MLC or Passive Aggressive or Narcissism

[AntoniaB]

Here's a different side to the birthday issue (or Christmas): my XH would go FAR overboard on gifts. We might set spending limits; he'd go over them. Sometimes double. He was the "best" gift-giver ever...my sisters would constantly compliment him and say they only wished their husbands would put the care and thought into what they chose for them. As the recipient of the gifts, I was thrilled, of course. But there was eventually a dark side of the over-indulgence:

1. He insisted there was NOTHING he ever wanted. He would say "I don't want things; I want experiences." So what does that MEAN? He'd say, "You should know me well enough to figure it out." So I'd try to figure out what he meant, but I'd always come up short. He would turn angry that I hadn't done "as much as he did for me" when it came time to doing for him.

2. When he turned 40, I thought I got it all right: I ordered him a personalized hockey jersey and I asked our closest friends if they wanted to go to a hockey game with us. Since we were going to be staying with that friend, the friend offered to order the 4 tickets for us. This guy LIKES going on tix sites and finding the perfect seats at a good price. When I asked that friend about bakeries in the area and what he'd recommend, his girlfriend offered to get a cake and have it at the house for us when we got there. We drove up to their house and gave him everything and I reimbursed the friends. Later, XH told me that I obviously didn't care as much about him as he did about me, because I wasn't the one to order the tickets or the cake. He said that if it weren't for our male friend he "wouldn't have gotten anything for his birthday." I mean, could I help it that the friend OFFERED to do this stuff? Was I supposed to say no? I never asked for help. It was just offered. The cherry on top was that after the game, which was the first game I'd ever been to, I developed a hardcore migraine. Between the flashing lights, the noise, the cold, the thai food earlier, the red wine, and the stress because I could just SENSE that XH was not happy, I got a massive migraine. Later he said I ruined his birthday with my migraine.

God the more I look back, the more I realize how much anger I put up with for so long. This happened 2 years before his initial MLC appearance...