My husband and I are both in our 40s have a very good and loving relationship. For the most part he’s a very helpful and engaged spouse and father. He cannot/will not remember the dates of important milestones.
I plan and organize the kids birthdays months in advance and he participates. I spent the first few years of our marriage sulking about him forgetting my birthday and since then I plan it out myself and let him know what I want as a gift. I remember my in laws and close friends birthdays and greet them on my behalf, leaving him to manage his relationships with them on his own. And I do love him a lot so I plan and celebrate his birthday (I know he’d forget it if I didn’t do so.)
I gave up caring about valentines days long ago. But, to his credit, he is good about remembering and celebrating mother’s day for me. He always forgets our wedding anniversary and after 8 years of planning and having him simply “participate” I left it on him to do something on this one event. He forgot it every year since then. We’ve been married for thirteen years now and we haven’t celebrated our anniversary for the past five years. I’ve made my peace with that.
We had a family gathering this weekend and in a group conversation, someone asked my husband how long we’ve been married. He did this oh I don’t know, wife keeps tracks of these things. And he and his siblings are all like haha typical husband. They ask me how long we’ve been married and I did the same tone of oh I don’t know, who can remember haha. Everybody became a bit awkward and husband looked upset at me. Later, he asked me why I’d say that and I said that we don’t celebrate our anniversary so it’s not at the forefront of my mind. The realization that we haven’t celebrated our anniversary in years came as a surprise to him.
He pointed out that I remember how old our home is, how old our cars are, even how long he’s had his laptop. He doesn’t remember those things, so for me to not remember how long we’ve been married is showing everyone that my marriage is of much lower value to me. I said that instead of making his forgetfulness a point of contention, I chose to be like him and not track the age of our relationship and he should be accepting of that.
I may be the “bad person” since I do remember how long we’ve been married, but I am pretending not to, because if he can’t bother to remember and celebrate then I shouldn’t be expected to either.
Here are what netizens think:
- This man may not remember much, but he does have the ability to buy himself a calendar and use it. Its not your job to care for the both of you.
- Yup. I have all important dates in my phone’s calendar. Even birthdays and anniversaries even if I know when it is. It’s just a reminder for the day of it as I can get days mixed up sometimes.
- I’ve saved my family’s birthdays, events, holidays and appointments on my phone ever since I had one because I know how i am. I tend to be extremely forgetful when it comes to numbers and dates, so putting them down on my phone saves the embarrassment of not remembering and I even have dates on my phone for roughly a week before to make sure I buy presents/make something before the date. It’s not that hard.