What would you do if you were offered a job that meant you would be away from home for long periods of time?

If you’re like the guy in today’s story, you would take it and end up feeling guilty about all the time you’re away from your wife.

He tries to make up for being gone by buying his wife gifts, but his most recent gift was a huge fail.

He’s wondering if he should give it back to her, but there might be an even bigger problem.

Let’s see how the story unfolds.

AITAH for taking back the anniversary gift I got for my wife?

I (37M) and my wife (35F) have been together 9 years, married for 5, no kids.

Because of my job, for the last 3 years, I’ve been away 2-4 days a week.

Even though my wife never directly was against my job when I was accepting it, now living that life makes me feel guilty about not being always present.

He has several things he does show he cares even though he’s away.

So to make up for it, I always go the extra mile with texts, calls when I’m away and always try to get little attention gifts on my way home.

Just trying to make her feel I know it’s taxing on the relationship.

We had our ups and downs during the last years.

Half the time when I’m gone, she’s… cold, and says she doesn’t feel like talking on the phone or texting much.

At some point claiming that the only reason why I call and text her so often, is because I feel guilty.

That’s important backstory for the specific, unique gift that got chosen.

Knowing my wife is sentimental, and sobs during every romantic movie we watch.

Last week for our anniversary, which we were celebrating together with our families, I decided to give her something sentimental, heartbeat rings which would let us feel each other’s heartbeat, when I’m away.

This being a special occasion, I also got them engraved with our names and anniversary date.

Anyways, after dinner we went to exchange gifts and she was excited at first.

All happy opening the box.

This was not the type of gift she expected.

But when I explained to her what they are, she suddenly got a weird look, and the first thing out of her mouth with a straight face?

“Wait… this isn’t some kind of tracking thing, is it?”

I actually laughed because I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.

She starts going to the product’s website on her phone, to find if I could track her with it.

I was sitting speechless, while the rest of the family started to make jokes about it.

Where is this coming from?

Now, for context, we never really had any big trust issues in all these years, so I was dumb founded from where this was coming from.

I told her this wasn’t about tracking, and I don’t know why she would even think that.

It was about feeling intimate, because she doesn’t like long calls and messages… But she just kept repeating it and after about 5 minutes seeing how she is still checking it on her phone, I just snapped.

I said “Fine. We should not have these” I took the rings back and put them away.

And there’s aftermath.

Now she’s [angry], and says she wants them back.

She says it was a joke. Says I took it away to punish her.

Says now it “proves her point”.

So what do we do?

While I don’t want to give it to her taking into account the emotional residue from that moment, and also thinking she might make the same “joke” later on.

I didn’t take it back because she just made a joke—I took it back because she completely ruined what was supposed to be a sentimental thing, on front of the whole family.

AITAH?

Why is she so concerned if it is a tracking thing? That’s what I would wonder.

Let’s look to the comments on Reddit:

There are definite red flags.

Everyone was IMMEDIATELY super suspicious of this reaction.

Some had strong reactions:

What’s going on here?

But if your partner’s initial reaction to a gift is suspicion, there’s SOMETHING significantly wrong.

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.