I’m sure if your partner gave a more thoughtful gift to a co-worker than to you, your spidey senses would tingle as well.

This woman’s husband asked her what she wanted for her birthday, but spent a lot of time crafting a surprise gift for a female co-worker, so she confronted him about it.

He got upset, and now she is wondering if bringing it up was a mistake.

Let’s analyze this situation.

AITA for telling my husband it’s not fair he went all out for a coworkers secret Santa but made me pick my own bday gift?

My (30 years old) husband (32 years old) has always been a great gift-giver, but in the past few years, he has not nearly put in as much effort.

We’ve been together for 10 years.

One birthday he gave me custom engraved necklaces of our dogs and I loved it.

She still remembers this special gift fondly. But things changed.

This year for my birthday he asked what I wanted (which I hate) but I ended up picking out my own bag and ordered it myself.

So he didn’t participate much, if at all.

Now onto the part that makes me upset… at his job he works with all women, and he is their boss.

They are doing Secret Santa for Christmas and he got matched with a girl who loves to read and is into fantasy genres like dragons and magic.

He bought her probably 7 different dragon themed little gifts and trinkets (tapestry, glass dragon egg, a little journal, etc….).

He seemed more motivated by this than by his wife’s birthday.

None of them were super expensive, so if that was all it was I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

But he also crafted a handmade mosaic of a bunch of different dragons that he stenciled on from images he found online.

It looks great and he’s super talented with things like that, but I can’t help but be jealous and think “Why can’t he do something like that for me?”

He spent hours on it and worked on it every night for a week.

I’m sure he would feel bothered too if the roles were reversed.

One of the gifts arrived in the mail yesterday and I said “is this another gift for her?”

He said ‘yes’, so I said: “I feel like you’re going over the top and it’s a little unfair I had to pick my own gift for my birthday when you did all this for her.”

He replied saying that everyone goes over the top for the gift exchanges and it’s not that deep… and that was the end of it.

Even though this is a plausible explanation, he is invalidating her feelings.

Also, I think part of it is he feels like it’s a competition on who gives the best gift, because at previous exchanges there has been a clear “winner” who gave the best gift.

He seems standoffish and short with me ever since we’ve had the conversation.

AITA?

He needs to set his priorities straight.

A reader shares their thoughts.

This commenter shares their point of view.

This person sounds baffled.

Another reader chimes in.

Someone sounds suspicious.

Someone else thinks she should do some investigation.

Now he needs to really wow his wife to make up for this.

If I were her I’d have a whole lot of questions.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.