Gift giving has become stressful for my 28F partner, but it's not stressful for me yet 24F

So for context, we have been dating now since June 2025 long distance and have met once so far. (She does make more money than me as I am disabled and on the pension and she has a full time job). The gifts we have given each other so far have been mostly handmade things. For example for Christmas I made her a box full of poems, origami, and other little bits and pieces I thought she'd like, and for Valentine's I made a notebook from scratch with all her life goals in them so she could mark them off like achievements and get a little reward after a certain number of them are completed, and I've bought her Lego, and the occasional other small thing when my finances allow. She crotched me a scarf for Christmas, which I cannot express how much I love and adore, and has bought me other things from time to time which I always love too (Video games to play together, meals, snacks etc)

Well now I'm left in quite a predicament, as my girlfriend is now getting stressed because she forgot about Valentine's day and gave me a reservation to taste fancy cakes and a cute card with no actual gift. I have absolutely no problem with this and appreciate the thought that was put into it and am happy with this for Valentine's (Especially because to me Valentine's means less than other events like anniversaries birthdays, and Christmas). She said that she is stressed about it because she feels that the gifts now have to have months of effort put into them, which I assured her they didn't need to. I asked her if I should tone down my gifts to stop her feeling stressed but she said she doesn't want me to because she wants me to be able to express myself and give whatever I'd like, but I'm happy to adapt and take time to change how I give gifts since I know I have more time to make things for her than she does for me.

I don't want gift giving to become a chore or source of anxiety for her. it's meant to be a gesture of love, which I will always appreciate from her. She also always asks me how long I've spent on her gifts, maybe that's something I should lie about.

What can I do to make her stress about this less?

Posted Feb 15, 2026, 3:02 AM UTC

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