Featured on @StorylineReddit: November 5, 2025
He says no.
What makes this volatile isn’t the garment. It’s how quickly the air changes. A routine step in making a gift turns into a refusal, and the refusal turns into a position. Suddenly the fabric carries weight it didn’t have before. The conversation tilts.
There’s humor in the way it’s told sharp, theatrical, a little cruel but the laughter feels like cover. Beneath it is a smaller, colder question about cooperation. About whether participation is negotiable when pride is involved.
Nothing dramatic has happened. No betrayal, no revelation. Just a fitting that doesn’t take place.
And yet the temperature is already higher than it should be.
On paper, the conflict is practical. One partner needs a brief fitting to finish a handmade gift. The other refuses, objecting to the floral pattern of a temporary mock-up. What should be procedural becomes personal almost immediately.
The refusal sets the tone. She explains it’s only for sizing. He pushes back, framing the request as inappropriate. Instead of adjusting for ten minutes, he introduces a condition. She doesn’t accommodate; she escalates in tone. The exchange hardens.
There’s a visible sequence: refusal, argument, sarcasm, imagined retaliation. No one steps away from the edge. The task itself disappears. The focus shifts to who bends.
Underneath that, something uneven is exposed. She has already invested time, money, and precision. He treats participation as optional. That mismatch lingers longer than the argument.
By the end, the blazer barely matters. The standoff does.
Text Version
My boyfriend won’t try on his Christmas present
CONCLUDED
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/ThrowRAPissedOffGF
My boyfriend won’t try on his Christmas present.
Originally posted to r/relationship_advice
TRIGGER WARNING: Toxic masculinity
Original post – rareddit Nov 24, 2020
Not gonna lie, I’m pretty fuckin angry and I’m basically only here for a whinge and a moan. If a mellowed out soul wants to give me some advice that might be helpful though, because I currently want nothing more than to punt the bastard off a cliff.
I’m 27 and he’s 33. Together 4 years. We have artsy hobbies and we usually like to make each other a handmade gift for Christmas. We usually enjoy it but honestly this last year he is constantly at my house leaving his ball hair under my toilet seat, whinging about Boris Johnson and doing my swede in. I saw an advert for Dogs Trust about how Milo the Doberman is going to spend Christmas alone this year and I’m jealous of the fucker.
Anyway, I sew as a hobby. For Christmas I thought it would be nice to make my boyfriend a blazer. He asked for one for his birthday, but I couldn’t get fabric for his birthday this year. I’ve made blazers before but the materials I bought this time were not cheap, so to make sure I knew what I was doing I got some of the leftover fabric from my last project and made a mock up/ prototype to make sure it was right.
For the last 3 days have been sewing about about 80 different tiny little insivible pockets and invisible seams and button holes, but now I’ve got a pretty decent mock up of what I want the real blazer to look like. I just wanted to check it fits him properly so I asked him to take 10 minutes to try it on so I could make sure.
I don’t know what his problem is but he decided that instead of trying it on so I can check it fits like I asked, he would start a row with me. A row because the fabric I made the trial blazer out of has flowers on it and was at some point in the week pinned to my mannequin who is a woman. He won’t put it on. He’s telling me he won’t put it on, even though he knows I’m the only one who’s gonna see it. I wish I was joking. Actually, no I don’t, because the girls and I are all having a right giggle about it.
I don’t know what he wants, but if he thinks that after I’ve spent £200 on materials to make this fucking blazer I’m gonna trot my arse down to the craft shop to spend another tenner on a roll of plain fabric because he wants a mock up that doesn’t have flowers on it he can get on his bike and ride it to Timbuktu. I mean it. He’s been playing up like a fucking imbecile for weeks now, I’m sick of his bullshit, I’m not going to coddle him and pretend that what he’s asking for is reasonable.
I’ve talked to my therapist about this, and he talked about reasonable ways to resolve this conflict. Currently I have come up with:
shag his da and then go on the Jeremy Kyle show to tell him.
make him sleep in the car and then have the car towed off the pier.
give him a card and a snickers bar for Christmas, wait for him to complain, then chuck his clothes out the upstairs window while the neighbours watch.
I’m open to more suggestions if you can think of anything better.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
MaggieLuisa
I am laughing my arse off at your possible solutions. They all sound reasonable to me.
