Holidays: My husband hates them!

I would talk to him and say I know you don't like holidays but I do and I would appreciate it if you would celebrate them with me

Sounds to me like you both speak different love languages! I highly recommend reading "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. Everyone communicates love in different ways, and the key to making most relationships work is to figure out the language your spouse speaks. Just from your description, it seems like your husband communicates/loves through small acts of kindness. And you seem to appreciate thoughtful gifts and gestures. Once you both understand each others languages, it will be so much easier to make each other feel loved!

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Love how you phrased this~ absolutely true that everyone has different love languages! my husband and i have different love languages, he definitely believes in acts of service and so do i but i also like affirmations, etc, so i had to tell my husband that you know it would be nice if we could be more proactive with each other's love languages every now and then.

My fiance is very similar! He has never done anything for Valentine's Day (he has never bought me chocolate or flowers, though part of that is because the cat likes to eat flowers and we can't keep them in our house), and he's not thrilled about the idea of doing gifts at the holidays. However, he takes care of a LOT of the day-to-day tasks and chores. There is a book that my fiance and I both read, called "The 5 Love Languages". My fiance's love language is definitely acts of service, where he feels most appreciated when I do things for him (whether it be chores, cooking dinner, driving on a long road trip, etc), while I feel most appreciated by things like getting handwritten notes from him, or us going out on a date to spend some time together, etc. We both learned about what makes the other feel appreciated. I recommend that you each read that book separately, and then discuss the chapters together. You could both work towards being more intentional about speaking each other's love language, which would help you both feel appreciated!

Like Brigitte said, you both have different love languages, and that's okay! Communicate with one another, and let each other know what your love language is, and what makes you feel appreciated and cared for. Once that's happened, you'll be able to understand one another much better, and be able to do things that make the other person feel loved!

This may be sound SO silly, but have you ever looked into Enneagrams?

My fiancé and I are total opposites when it comes to this too! After so many times of being disappointed because of our differences in wants/needs with this, I looked into enneagrams and we took the test. We are literally night and day from one another - this is similar to "love languages". It's literally how a person's mind works, what they love and hate, how the want to be loved etc.

This was SUCH a huge help for the BOTH of us! I feel like I know a lot about how he operates and how he needs to be loved, and the same for me based on our Enneagram type.

For example, I love feeling validated and appreciated. I would much rather come home from work to a clean house and dinner cooked and be told "I drew you a bath and here's a glass of wine". He would rather get to come home and sit on the couch with me and be "at peace".

It sounds so crazy, but I swear by this! And I'm not one whois normally into this stuff! Maybe sit down together and take the test and read into the type you score highest for. It may be really helpful for you both!!!

As others said, you have different love languages and need to discuss! My fiance and I have the same exact problem. He doesn't love holidays and prefers to show he loves me in other ways over buying gifts all of the time. While I don't need gifts, I like to feel appreciated and even just a card would make me feel loved. The Valentine's Day debate has been one FOREVER...people always say, "it's just a holiday made by Hallmark" but I always loved it. My parents taught me it's a day to show everyone you love them, so don't just limit to a significant other. Can you try to explain to him why it means so much to you and have him understand? Maybe try to make a compromise. Example, my fiance is big on physical touch. So when we discussed this, he said he would try to appreciate what's important to me more, like the holidays, if I tried to appreciate what's more important to him, which is physical touch and feeling loved that way.

Here is the root of your issue: "He feels like I don't appreciate his daily efforts and I feel like he doesn't find the effort to make holidays special for me." Each of your feelings are valid and it's important to communicate to each other on how you are feeling and to recognize and understand the validity of your partner's feelings.

One way that might help you see his side of it is to think about how not liking holidays is part of his core personality. This is how he is and you have known this about him for 7 years. Do you want him to change his core personality? What changes have you made for him? How have you worked to improve the ways you show your appreciation of his daily efforts?

