We ARE in a recession! Duh!
I tried this a year ago. I hate shopping, I hate crowds, and these things are common knowledge within my family. I was also under a lot of stress for other reasons (really barely holding it together). So early December I’m on the phone with Mom and tell her that I’m opting out of the whole gift exchange thing this year. Because really, there’s nothing that I want that I wouldn’t buy for myself, unless it’s so expensive I’d never ask someone else to get it for me. And I just couldn’t deal with it then, just way too stressed out. So I don’t get you gifts, you don’t get me gifts, please tell the rest of the family, it’ll just be a lot easier for everyone.
Christmas rolls around, and I get a couple giant boxes full of gifts in the mail. Remember the part where I said I wasn’t going shopping for gifts that year? Yeah. I spent a very memorable Christmas feeling utterly humiliated.
I didn’t even try this year. I just made a bunch of gifty hand lotion on the cheap and gave it to everyone. Along with a few baked goods.
I long to open gift cards on christmas and my birthday. My parents are crap for giving presents. They whine that I’m “hard to buy for”; I give them detailed lists, including which stores to get stuff from. This year, I told them above all else NOT to buy me a dress shirt. They got me a dress shirt. Wrong size.
And they know I loathe returning gifts. If it wasn’t so pathetic I’d suspect malice.
I attempted to push the idea that we only buy gifts for my nephews, since the adults don’t need the conspicuous consumerism so much. I was accused of trying to ruin Christmas. That year, I got the electric blanket that I told them SIX TIMES not to get me.
Fortunately, my SiL is awesome at buying gifts. This year she got me: Amazon gift card. At least that’s one present I’ll enjoy.
So, OP, I don’t think you’ll ever fix your wife’s gift-buying deficiency. At least if you train her to get you gift cards, you’ll shift to mildly thoughtless gifts, from the hurtfully thoughtless ones you’ve been getting. It’s either that, or become a glam diva, I suppose.
Loved the OP, made me laugh.
Yup. Make the best of an unsatisfying situation.
I have an idea, shall we trade spouses? Er–wait, that wouldn’t work. But my husband falls right in that category of getting the wrong thing, the really really wrong thing. Since I am a person who prefers to buy my own stuff anyway, I have now finally pissed my husband off to the point that he doesn’t buy me anything, just hands me cash. But the bathrobe story I have to respond to.
Some years ago I had two really old bathrobes. One of them was a pink chenille thing that I think my mom got on her honeymoon in the early 1930s, and I convinced her to give me in the 1960s. I loved it. Whenever I put it on I felt like Jean Harlow. But, okay, by the early 1990s it might just be looking a bit moth-eaten, I can understand that.
The other one was a splendid, soft, zip-front one I got to wear to the hospital for the birth of my first child, when Jean Harlow just wouldn’t do. And by the 1990s it, too, was looking a bit under the weather.
(I mean, what the hell. These are bathrobes, they are supposed to be comfortable, it’s not like you’re wearing them to breakfast at Denny’s or anything.)
But anyway, I agreed that I needed a new bathrobe, the Harlow one mysteriously disappeared, and then mysteriously reappeared in the yard of some neighbors who had a perpetual garage sale consisting of items “rescued” from the trash in various alleys. Obviously someone thought it still had some potential.
But back to the need for a new one. I hinted that I could use a new bathrobe for Christmas. I more than hinted. I said there was one in particular I had my eye on. Egyptian cotton terrycloth, big pockets, a hood for when the hair was wet, etc. And this one store had it at a great price. In fact, you could buy two matching ones, for instance, and the second one was halfprice. Just to the left of the escalator on the second floor of MayD&F. Probably there’s even a coupon somewhere.
Now I know that I am hard to buy presents for, because a lot of people who might buy me presents–well, not anymore, but maybe once they would have–just don’t have my shopping standards. After all I can’t tell everyone exactly what I want, how much it costs, and where to buy it. But I can tell my husband…right?
I can tell him, but here’s what I got: A bathrobe. That looked like it was made for somebody’s blind grandma. Made out of polyester. Felt terrible–I mean kind of rough and sleazy and slippery, all at the same time, and it smelled funny. It was dark blue, with giant pink flowers. Now, the flowers were all over it, so probably it was just a coincidence that there was one right over each breast. Instead of a wrap tie or a zipper it had snaps. When I took it out of the box it cracked with static electricity that seemed to be built in. In fact it snapped at me. I should have taken this as a sign, put it right back in the box and returned it but no, I gamely put it on. It immediately molded its smelly polyester self to my body, tried to trip me when I walked, zapped me with static electricity at every step, and very obligingly came unsnapped when I wanted it to stay snapped but, when I wanted to take it off, the fucking snaps had to be pried apart with fucking pliers. And did I mention that it was ugly? It was ugly in the dark.
I wore it for two days of Xmas holidays and then I threw it into the ARC box and didn’t even try to hide it.
