Milestone birthdays can hit differently when expectations don’t line up with reality.

So, what would you do if you asked your spouse to plan a milestone birthday celebration, and she put forth very little effort, but later you find out that she’s planning two other parties? Would you just stay quiet and let it go? Or would you confront her about how it made you feel?

In the following story, one husband isn’t sure whether he should confront his wife about this very thing or not. Her’ what happened.

WIBTA IF I GET UPSET ABOUT MY BIRTHDAY

I (30 M) recently celebrated my 30th birthday. My wife (27 F) and I have been together for 7 years, and she’s always wanted to throw me a birthday party. I’ve never let her, as I didn’t really have parties growing up and hate being the center of attention.

This year, since it felt like a bit of a milestone, I finally relented and gave her the go-ahead. I told her the only thing I wanted, since my birthday was on a weekend, was to really make a weekend out of it.

Maybe spend Friday with my family, then Saturday with my friends, and then Sunday (my actual birthday), she and I would just be together. Other than that, I told her that she knows me well enough to know what I like and that I didn’t really want to be a part of the planning.

His wife had plenty of time to plan.

We had this conversation four months before my actual birthday. So she had four months to plan.

In those four months, I would occasionally check in to see if she had any idea of what we were going to do or who was coming. She never seemed to have a concrete plan, and didn’t really reach out to anyone until about two weeks beforehand.

Cut to my actual birthday weekend: the only thing that happened was that two of my friends came down, and we met for dinner. My wife actually ended up getting sick that whole week with the flu, so I ended up taking care of her and then hanging out with two of my friends for an evening.

The whole thing was a bust.

She talked a great game about how amazing my 30th birthday would be, but then it ended up being kind of a bust.

Now, to be clear, her being sick is in no way her fault, and in no way made me upset.

In truth, I wasn’t even really upset about the birthday itself until last week, when I found out she was helping to plan, not one, but two of her friends’ birthdays this year.

She has lots of plans for other people’s parties.

For both of them, she’s essentially planning mini girls’ trips, with a lot of thoughtful little touches. To top it off, her sister is also turning 30 this year, and as soon as it was mentioned at family dinner, my wife had no shortage of ideas of what to do, even suggesting a cruise.

It’s nice that she’s being so helpful with everyone else, but I’m feeling very much like the bottom rung on the ladder at the moment, since it seems to me that my birthday didn’t get nearly this much effort.

I know bringing it up will only upset her, as she does already feel a bit bad about it.

AITA?

Eek! It’s clear why his feelings are so hurt, but it’s probably not on purpose.

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit feel about his wife’s behavior.

This person thinks he should talk about his feelings.

According to this reader, she should’ve done more.

Yet another person who thinks he brought it up to her enough.

This reader offers advice.

It’s best to talk about it now, because ignoring too many things like this can create anger and resentment later.

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.