Firstly, I want to say thank you for writing in. This is a really hard thing to talk about.
Being excited about something, looking forward to something, getting it after all of the work that goes on behind the scenes, all the stress, potentially interviews. Then you come home, tell your partner, and their response is not what you were hoping for.
The first thing I want to talk about is that it is okay to be disappointed. You do not have to minimise it or ignore your feelings.
What I would encourage you to do is have a conversation with your partner. How you have that conversation is really important.
Try not to use critical language like ‘you never celebrate me,’ or ‘I always make time and effort to celebrate things for you and you do not do this for me.’ Try not to go in with assumptions like ‘you do not care about me and this is just proof of that,’ or ‘you think I am worthless,’ or ‘you are jealous,’ or any sort of accusation. We do not know what is going on, and that is not going to get a good outcome.
What you want to do instead is talk about how you feel first, using feeling words to start with. For example, ‘I felt disappointed when I shared my promotion with you and you responded in a way that was not what I was expecting.’ Then you might say, ‘When I hear that, or when I heard that, the story I am telling myself is that you do not care about my hard work, or that I do not matter to you, or perhaps that you are even jealous.’
If there is a particular story behind that, you can share a little bit about where that comes from. Then you can say, ‘Could we talk about this again? I was really proud of my achievement, and I wanted to celebrate that with you.’
There could be a few things going on here. They might have feelings about your promotion that have nothing to do with you, and that has triggered or evoked old wounds of theirs. Or, most likely, they thought they were being enthusiastic and did not realise how much it meant to you.
You also might not have had a conversation about how it feels, or about what you would like to do when it comes to celebrating important events. That can then open up a discussion about how you would like to celebrate this, what reaction you were hoping for, and how you like to celebrate your achievements.
