I think you mentioned this somewhere, but I am unclear. Did you say your wife works outside the home or not? Is she full-time or part-time?
Regardless, here is something for you to think about, though I may be way off base here. Your wife is putting her heart and soul into redecorating -- that's what we girls do with our houses. It 'jazzes' us, even though we get bone tired doing it.
I think your gifts were incredibly thoughtful and I do not think you should feel any remorse whatsoever in doing such things. You did them with genuine, honest feeling, and you kept your expectations under wraps as much as you were able. I think you should feel very good about yourself and your efforts. That was a very cool and thoughtful thing to do and I don't think you should let anyone spoil that for you. Give yourself a great big "10."
I think the problem with this scenario is not you or your expectations at all; I think the problem going on is with your wife, and I think you missed it. Not making eye contact is a sure sign of something going on inside of her that she is not comfortable expressing. That she was a bit nervous sitting next to you while watching your new TV says to me that she has some inner turmoil going on.
Let me throw this out at you and see what you think. Since you say there are similarities between your wife and I, I'll throw out my interpretation from a personal point-of-view. I know this isn't about me, so that's why I said I could be way off base here.
It could be that your wife is very used to be a 'strong' woman, doing for herself and rarely, if ever, asking for help. She probably has a huge measure of satisfaction knowing she has done something all on her own. She knows she needs help, but if she accepts it, then she cannot look at a project and say, "look what I did" and find a measure of pride in it. So she works herself to the bone, gets herself really, really tired, and sets herself for a crash and burn scenario like the one you two had last night.
She probably very much appreciated your gifts and was probably overwhelmed by them, has absolutely NO IDEA how to accept thanks and appreciation gracefully, and keeps that all inside. She didn't want to spoil the joy you obviously had in giving these gifts, so she sat down to enjoy them with you. She knew inside that she should show to you physical signs of appreciation because she knows you would have enjoyed that very much, yet feels guilty because she doesn't feel like doing that -- she wants to get up and keep on working because she has so much more 'to do.' She probably immerses herself in her projects, lives in her own little world, and doing so allows her to push those 'guilty feelings' aside. But she cannot do that in good conscience unless you TELL her it's okay, go finish your projects. So she sits there and feels agaitated and torn. She wants you to 'let her off the hook,' and you don't. Resentment is building in her...
And there you sit picking up on all of this and you start to think you've done something wrong. You now become bothered, and rather than this being HER problem, she begins pushing you to reveal your feelings so it can now become YOUR problem. And you took the bait, hook, line and sinker.
Do I think she did this on purpose? Absolutely not. I don't think she even realizes she is doing such a thing. But when someone becomes 'angry,' well, THAT is the person with the obvious problem, right? You both, together, moved the focus off of her, and on to you, and now, she is 'off the hook.'
You were feeling hurt and you had every right to. I bet you were feeling really confused, too, because you had no idea what the hell was wrong!! You assumed it was you, but it wasn't, do you see? It was her, but you took the fall.
You must stop doing this. This is part of setting boundaries. It's okay to feel hurt, you are allowed to express those feelings because they are YOUR feelings. You and your wife have created 'roles' for yourselves, and the fight you had at the end of the night put both of you in the roles you were comfortable playing. You have 'a problem' and she is 'the soother,' but somewhere deep inside of you, you know this isn't right, it doesn't feel right, you sit there wondering how the hell this became YOUR problem when all you did was something nice.
Stop letting her off the hook. If you get into a situation again like the one last night (and I am sure you will), and she keeps pressing you to talk, what I would do is tell her that you aren't really sure what the problem is, you'd like a few days to think about it, and when you figure it out, then the two of you can sit down to talk.
This does a few things for you. One, it doesn't let her off the hook. Two, it gives you a few days to distance yourself from your emotions so you can logically view the situation and figure it out. Three, when you come back to talk about the situation, you can lay out your boundaries to her without being angry.
Now. Think again about the scenario last night. What didn't feel right about it? If you were going to handle the same situation again today, what would you change about how you acted and responded to the situation?
Let's say that the catalyst for last night was that you took HER problem and personalized it. View the situation now without doing that.... completely leave you out of it. Now how do you see the scenario? What would you have done differently? How do you feel about the situation viewing from this type of angle?
Just some thoughts. If I'm way off base, please disregard.
