only one voicing complaint. Why disrupt the status quo?
While I was alone in our room, they texted me like they didn't know what was wrong, "Are you okay?" No, I'm not okay. So we have a little back and forth over text. No resolution because I won't budge on not explicitly asking for particular gifts I want. That night we went to bed like nothing was different, like all the holidays before. And we got up today with our kids to have a pretty normal day. But I'm sad, I'm not okay. I realize this problem is bigger than gifts, but I don't know how to solve it.