My husband never gets me gifts: Feminist Advice Friday

A reader wonders if murder is the only option.

Since it’s a holiday, I’m revisiting some older Feminist Advice Friday questions, and updating my answers. It is, after all, the unofficial start of the season of men disappointing women with their terrible holiday behavior.

A reader asks…

Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone with no acknowledgment. And maybe I might fall for my husband’s “It’s a made up holiday” if this didn’t happen on every single holiday. He knows when Christmas is. He knows we have an anniversary because he was fucking there when we got married. And yet year after year, nothing. What the fuck? I’m sorry, I meant: what can I do, aside from killing him?

My answer

I admire your commitment to holding your husband accountable by murder if necessary, as well as your realization that he is fully capable of remembering and acknowledging holidays. This already puts you light years ahead of many heterosexual cisgender women, who dismiss such behavior as funny and just the way men are. But don’t sharpen your machete just yet.

I’m a big fan of holding men accountable for this “oops I forgot every holiday but also somehow didn’t forget to expect a present for myself” nonsense. It is not an accident that it’s disproportionately heterosexual women making holiday magic and disproportionately heterosexual men benefiting from the magic while offering nothing in return (except a bad mood).

The fight over presents, over remembering anniversaries, over treating life as something special rather than as pure drudgery is not trivial.

You have a right to ask your partner to meet your needs, and to respond to your hopes for your relationship, whatever those hopes might be. And when those hopes are something as easy, normal, and normative as giving you fucking presents for major holidays…yeah, it’s fucking terrible that he seems not to care.

Before you burn the marriage down, though, I want you to pause and take a deep breath: Have you asked him, in clear and specific language, to honor this wish? Have you told him how important it is to you? I usually deride advice columnists who tell women that the problem is that they need to communicate better. Because most women communicate till they’re blue in the face. They communicate till they pass out. They spend years in therapy trying to fix something that the man could change in a split second if he really wanted to.

Still, though, I have learned over the years that women often talk about gifts in really indirect, passive language. And some people really do grow up in families where either presents don’t happen or where (it makes me mad to even say this) kids learn that presents flow one way: away from, not to, mom.

It sucks when the people we love seem not to know what we need, especially when it’s something super obvious, but that’s life. We’re all bad at certain things. So give your husband the benefit of the doubt, and tell him that you need presents for holidays to feel loved. Give him a list of those holidays. Emphasize this is important to you. Then wait.

If it doesn’t happen on the next holiday, then you know: This is a deliberate choice.

And if you’ve already told him that this is important to you, you don’t need to tell him again. No matter how much he uses ADHD or whatever an excuse.

There’s an increasingly popular trope among men: “She left me because I left the toilet seat up.” “She left me because I didn’t throw her an extravagant birthday party.” “She left me because I forgot Teacher Appreciation Day.”

These stories—which misleadingly sum up a marriage in a single sentence—paint women as hyperemotional lunatics, who disregard their marriage vows and blow up their families because their trivial desires were unmet. They cater to the trope of the princess wife, who must get everything her exact way at all times.

The reality is that women spend their lives catering to men, doing more than their fair share of labor at every turn, every age, every stage. So yes, after a lifetime of doing more than their fair share, women have finally had it, and falling into the toilet again or cleaning up after Princess Man Baby again, or yet again being disregarded on a birthday is the final straw.

The failure to give women gifts is common. It’s deeply rooted in the notion of women as fundamentally undeserving, and springs from men’s absolute refusal to do emotional labor. And the coded message is that women are not allowed to want things. Anything at all. It’s about the gift, about being celebrated, yes. But it’s also about more: the ability to show up for your partner and show her that she matters.

A deliberate choice to disregard your needs is profoundly awful no matter what those needs are. Should it happen that your husband continues to refuse to buy you presents or remember holidays, it’s time to answer some questions about your relationship:

• Are you going out of your way to make the holidays special, while he sits back and does nothing?

• Are there other ways in which he treats your needs as insignificant?

• What’s the division of household labor like? Does he make up for his gift-giving failures in other ways, or is this just one of many ways in which you give and he takes?

• What is he contributing to your life? The marriage?

• Are you happy with this man? Does he make your life better? Do you share goals?

• You need to spend some serious time reflecting on whether the gift giving issue reveals something deeper about his character, and about your marriage.

And then, should you consider leaving him? Going on strike? Maybe. He’ll of course say you did it because he forgot a holiday, but it’s never really about a holiday, is it? Only you can decide if this is a small but significant irritation, or part of a larger pattern.