March 10, 2025 at 11:55 pm

Her Husband Won’t Help Her With The Christmas Shopping, So She Stopped Putting His Name On The Gifts

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Shutterstock

If you’re not gonna hold up your part of the bargain, you’re not gonna get any credit!

That goes for a lot of things in life, and the woman who wrote this story on Reddit sounds pretty fed up with her husband’s lack of effort when it comes to shopping for Christmas presents.

Did she do anything wrong?

Check out her story and see what you think.

AITA for not putting my husband’s name on gifts I bought on my own?

“The first 2 years we had been together, when we were still pretty young and our relationship was new, we bought Christmas gifts separately (except in some rare cases).

But when we got pretty serious, we started making gifts from the both of us to other people.

Since then, he has not once helped me buy the gifts.

That includes gifts for my family, our friends, but even gifts for his family.

He’s not helping out very much…

Occasionally, he would give me some ideas as to what the person would want, but that was still pretty rare and the ideas he gave were most of the time very vague.

And even when he gave me ideas, I was the one that bought the gifts and went Christmas shopping alone.

I was fine with it at the beginning as I really enjoyed gift giving and finding the perfect ideas for everyone, but it’s been 8 years of this and it’s getting pretty exhausting.

I’ve also evolved in my career since we got together, and now have way less free time to spend buying gifts.

So last year I asked before the holiday season if he could help this year and we’d each buy some of the presents.

Out of maybe 20 people we bought gifts for, he bought only one.

Come on, dude!

And he told me that he would “take care of it” until the very last minute but eventually forgot, so I had to buy his sister and mother a present less than 24h before Christmas.

After that, I told him that I now expected help because this could not happen again as it was mentally and physically exhausting for me.

So this year I bought half of the gifts and he was supposed to buy the other half. He didn’t.

Yesterday I spent 7 hours at the mall trying to find the rest of the gifts and he was no help.

I sometimes called him to ask if the person would like a gift, if they already had it, or what he thought and he mostly said “I don’t know”, “maybe” and “whatever”.

Jeez!

I also have to add that I’m 6 months pregnant so this was extremely exhausting.

When I got home I was angry and tired and while wrapping the presents I decided that since he didn’t help at all I wouldn’t put his name on the presents.

Usually we write something like “from Mary and John” (not our real names), but I just wrote “from Mary”.

Today as we were packing all the gifts in the car to go to his parents’s house he noticed that his name wasn’t on it.

I explained it to him and said that he didn’t help so he didn’t get credit for what I bought.

He keeps saying that it’s unfair and that I’m gonna make him look bad, and asks that I change it.

I don’t know if I should.

Maybe this is petty but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve asked for help many times and I’m just afraid he’s never going to change.

Should I put his name?

Am I mean for this? How can I make him understand how much I need help?”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person said she’s NTA.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual weighed in.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This person spoke up.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another Reddit user had a lot to say.

Source: Reddit/AITA

And this person shared their thoughts.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This guy sounds like a bit of a deadbeat…

But this is all too common.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.