It’s tough when the perfect gift could either make someone’s day or remind them of what they lost.

Imagine your spouse’s dream concert falls through because of family excuses, and now their birthday is coming up. Would you try to recreate the experience at home as a thoughtful surprise, or would that only rub salt in the wound?

In the following story, one husband is trying to find the answer to this exact question and needs advice. Here’s what’s going on.

WIBTA If I played a concert for my wife that she couldn’t go to?

So I (33M) have a wife (32F) who is a big fan of Coldplay. It’s literally on her bucket list to go to a concert of theirs.

Well, her birthday is coming up, and her brother offered to take her to an upcoming concert in Miami that Coldplay is putting on with their current tour.

He said all we had to do was buy her plane ticket, and he would handle the rest, which included a Concert ticket, hotel stay, and most of the food (she would buy anything extra she wanted, which we were both fine with).

Soon, they realized he couldn’t afford the trip.

However, as time went on and we tried to find out when to buy the plane ticket, he kept coming up with more and more excuses as to why he couldn’t get everything handled and planned.

Eventually, we realized he was just too proud to admit he couldn’t actually afford the trip, which not only bummed my wife out because she was lied to but also, and more importantly, because she wasn’t going to see the show she wanted to see.

I even helped participate in surprising her with the trip by giving her an early birthday gift that was a T-shirt I ordered that had lyrics from her favorite Coldplay song on it.

Here’s where her husband came up with a plan.

Here’s where I may be a jerk: I found a VOD of a livestream of the full show from this same tour that happened about a month ago and I was going to surprise her on her birthday by not only having the house deep cleaned for her birthday but also taking the kids and basically making sure she didn’t have to do anything at all for the entire day.

Then, once I got the kids in bed, I would present her with a pair of (admittedly homemade) tickets to a “concert” in our living room where I would play her the concert she didn’t get to see.

I ran it by a friend of mine and he told me that may make her more bummed because it’s a reminder of what she missed out on.

AITA?

Wow! Her brother sounds like something else.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about her husband’s plan.

According to this reader, it’s all about the thought.

As this person points out, he knows his wife the best.

This person thinks his friend was wrong.

Here’s someone who thinks he should go even bigger.

He should totally do it!

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.