I get it. I don’t know why but I have a feeling men are just not into organizing events or understand their significance, and often forget what is important to their partner especially if it’s a surprise party. At least looking around me, i see and hear lots of women organizing parties and events and surprise parties for their kids and husbands but I have never heard a man doing that on his own. The only thing men organize are bachelor parties. I had once a surprise party that was organized mainly by my mom but she enlisted my boyfriend at the time to participate and gave him clear cut instructions on exactly what to do and my mom loved doing it with him cuz he was so cooperative unlike my dad who sucks at everything and is also uncooperative and resistant. I think is culture and it is the way men are raised and socialized. Women do the organizing, the backstage prep, the foot work, the attention to detail, men do not put much effort in things that do not put them at the center stage. In a surprise party the birthday person is in the lime light so to speak, the organizer is the person behind the curtain.

My MiL for example organizes surprise parties for her husband once every couple of years and goes to great lengths to make it as exciting as possible and her husband loves it. And I asked my husband if he ever returns the favour, and my husband laughed and said “Haha! Of course not!” And I was upset about it and said why not? His answer was because his mom cooks and bakes and his dad only does bbq. And I said so why not a surprise bbq then? He said, eh it is just not how their relationship is. And I get it. Not my place to get involved there, but I told my husband that I will not be like his mother, happy giving and getting little in return.

The thing is my husband always wanted to celebrate my birthday before the pandemic. But I would put most of the effort in the organizing because he just sucks balls at it. He does not order enough food so I have to keep an eye on that. He does not take care of details, we’d be probably sitting around the tv with junk food pizza and grocery store cake if it were up to him, and I dunno, the guests would be dissatisfied because his friends are mostly a bunch of snobs who when they host they have tapas on square plates with labels and I feel like shit to have anything less when they are invited over, especially when is my birthday.