'AITA for being upset after my husband said all you did was wrap presents?'
"AITA for being upset after my husband said all you did was wrap presents?"
Husband slept in because he "woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to bed til pretty late." I stayed up until 3:30 AM prepping for "Christmas magic" ie. cookies and milk, carrots for reindeer, note from Santa, Santa's footprints, wrap presents I had to hide for a while, clean up the mess.
This morning when the kids woke up around 7:30 AM, I had tried to wake up my husband by saying "hey! The kids are up. Come down so we can watch them open presents!" Didn't budge. That's where my resentment began to build.
So I did all the presents with the kids and filmed everything on my own. Tried so hard to not snap or take it out on the kids, but my anger was slowly building.
By the time husband woke up around 11 am and came downstairs, I was already done with breakfast, feeding kids, kitchen clean up, clean up present-opening-mess, etc. There were periods of time I would snap and raise my voice at the kids.
My patience and fuse have been short, mainly in part of my first trimester fatigue, hunger (iykyk), and moodiness. My husband, apparently tired from my yelling, snaps at me and tells me to go upstairs because he doesn't want to hear my yelling anymore.
"Wtf is wrong with you?" he said. "YOU!" I snapped back. "You're what's wrong! You haven't done sh!". Then the words that came out of his mouth caused me to cry for the next 3 hours and periodically throughout the day.
"All you did was wrap presents." All I did was wrap presents. At that moment, it felt like one of the most hurtful things anyone has ever said to me. I don't know if it's my pregnancy hormones, trying so hard to make Christmas special for my kids (4 and 2 years old), or it's all of the pent up resentment overflowing (or in this case erupting) not just from today, but most days.
Maybe it's the feeling of him not pulling his weight. It's the first year where our kids are understanding the magic of Christmas. I never had this as a child and neither did my husband. AIO for still being upset that he said "all you did was wrap presents"?
aplagy8 writes:
The kids are young enough that you can change traditions. One toy from parents, opened on Christmas Eve, one toy from Santa Christmas morning and Santa did not need to wrap presents. Trust me, my kids were still excited and still happy with what they got.
They’d get new toys throughout the year so they were not deprived and the “toy room” was always overflowing. Now that they are adults, we don’t “do” presents. If we see something special we want to give someone then we do it regardless of the time of year.
The only one who still clings to “presents” at Christmas is hubby, who did not contribute time or energy into creating “Christmas Magic” when the kids were little and it actually mattered. He did, however, get out of bed to watch them find Santa’s gifts, even if he crawled back into bed immediately after.
Also, he never belittled me but always thanked me for everything I did. The appreciation instead of participation wore thin after three decades, truth be told, but it kept me in the marriage a lot longer than outright disrespect would have.
eatsha writes:
I don’t know what y’all are doing to end up with these low value males who do not appreciate the sheer effort it takes to run a family. What kind of father doesn’t get up on Christmas morning to see his kids open presents? What kind of husband leaves everything to his pregnant wife without even a modicum of shame?
I’m guessing he’s difficult to talk to? You could suggest couples therapy so you can both speak and be heard but it sounds like you’d be fighting a losing battle. Do you really want four children?
falame writes:
I don’t know what y’all are doing to end up with these low value males who do not appreciate the sheer effort it takes to run a family. What kind of father doesn’t get up on Christmas morning to see his kids open presents? What kind of husband leaves everything to his pregnant wife without even a modicum of shame?
I’m guessing he’s difficult to talk to? You could suggest couples therapy so you can both speak and be heard but it sounds like you’d be fighting a losing battle. Do you really want four children?