The saying goes that it’s the thought that counts when it comes to gifts, but that’s usually what people say when they don’t like the gift.

In today’s story, one wife doesn’t like her husband’s gift idea for her birthday, and now she’s worried she hurt his feelings.

Let’s see how the story unfolds.

AITA for rejecting my husband’s birthday present?

My husband (33M) and I (31F) have been married for almost 9 years.

We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, we’ve got 3 kids and he has never put in a lot of effort for my birthday (or any other holiday, for that matter).

But we’ve worked through a lot this past year and I know he is trying to put in more effort.

He told me recently that he was going to pay someone to come deep clean our house as my birthday present.

To be fair, I have said many times that I would love to have this done but it isn’t something we need to be spending money on right now so we haven’t done it.

She knew she needed to be careful about how she reacted to his gift suggestion.

He followed this up by saying that if I didn’t want to spend the money, he would gladly just take the whole day and do it himself.

When he told me this, I wanted to be very mindful of my reaction.

Again, he has not been in the habit of gift giving or being super thoughtful when it comes to special occasions.

She doesn’t think it would really be a gift.

I told him that I really appreciated the thought and saw the effort that would take for him to do.

But if he took the entire day to clean the house, I would obviously just be watching my kids and trying to keep them from coming behind him and messing all of his hard work up and ultimately that doesn’t sound like a present.

I felt guilty because I want to praise his effort but I also feel like this “gift” doesn’t feel personal or thought out well, despite the effort.

She’s worried she won’t get a gift.

He didn’t seem too upset by my reaction but now I’m afraid he isn’t going to do anything?

I’m also feeling a bit frustrated because if the roles were reversed, I would (and have) set something up where he would be able to go do something he loved with his friends and not have to worry about me or his kids.

AITA for not just letting him do this for me?

It sounds like she turned down the idea of her husband doing the deep cleaning, but his original suggestion was to pay someone to deep clean the house instead.

Then he could watch the kids while that’s happening, and she can relax.

Let’s see what Reddit thought of this situation.

It’s a bad gift idea.

This husband is clueless.

He should help clean the house anyway.

He may not clean up to her standards.

She needs to make it easy for him.

Sending him a wish list of good gift ideas might help.

Maybe. It’s worth a try.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.