All I can think of is to shelve the whole thing for now and ask him calmly, possibly after preemptive self-medication to enable calm, if he wants a blazer or not. If he does, he tries this one on. If not, he owes you an apology for wasting your time.
What does he think will happen if he tries on a flowered mockup? His dick will fall off? You sew, you can fix that.
OOP
Appreciated, the therapist didn’t agree. Though I can fix that, I think no penis suits him better…
MaggieLuisa
You should finish up the flowered blazer without a fitting, and give it to him for Christmas, too. Maybe add some lace. And bows.
OOP
I do like that idea…
Tell him I knew it was inappropriate to ask him to wear something like that without a matching clutch bag…
twirlingpink
Don’t do this. Don’t lean into the toxic masculinity. It’s not girly to like flowers and he doesn’t have a vagina just because he’s being an asshole.
OOP
Absence of a penis does not a vagina make my friend.
However you are right, just because he’s being a dildo I shouldn’t play up to it. But I’m mad so I’m gonna shred his masculinity in the anonymous comments.
squirrelfoot
His masculinity certainly sounds very fragile.
~
Aquarterpastnope
Knitters have this “boyfriend sweater curse”. Apart from the fact that your boyfriend exhibits some ridiculously fragile masculinity here, that curse says after you knit an especially nice and work intensive sweater for your – in this scenario– boyfriend, the relationship falls apart.
I saw a TikTok (yes) about it that made a good point: it’s not the sweater, it’s investing so much love and time and labor and then feeling the resentment when you see it on a person that doesn’t value any from that from you, and would never invest that much for you, and you know it. In a good relationship, you just made your spouse a sweater. In a bad relationship, it brings out what is wrong, for example investment disbalances, or a fragile ego, or whatever.
Maybe you found the sewing equivalent, the blazer curse, and the sewing magic is trying to tell you something.
OOP
This… makes so much sense.
~
msraspberry91
Damn that masculinity sure is fragile!
OOP
He makes me get the spiders too.
shatspiders
Somehow I knew that based on your description
~
Fabulous_Title
This is insane. I’d understand if he didnt want to wear something floral out but it’s a mock up of the real one? he’s crazy. My suggestion is to donate the blazer to someone to needs it & would appreciate it & get your boyfriend nothing for Christmas.
OOP
The ironic thing is he’s the biggest pussy I know.
angelcake893
It sounds like you want to break up with him. Why don’t you?
OOP
Honestly, im going to. Today really set me off but it’s not the first time he’s behaved in a way that’s completely infantile for no reason. I can’t be with someone like that.
~
[deleted]
What language is this? Seems like English but has expressions like “doing my Swede in”. What did I just read?
OOP
This is real Manchester English my guy
OOP made 1 final comment/update Same Day
His stuff is packed and by the door. It’s up to him when to come and get it.
He knew I was a cold bitch when he got with me, I didn’t know he was a man child until I had to lock myself in a house with him. I think I deserve some slack.
Source
He won’t put it on. Not because it doesn’t fit. Not because it’s unfinished. Because it has flowers.
She’s holding pins. The mannequin is in the corner. The room is private. He crosses his arms.
At first it reads as stubbornness. Then it begins to look like a boundary he feels he has to defend. The request is contained and temporary, but to him it seems to carry implication. He reacts as if something is at stake.
The escalation is simple. She asks again. He refuses again. Voices rise. She tells him she won’t buy different fabric. He says he won’t wear that. They stop talking about measurements and start talking about principle. No one moves.
What’s notable is how quickly irritation turns into contempt on her side. The humor sharpens; the fantasies of revenge become elaborate. They are funny. They are also edged. She has already done the work. The invisible pockets. The careful seams. The cost of the materials. He withholds ten minutes.
From his angle, there’s defensiveness that doesn’t fully explain itself. He resists something symbolic, even if he never names it that way. It isn’t about being seen in public. It’s about the act itself.
This is where the imbalance feels less theatrical and more structural. She is operating inside a shared project. He is protecting something that doesn’t require collaboration. The fitting becomes a test neither agreed to take.
By the time his belongings are packed, the argument has already run its course. The blazer was only ever fabric.
He still wouldn’t try it on.
