For my birthday, my spouse got me a nicer newer expensive version of a thing I already have. The one I have is older and dented but works just fine. I use it weekly. I never complain about it. I’ve never asked for a newer one. The one I have was given to me by my mother in law, whom I adore. It’s sentimental.
I don’t like new things. When they got me a 3d printer, it was the cheapest one and it was a kit and I had to build myself. I loved it. It’s perfect for me. I regularly buy things used or get things from Buy Nothing groups. I much prefer to repair old things in many ways. My car has over 100k miles. The one before did too. I don’t like new things.
We got into a huge argument because I want to return it. They are so upset with me that they left the house to calm down. Why am I the bad person? Why are they mad at me? I have a very clear tendency for old broken used things. Why am I obligated to like this new thing?
We literally established a rule early in our marriage. I’m not allowed to gift nerdy t shirts. They don’t like them. I love them. I thought they would like them but they do not. So they asked me to stop. This feels the same. I do not like new things. Why am I the bad guy for wanting to return the newer version of the thing I already have?
I’m the same way with things, but I do think you handled this poorly. When people do things like this for me, also knowing I’d prefer to keep what I have or fix it if it’s malfunctioning/broken, my response is usually something along the lines of: “Thank you! This will come in handy when I can no longer use the one I have now. I’ll keep this safe until then!”
As someone else pointed out, they probably had a very good reason for getting that for you. When my lady bought me a new cell phone and I said basically what I wrote above, her response was that while she understands my current phone works, it doesn’t always work well, and she’d like to have longer, more meaningful conversations with me while I’m out of town. I asked her what she meant, since I saw no problem with it. She said my current phone didn’t keep a charge very long and the microphone wasn’t great. I learned that she called me less often than she’d like to because she felt like having me repeat myself and having to stop my work to charge the phone while having our talks was a bother to me, so she figured this would fix both of those problems. I swapped the service to the new phone immediately. She was elated, I was happy she was happy, and honestly I have a great phone that lasted two days on a charge for over a year. I also rarely have to repeat myself now, and didn’t realize that I was, in fact, bothered having to repeat myself until I didn’t have to.
Win-win, but you’ll never know if you shut it down.
Good take.