I have been with my partner for 13 years. When we got together, he was the father of a two-year-old. His marriage was already falling apart and the divorce was bitter. His daughter, who only stays every other weekend, is a beautiful girl. I love her very much. I have always taken the time to make her birthdays great. I have made an extra effort to decorate the house, organize parties and meals, and buy nice presents… lots of them. When it was Father’s Day or her father’s birthday, even when she was very young, I would help her make cards and little presents for him, or remind her to bring something the next time she visited.

What upsets me is that she is now 15. I have known her since she was two. I have never received a birthday present, a card, a doodle on a piece of paper or any other acknowledgement that it is my birthday. Mainly because my partner didn’t think it was worth the effort to remind her or encourage her, of course. But now she is older, has a decent allowance and is perfectly capable of planning great presents for her friends. Still, I have never received anything other than last year’s message. I expect it will be the same this year. If that happens, I would like to sit down with both of them and explain how much this has hurt me, acknowledge the part of her father instigating nothing when she was young and explain that I am simply going to refrain from buying her any more presents now that she is older and informed and still not in the mood. Am I wrong?

Eleanor says: It sounds like you put in a lot of effort and didn’t get much in return. That always hurts. But before you say you’re done with the gifts, I think there are a few tempering considerations.

On the one hand, it is about why she doesn’t. We tend to give gifts and reassurances about how we feel when the other person isn’t sure how we feel. Because we want to remove any doubt, we give lots of symbols that show our feelings: think of how many more signs of affection there are in courtship than after 50 years of marriage. (Perhaps part of the reason you went out of your way for her was to remove any possible doubt about whether her stepfather loved her?)

The trap is that sometimes we don’t bother to express our feelings with symbols when we are convinced that the other person knows what we feel. That’s a shame. Everyone likes to hear “you are loved,” even if they already know it.

Maybe she doesn’t buy you gifts because she assumes it’s not necessary; her love is so obvious that there’s literally no reason to say it. Maybe she doesn’t realize that you’ve been wondering if she loves you back, and that it’s important to remind you that she does.

Another consideration is how much this falls on her father. It’s notable that you remembered and made sure she got gifts on Father’s Day and birthdays (perhaps you still do that?). The mental logging so often falls to the women in the house. It sounds like part of why you’re hurt is because he didn’t teach you these rituals of consideration the way you did him. We should be careful about calling it that. her Thoughtlessness. It might be worth talking to her father first to point out the gap in emotional labor: “I don’t need anything major, but it hurts my feelings a bit that you didn’t remind her to mark my days like I did for yours.”

And finally, she’s 15. Puberty goes well when the worst thing you do to your parents is take them for granted. They say she’s older and more informed now, but the truth is that many people are born into their 20s or 30s before they really see their parents as people. It can take a long time for the childish view of parental figures as somehow both God and part of the furniture to completely dissolve.

That doesn’t mean you have to like it, but it does mean that the explanation may lie in puberty rather than insult and neglect.

Saying you’re done with the presents while saying it bothers you can feel like a break-up. If you really want more appreciation and want to make your birthday more special, you may need to ask for it. If you really want validation about whether she appreciates you, it might even be worth saying that. Maybe not to her, on the principle that one should be careful about revealing emotional vulnerabilities to teenagers. But at least to her father.

As a parent, you never get back the love you put into your family. But a cake and a present are not too much to ask. I would first make sure the children know how much it means to them.

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