I Made a Simple, Affordable Request for My Birthday. You’d Think I Asked My Husband for the Moon. – Slate

Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!)Dear Pay Dirt,Two years ago, my husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told him that I wanted to eat downtown in our city because it’s really pretty in the winter. I picked a chain restaurant with a good reputation that he could easily make a reservation at online. My birthday came and went. I asked him if we could still go to the restaurant and he said yes, and yet, more months went by. I cook more than 90 percent of our meals, so aside from going downtown, a break from cooking would have been enjoyed. After more months of me begging to go to the restaurant, he asked me what I wanted for my next birthday. I snapped and said that I was still waiting to dine at the restaurant downtown from the year before. He booked the restaurant … in a mall by the highway. He was then upset at me when I became angry and emotional.We eventually ate at the restaurant downtown and he acknowledged that it was nice. I told him that I would like to dine out again, even if just for cocktails and appetizers. He agreed. And now another year is rolling by and after doing all the cooking and baking for the holidays as well as feeding him regularly all year, I am crushed. We are not hurting for money and I feel like the opposite of someone who is cherished. When I’ve tried to talk to him about my feelings, he interrupts to tell me his perspective, lists the things he’s done that should be appreciated, and then walks away without noticing that I haven’t been able to finish a sentence. I don’t think that this is normal but he has ADHD, and I hear that men often don’t see their partners’ “invisible work” like cooking. What can I do? We have been together 15 years and I can’t stand the thought of another 15 years of being a sidekick to his main character.—Exhausted and EmptyDear Exhausted and Empty,It’s painful to read your letter. It sounds like you’ve put up with 15 years of being ignored, your contributions to your household and marriage taken for granted.A good relationship should make you feel cherished and loved, even when you are having a disagreement. You shouldn’t feel stepped on all the time, and you should get recognized for your contributions. You should also feel heard. Explaining away his behavior by saying he has ADHD is a red herring. You don’t have money problems, so never going out to dinner (especially because that was your big birthday ask) is a slight that shouldn’t be ignored.From where I sit, you have a few options: (1) make your own dinner reservations; (2) ask him to go to couple’s therapy, where you can discuss how his comments make you feel and why you feel a less-than-equal partner in this relationship; and (3) find your own therapist, so you can talk about why you’ve adopted the role of “sidekick” without any internal pushback.I recommend all three. Make some dinner reservations at places you’d like to go. If he doesn’t want to join you for dinner, ask a friend to join instead. If he refuses couple’s therapy, make sure you find someone for yourself, so you can begin to unpack the last 15 years of your life. Once you’ve been in therapy long enough to understand what happened during the first 15 years of your marriage, you can start to imagine the future, and whether it will include your spouse. Either way, I hope you can spend some lovely nights downtown, enjoying your city. You’ve certainly earned it.
Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Thanks! Your question has been submitted.Dear Pay Dirt,I have always had a great credit rating, well over 800. Today I checked it and it’s 763. Why? Because I used over 50 percent of my available credit last month. I always pay my credit cards in full every month and in fact just paid this one. My credit limit is high but who cares because the card is paid off? I have absolutely no debt except for my mortgage. I use just one card because of the travel benefits, but do have others that I keep for other reasons. I’m not about to buy a new house or anything but this seems ridiculous to me. Should I divide my spending among multiple cards to keep myself “below 50 percent of my available credit?  I feel like I’m being penalized for spending money I actually have! (The big bill was for holiday gifts and our charitables, which we tend to cluster at the end of the year.)—What’s a credit rating for??Dear What’s a Credit Rating For,A credit score tells potential lenders and creditors what sort of credit risk category you fall into. Are you likely to repay your loans in full every month? Or are you likely to miss a payment here or there, potentially ending up in collections?The higher your credit score, the lower the interest rate on your credit cards, which is important only if you carry a balance. Higher credit scores also mean you qualify for auto, home, and personal loans with lower interest rates, better terms, and fewer fees. A really low credit score means you might not qualify for a loan at all.What many consumers don’t realize, but you’ve discovered, is that the credit scoring algorithms used by the three main credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and Transunion), FICO, and others are sensitive, and can make your score  change frequently. If you open too many new credit accounts all at once or apply for too many loans within a very short period of time, you could see your credit score drop.The same thing can happen if you break a cardinal rule for great credit by using up too much of your available credit. Ideally, you’d never use more than 30 percent of your maximum available credit limit on a single card. By charging up to 50 percent of your available credit, the credit score algorithm dinged you.This may not sound fair, but credit scoring isn’t perfect from the lender’s perspective either. Credit scoring can’t predict, for example, what will happen with a loan if you suddenly lose the ability to pay all of your bills and have to choose which ones to pay. But, it’s the system banks use to make a determination about whether to approve your loan or credit application.The good news is you should see your credit score bounce back up in a month or two. And, yes, going forward, you might want to keep your charging to just 30 percent of your maximum credit limit, even if it means breaking up holiday expenses onto two or three different cards.You didn’t ask this question, but if you don’t have a credit card that is a “cash back” card, you may want to have one for situations like this. I get that travel cards have a place in some people’s wallets (I have one, too) but if you get a cash back card, you have the flexibility to decide how to use that money—which is a really nice perk when you’re spending a lot on holiday gifting.—IlyceI’m in my late 20s. I’ve been dating the love of my life for a little over a year—we were best friends for almost a decade before we decided to date. We’ve been long distance the entire time, but both have been looking for jobs (unsuccessfully so far) that would allow us to live together. Then, within the last two months, both of our moms were diagnosed with different catastrophic illnesses that require a lot of care. My dad has his own health issues, so I moved back in with my parents to care for Mom and run the household. But what do my boyfriend and I do now?Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company.All contents © 2025 The Slate Group LLC. All rights reserved. Source: https://slate.com/advice/2025/02/birthday-request-affordable-husband-reaction-marriage-advice.html