I’ll admit, I am totally with your husband. I was much more appreciate the variety of gifts and tokens of love throughout the year versus only something on holidays where it feels rather forced/pressured.



But in your situation, maybe you do something where you focus on your wedding anniversary, and make that the big date that you celebrate since it has to do with both of you. Then maybe you can also find one holiday in the year that you both agree you’ll celebrate. But certainly not every single little “holiday” on the Hallmark calendar.

View Quoted Comment Yasss!!! This right here!!!

View Quoted Comment I second this! I love that book. I'm with your hubby, I'm not a fan of holidays. My parents are divorced and I don't enjoy going to my in-laws for the hollidays.

This is sooo relatable for me. I LOVE all the holidays and my partner really couldn't care less. Said the same thing about "every day is special", and I would get those holiday blues too. The two things that worked for me were 1) trying to get him involved in things I knew he would be more interested in, kind of like with wedding planning. He is a huge foodie and I realized if I started talking about my holiday food plans he would become interested and start talking about things he wanted to cook. He now says that's his favorite part of the holidays. 2) This one is harder (it took me a few years to get to this point), but it really helped me feel better once I just came to terms with the fact that he doesn't care about holidays, and that's okay. I decided whether he wants to help or not, I'm still going to put up all the decorations and do all the activities because those things bring me joy. He has hobbies I don't care about either and that's fine. I went from complaining that he wasn't helping with holidays to being okay with doing it for myself because it was better than not doing anything at all. That seems kind of melancholy but it really has helped me feel a lot better. And ironically, ever since I became at peace with that, it seems like he's become more interested in doing things for holidays. Maybe it's because he's seeing me happy instead of sad, and there's no pressure. 🤷‍♀️


I'll also completely agree with everyone else here on the importance of understanding each other's love languages! It makes a big difference in how you're able to support each other through all kinds of situations.

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Heather, I just gotta say that how you decided to and learned to navigate your differences with your partner is so smart.

View Quoted Comment Thank you!

Have a talk with him. Let him know how important holidays are to you. In return, you should take time to find out what's important to him and do it for him or with him. My husband isn't huge on holidays. We're both huge on family and spending time with family but he isn't thrilled about holiday things like buying Christmas presents (i buy them and put his name on them for our family and friends, lol), decorating the Christmas tree with me (my sister-in-laws come over and we make a girls night out of it when my husband doesn't want to do it), carving pumpkins around Halloween, decorating for other holidays and things like that. He does these things because he knows I love it. In return I do things that he loves to do too. If I get out of work before he does, or on my days off, I'll surprise him and take him lunch to work from his favorite sub place, I'll give him a massage most nights because his body is beat up b/c he played sports through college, we go bowling a few times a month together and we go golfing often because he loves it. I also go watch him in his bowling league every Wednesday night because he likes me being there. It's not my favorite thing do to, but it makes him happy so I do it.

As far as Valentine's Day goes, I understand where your husband is coming from. Neither my husband or I are very into it. We spend the entire year showing each other how much we love each other by doing little things, going out to dinner, taking trips together and so on, so we personally don't think we need one day to prove to each other how much we love each other. The most important part of a marriage, in my opinion, is communication. Let him know how you're feeling and come up with a compromise together. Because you mentioned you both are feeling underappreciated, this is the best time to talk it out and come to a conclusion that you both can work with and that makes you both happy.

Communicate your feelings with each other and embrace your differences. You are happy together otherwise. People have their own way of showing that love. Both your view and his are valid. They key is open communication and compromise that will make you both happy.

Familiarize yourself with different love languages. People express love in different ways, these five being the primary ones: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Giving and Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch.

If you default to one language and he defaults to another, without understanding the others position, you will end up miscommunicating and feeling underappreciated and undervalued. Its really important to know what you like and what your partner likes, and accepting when they are expressing love in their way instead of yours, as well as reaching outside your comfort zone to express love in a way that isn't familiar to you but speaks to your partner, and vise versa.