Marriage and the Power of Divorce

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Namon

Namon

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Being married I've grown to see all these holidays and events as nothing but a money grab. I now loath Valentines and Mother's Day, and honestly Birthday, Christmas, and (to a lesser extent) anniversaries are stressful too.

As far as anniversaries go, we did the going out thing for the first couple of years. Then we started to get a cabin in Gatlinburg TN for a weekend (anniversary is in January). Even that faded out due to kids and logistics, so now we just kind of pass each other and go "another year, yay," with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

As far as gifts go, my wife is just too damn picky. She has this strange ideal that I should come in with some piece of jewelry that is special. Which would be easy enough if she didn't have specific tastes that make almost every piece of jewelery out there ugly to her.

This thread definitely is no shortage of entertainment, and Olebass I live less than an hour from you, it's funny someone from this board bring up all these places around where I live. I haven't seen you post in a while, and I hope things are going ok for you.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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The Master_sl said:
This is amazing. Probably going to steal this.
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Another suggestion: purposefully buy the wrong card. My wife has had 4 bar mitzvah so far. Write a joke or something actually meaningful inside.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:
We don't do a lot of those holidays because we don't like the forced part of it.

Valentines Day
Fathers Day
Mothers Day

We pass on all those. We do something for our anniversary or around that time that is usually interesting but no gifts or cards. For birthdays we generally just do something for those as well and then claim some recent purchase we wanted to be labelled our 'gift'. I always ask for the "Triple Threat" and never get it but a man can dream.

*Triple Threat = Sex in each hole at different times that night. I don't think a man married over 10 years has ever achieved it (sarcasm).
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Does all 3 in one session count?
 
Xarpolis

Xarpolis

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Namon_sl said:
...and Olebass I live less than an hour from you, it's funny someone from this board bring up all these places around where I live. I haven't seen you post in a while, and I hope things are going ok for you.
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He posts a lot in the Home Improvement thread. I suggest giving it a read.
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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I hate scheduled gift giving. It's worse than aids. Oh I'm giving this to you because I'm so thoughtfu--oh wait it's because someone told me to. Some people like it, and I understand that, but it's one of the worse things in human relationships to me. I'm slowly easing my family into the reality of me not giving gifts for bdays anymore. In my mind, you should give gifts when you see something spontaneous that they'd like. Of course I say that and never do that either, so I'm probably just a selfish jerk
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For birthdays and anniversaries I can see gifts being okay, after all those days are special to you and only you. Any holiday though I agree, its bullshit being pressured or having to deal with those who think you need to conform to the rest of society. Its almost like tipping!
 
lindz

lindz

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Yeah we're pretty low key about gift giving. Don't do anniversaries, valentines etc. Christmas is mainly for the kids. Sometime husband and I will do something small for one another or do a joint gift for each other that we want. Birthdays, again small unless its for the kids. I'm not a fan of spending much for myself and my husband hates gift giving so it works out just fine.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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lindz_sl said:
Yeah we're pretty low key about gift giving. Don't do anniversaries, valentines etc. Christmas is mainly for the kids. Sometime husband and I will do something small for one another or do a joint gift for each other that we want. Birthdays, again small unless its for the kids. I'm not a fan of spending much for myself and my husband hates gift giving so it works out just fine.
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This is how my family has always been for my entire life. Christmas is for the kids, the adults have never bought gifts for each other.

Now my wifes family, everyone gets EVERYONE gifts. Its ridiculous, I don't need her 70 year old mother trying to buy me a gift each year, and I don't want to have to buy a gift for my sister-in-law. They do stockings for adults, gifts, etc. I get a stocking each year full of random stupid crap I'll never use like travel tools, cufflinks, keychains, batteries, etc. Its totally pointless. I don't know if I'm going to be able to convince them otherwise, but it's just a huge waste of money. I take what I get each year, dump it in a dresser drawer, and never look at it again.
 
D

Draegan_sl

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My wife loves cards. Loves them. Her whole family does. Dated my wife for a while and first time I met her brother he gave me a birthday card. I told my wife then that to tell her brother to cut that shit out it's weird.

Card people are weird.
 
T

Tenks

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My mom is nuts about cards as well. I get them for every minor holiday. Halloween cards, Easter cards ... all of them.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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joeboo_sl said:
This is how my family has always been for my entire life. Christmas is for the kids, the adults have never bought gifts for each other.

Now my wifes family, everyone gets EVERYONE gifts. Its ridiculous, I don't need her 70 year old mother trying to buy me a gift each year, and I don't want to have to buy a gift for my sister-in-law. They do stockings for adults, gifts, etc. I get a stocking each year full of random stupid crap I'll never use like travel tools, cufflinks, keychains, batteries, etc. Its totally pointless. I don't know if I'm going to be able to convince them otherwise, but it's just a huge waste of money. I take what I get each year, dump it in a dresser drawer, and never look at it again.
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Draegan_sl said:
My wife loves cards. Loves them. Her whole family does. Dated my wife for a while and first time I met her brother he gave me a birthday card. I told my wife then that to tell her brother to cut that shit out it's weird.

