Ex-boyfriend taking back a gift; what should I do?

In My Humble Opinion
101

Indeed.
And, as Asimovian and others have pointed out, business law doesn’t consider gifts to be in the same category as transactions. A transaction is a two-way exchange in which the fulfillment of one part obligates the fulfillment of the other part; a gift is a one-way bestowing (of goods or services) for which no contractual obligation can be enforced.

Note also that I can* promise to buy Asimovian’s car for ten million dollars but, until I front the money or he sends me the keys, it’s all empty words and no contract has been entered. If I send him a dollar as down-payment then a contract has been entered.
Let’s turn this around a bit:
The Tambourine Man says, “Hey, I got these tickets to the Floyd renunion New Years’ Eve concert. They cost $400 each – they’re a steal! We’ll pick them up at Will-Call at the concert hall right before the show.”
But you dump him on Labor Day because you find out he’s a pathological liar and you can’t abide the constant lack of trust that such knowledge gives you.
You dumped him; are you really going to gripe if he decides to take Sitar Girl to the New Years’ Eve bash? He paid for the tickets; they’re his to use as he likes.

So you scour E-bay and CraigsList and end up talking to a coworker who’s got two extra tickets to the Floyd renunion show. You’re not seeing anyone but you figure you’ll be involved by Thanksgiving so you tell her “I’ll give you $800 for them both. Here’s $400 for mine and I’ll sell the other for in the next few weeks somehow.” Christmas comes and goes and you end up selling your extra ticket – you get $1000 for the single ticket – across the street from the concert venue four hours before the show. Don’t tell me you actually go back to your coworker and say, “Here’s ten Franklins; I got a grand for your other ticket.”

No. You put up $400 of the $800 promised in exchange for the tickets and you’ll give your coworker the other $400 to fulfill your obligation. If you give her any more, the excess is considered a gift – you weren’t obligated to bestow it but you did anyway. And I’d bet you’d only hand your coworker an extra C-note.

—G!
Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the War
For a leading role in a cage
. --Pink Floyd
. Wish You Were Here
. Wish You Were Here
*I can, Asimovian. I didn’t and won’t.

102

Exactly. He bought them. He had them. They were his. You made a business transaction (which I think he was stupid to get into. I would’ve kept both tickets for myself.) You agreed to a price and now you’re reneging. And somehow he’s the asshole?

103

It’s the job of the new boyfriend to kick the ass of the old boyfriend. Amiright?

104

It’s a gray area on which we’re never going to agree… but I believe that an ethical person who presented to me that these tickets were a gift should stand by their word and honor that promise. Since he failed to be honorable, I am no longer bound to be honorable either. If he can ask for his gift back, then why can’t I? If he can act vindictively, then so can I.

(P.S. As I mentioned earlier I am giving him the money, even though I feel he is a total douche for taking his gift back. But I consider it the cost of learning what a petty douche this guy is and having him out of my life.)

105

(1) He was immature first by being all butthurt and asking me to pay him for my gift (when I had got him an almost equally valuable gift). I am just treating him the way he is treating me.

(2) Yes it was definitely not a waste of money. It’s THE WALL LIVE after all!

106

“He did it first so I am going to do the same thing back” is an extremely immature attitude in and of itself. If you can’t see that, then I feel for you.

I am not a Floyd fan but I would have no problem paying that price certain other things.

107

Ok, fine. They’re his, he bought them. Just like the hockey tickets were mine, I bought them. So now I want him to pay me for the ticket I gave him. He pays me for the hockey ticket ($150) and I pay him for the concert ticket ($200). That is what would be a fair and honorable compromise.

He’s just a bitter butthurt baby. A gentleman would not act this way.

108

Ok. Good luck to you!

109

I would have given them to you. In a similar situation in my life, I did offer up the tickets (and was turned down.)

I think that you are both are acting like butthurt babies.

110

Yeah it doesn’t feel good… I don’t want to be this way, it’s not me. But you know I am sick and tired of getting screwed over by selfish penny-pinchers and vindictive dudes. I am always the nice guy and have put up with so much bullshit and get nothing in return for being nice. Just getting trampled on like a doormat. I am always generous to the people I care for and would have never ever dreamed of asking for a gift back. So yeah, he’s being a dick and it makes me want to be a dick back for a change.

(Note: Again, I have given him the money basically because I can’t stand the thought of being thought of as a bitch by anyone.)

111

You’re totally wrong here. Once the gift is given, it’s given. You gave him the hockey tickets. He had the concert tickets, but he hadn’t given them to you. That’s the difference, and it’s appalling that you’re trying to equate them as a way to save money.

112

I am embarrassed to admit how many years of my life I have spent with inconsiderate women who took me for granted. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to stoop to their level.

113

I agree that ethically he should have given you the tickets, but the reality is that he isn’t bound to do so.

Not once you agreed to buy them, you can’t. At that point it becomes a business transaction and the only one looking bad is you. You are bound to honor your business agreement. Gifts between couples don’t follow the same rules; stop claiming they do.