Card people are weird.
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I got both of these combined! My wife's mother would send us(as in, mail a package) candy for easter, halloween, valentine's day, any holiday that was gift giving centric but not important enough for us to visit them. There would be a card in the package too. It became so procedural that we received the same halloween card from her 4 years in a row. We got real passive-aggressive about and wrote the year in the skull's eye and then hung them all next to each other in the kitchen. She never noticed. I just don't understand the point of procedural gift giving.

Luckily, that's mostly stopped since we have a kid, so now he gets all the attention. Still receive packed stockings on christmas.
 
Soygen

Soygen

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Cards are just weird.

"Here, have this thought or funny thing that someone else thought of."
 
Xarpolis

Xarpolis

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I buy a card for my mother just because she insists on it. She's the only one that gets one, fortunately. However, I go above and beyond just signing my name and calling it a day. I usually fill out the entire inside with a message. It makes her happy, so it's worth it. I'm glad my wife doesn't care about cards.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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I had an awesome aunt as a kid that always just mailed me a card with cash in it for my birthday and christmas. Finally one year she asked me if I'd rather her just skip the card and send an extra couple bucks instead, and I jumped all over that. I was happy because I got more money and she was happy that she didnt have to go to the store and get a card.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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Usually I'll buy my wife a card and write something personal in it. Usually it's a card with a funny looking dog or something overly sexual on it. I think what I write is more important, but at $3-4 whatever.

Her family drives me insane on Christmas. The first year we were dating (at that point, I would say 4 months) they invited me over for Christmas morning. When I got there I had more gifts than I had ever received in my life. They always do a big Christmas even though we're all 30+ years old (one son is 20.. funny thing is all 3 sons still live at home). I've told them not to do it, but they insist.

My family was the same when we were kids. All the cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents got together and had a huge present opening event. It took like 5 hours. Finally a few years ago I told them stop buying me things because I wasn't buying anything. I buy a couple presents for the kids in the family and that's it. I think we're done in 30 minutes now.
 
stupidmonkey

stupidmonkey

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Also in the group that cards are a bit weird. If it's just a signature and nothing else why bother for $3.99?
 
Phazael

Phazael

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My wife is huge into showering gifts on any conceivable holiday. It is one of her few girly traits and she loves buying shit for others, so its not a major chore. Personally, I would rather buy something on amazon and ship it than waste one of my free weekends with the inlaws, anyhow. Of course we have the disposable income to do this sort of thing, so your mileage may vary on this issue.

Flowers wise, I occasionally get my wife a large arrangement and have it sent to her work so she can showboat a bit. Yeah its more about waving it in other cunt's faces, but it makes her happy and feel appreciated, so fuck it. She brings them home and admires them for a week after, so its not entirely flap waving, either. My attitude is that its only money and you can't take it with you, so fuck it do something that makes her happy. Now if I were like Melrin and living from government check to government check and shitting out little mutant copies of myself, I might not have this luxury, but as a married man with no kids or plans to have them I have the resources to do these sorts of fun things regularly. Feeling appreciated is the glue that holds relationships together over the long haul and if a few gifts achieve that, then I am totally cool with buying some dumb shit to make us both happy.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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Me and the wife dont do presents for each other. We usually just buy what we like when we want to and can afford it. Many times I have tried to get her stuff and many times I failed. So she was forced to keep it or whatever so she does not hurt my feelings. One day she told me the truth and we discussed it and came to the conclusion that presents are a waste. We do dinners and a night out. Usually that is enough treat for us.

As far as other presents and family? Our family a long time ago decided not to do anymore presents unless its kids. So we dont do presents. Of course I will get my mom some basket or some shit with some nice wine, but other than that, no presents, and its wonderful.
 
Crone

Crone

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As said, I have a lot of fun surprising my wife with gifts on her birthday and Christmas. Her birthday was yesterday, and I went all out.

She's never seen the musical wicked in person, and being that she's 7 months pregnant, I wasn't sure when she would want to go. We have family in Phoenix, Vegas, and Portland, so I printed off their schedule and laminated it, tied it to a wicked printed coffee cup, and inside the cup I put 2 "tickets" that I went to kinko's to have printed up. It's the wicked logo, with "Pick the Date!" over the top, printed on card stock to the dimensions of a concert ticket.

Then the biggest surprise is I flew 2 of her sisters out from Portland that she hasn't seen in a really long time. Surprised her with it last night, with a line about I couldn't find a sugar free cake that looked any good so I decided to bring some chefs over instead, and her sisters then walked in. I got the whole thing on video, where she screamed, dropped an F bomb, and started crying happy tears.
smile.png


I'm best husband ever for at least a day or 2, until I refuse to get her the damn froyo again....
 
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