114

That is where we keep disagreeing. You see, in my eyes, he DID give them to me through his actions on Christmas (sorry it was a Christmas present, not a birthday present, my mistake) when he presented me with a card and a verbal statement that “I got you tickets to The Wall!” To me, that statement is equal to giving me the gift. An honorable and respectable person would abide by their statement or promise. Him not actually presenting me with the physical tickets was tacky, but that doesn’t mean his statement or promise was invalid. That’s my opinion anyway, I know you don’t agree.

115

How two highschoolers can afford tickets like these is beyond me.

116

Shush now, you’re embarrassing yourself.

117

You’ve gotten a lot of very good advice in this thread, but I suspect most of it is not what you want to hear.

“If you can act that way, so can I” is an attitude that is guaranteed to drag your conduct down to the lowest level of the worst people who are around you. You should strive to hold yourself to a higher standard than others.

Gifts do not go on a ledger sheet to be balanced off against what the other person does for you or gives to you. A gift should be freely given with no expectation of return. If it is not, then it is just part of an extended bartering transaction.

When you gave him the hockey tickets, that was a wonderful, thoughtful gift, and you should be proud of that. If you look at that gift by itself that way, that was a beautiful act. But if you think of the hockey tickets as just one of your payments into an ongoing exchange of goods and services with that guy, you choke all meaning and thoughfulness and kindness from the gift. Then it just becomes a credit of $300 towards what was then your pending birthday gift. Was that all it was? If so, then you only have yourself to blame for not availing yourself of the sort of protections that both parties to a commercial transaction usually avail themselves of. For example, you could have made delivery of the hockey tickets contingent upon his execution of a written agreement to provide you with a birthday present of equal or greater value no later than 11:59 p.m. local time on the date of your birthday, with specific penalties for a failure to fulfil the contractual obligations set forth in the agreement.

But of course your gift was not a commercial transaction…it was just a gift, right? You gave it, he accepted it and presumably enjoyed it, now it is done and irrelevant to what you should do from this point out.

You are not out any money, in that you did not spend any money that you did not intend to. The money you spent on the hockey tickets went exactly for the purpose you intended. The money you offerred to pay for the Wall tickets was freely offerred, wasn’t it? In exchange for that money, you got to see a show which it seems you feel was well worth the price you offerred.

Now, he took you at your word when you offerred to sell the other ticket. He trusted you (despite the breakup) to sell it for a reasonable price. I mean, he trusted you to not turn around and say, “Yeah, I sold the ticket to my brother for a penny! Don’t spend it all in one place, sucker!” Now, you seemed to feel $200 for one ticket was a fair price. Did you make an effort to sell the other ticket, or did you end up going with a friend and then just sending your ex a $100 in the hope that he would just leave it at that? If you made an honest effort to sell it and could only get a $100 for it, I think you would have already mentioned that fact, so I assume you just were hoping to fob him off with the $100 payment as a kind of after-the-fact, take-it-or-leave-it move.

You should really pay him the other $100 if you haven’t already, if only to demonstrate that you are the type of person who can be trusted to fulfill your promises… Now, if you are thinking, well, then turnabout is fair play, it is his fault for not having a written agreement about how I would try to sell the ticket or some such thing, then you have missed my point entirely.

Hold yourself to a higher standard than others.

As it stands right now, the picture you have painted of yourself is someone who places a value of less than $100 on their own honor and integrity.

I hope you can figure out a way to handle this situation that leaves you feeling confident that you behaved properly and maturely, regardless of what others may have done.

118

I see what you did there!

119

You posted a lot while I was writing my last post.

Then start being you. You cannot control what he did or does, or what anyone else does. You can control what you do. So choose to act in the way that is going to make you feel good about yourself.

You didn’t get screwed over in this situation. You gave someone a great gift. You bought tickets and saw a cool show. Sounds like good things.

Don’t expect to get anything more for being nice or honorable other than the knowledge that you have conducted yourself in a manner that is beyond reproach and that makes others around you happy. If you are being “generous” with the idea that it is going to somehow benefit you, then you are not being generous, you are investing.

I know that a lot of what I am writing just sounds like a lot of happy bullshit, but I really do mean it.

I totally get the idea of “he’s being a dick and I want to be a dick back…” that is human nature at some base level, and I am certainly not immune to it, but it is not making you feel better, is it?

Good show on paying him the money…let yourself feel good about yourself for doing the right thing, and hopefully learning from this situation so that the next time something similar happens you can skip the whole part where you are eating yourself with anger and thoughts of retaliation and go right ahead to the doing the right thing part.

120

What I find funniest about this statement is that clearly you have dreamed of asking for a gift back. That’s what this entire thread is about–your running tally of who gave what when and how much it cost.

Now maybe I would think of it, too. I might be resentful. But in truth, most of the things I resent are things that I just need to grow the fuck up about. Resentment and irritation are not excuses for bad behavior. Other people’s bad behavior is also not an excuse for bad behavior. You might do a bad thing in reaction to someone else’s bad thing, but don’t try to justify it.