As a second present that year my husband had gotten me garnet earrings. Tiny little things. From Shane Company so he got royally ripped off. He thought it would be cute to hide them on the tree, like ornaments, and see if I noticed. I did not notice. In fact I never even found the second earring, ever. It probably stuck to some of the tinsel, which in turn stuck to the cat, which in turn–well, I’ll stop there.
So anyway about two days after Christmas, not my best time of the year in any year, I had a screaming, crying fit where I threw the remaining garnet earring at my husband, told him that Tom Shane was not his friend in the garnet business, told him that hiding them in the tree and making me find them, when I didn’t even know they were there, was some kind of psychological torture, and anyway I hated garnets and didn’t own anything that would match them, asked him why he had not followed my fairly complete directions on What To Get Her For Xmas, and when he said somewhat weakly that he “wanted to surprise me” I shriekd that he should never, ever do that, and in fact he should never, ever, ever buy me anything, ever again, and I stomped off to the store to buy MYSELF something that FIT and that I LIKED.
And this is why he nowadays just hands me cash. Probably any other man in the world would have divorced me by now.
graceland, I’m sorry that this year sucked so hard for you. I hope that next year is better.
I don’t mean to give the impression that I place too much importance on receiving gifts - far from it. It’s more that I’m grumpy in the morning, in large part because I feel obligated to wear a bathrobe that has sleeves that are a foot too long.
Of course, this is trivial – it’s a minor frustration. I love my wife, wouldn’t trade her for anyone, and although she is pretty wide of the mark when it comes to the ritualized gift-giving that we do a few times a year, she shows her love and affection for me in myriad other ways on a day-to-day basis. She may be better at this day-to-day stuff than I am.
Hunter Hawk, your post (and others’ follow-ups) actually made me laugh out loud, without resort to banal acronyms. This is extremely dangerous, since my wife is sitting just a few feet away, and only her concrete disinterest in anything related to my Geeky Geek Message Board for Geeks stands between me and total disaster.
Chief Pedant - “self-help” books of that sort are waaaaaay outside of any of my areas of interest. That said, I’ve added it to my reading list. I think the relationship is pretty strong, but it can’t hurt. Thanks!
Folks who’ve suggested “wish lists,” I guess the dissonance that I have is the way I personally approach gift-giving - I really like to show the other person that I’ve spent some time thinking about who they are and what they might like – it’s a game that makes gift shopping fun for me. Having an actual list to work from takes that element out.
I should also say that as I type this, I’m reading the board on a very nice LCD monitor that I received for my birthday last year – one that replaced a huge old CRT that I was perfectly satisfied with and never would have thought to replace on my own. So she does score a hit from time to time.
…sorry if I am ignoring anyone, I’m trying to be all stealth.
…and she’s turned the TV oiff.
Absolutely.
FWIW, I highly suspect from the OP that Mrs Mudd’s love language is Words Of Affirmation. Notice how she’s angling for verbal strokes for having done the “right thing” in her gift-giving?.
Read the book. Really. (get it for yourselves as a Valentines gift ;))
Holy shit man. You had me cracking up by the time you were describing the scarf she gave you. How long have you been married?
Some people are just clueless when it comes to gift giving. My mother gives me clothing that would make me The Only Gay In The Village: a turquoise muscle top and matching baseball cap anyone?! (I never wear hats. Ever. Or turquoise. Or muscle tops.) Or Franklin fuckin’ Mint-style crud that she is disappointed to see I haven’t mounted on the wall when she visits. She knows my taste is for subtle ethnic South-East Asian exotica. Why then did she give me a plate with a badly painted owl flying over a church?
But the worst, worst, worst, who makes Larry Mudd’s missus seem like Daddy Warbucks, was my ex-father-in-law.
My ex-mother-in-law walked out on him one Christmas because all he got her was… a bread bin.
She already had a perfectly good bread bin, that was only six months old.
The ‘new’ one was second hand and slightly damaged, and still had crumbs in it. It looked like he’d either bought it at a garage sale, or had stolen it from someone’s kitchen. It looked like the ultimate afterthought panic purchase on Christmas Eve because the gas stations had shut. No card. No wrapping paper. No token of love. Just a used, dirty, fucking bread bin.
She returned to him a couple of months later, but that was the final straw that precipitated their separation.
He also once offered me and the ex a rug he had got for us. A giant, hideous brown and orange rug that, it turned out, was too big for our apartment. My ex informed me this year that fourteen years on, it’s still in storage in the spare room.
How did he get the rug?
He traded it for Nelly, the beloved family donkey, whom they had owned for fifteen years. Cue copious weeping from my ex, her mother, and all her sisters.
Couldn’t even afford condoms, and definitely couldn’t afford to get pregnant? :eek:
I’m glad I’m the only one home right now so that no one is looking at me weird for giggling hysterically at the computer screen. A used bread bin with crumbs in it? That’s fabulous. Your ex’s entire family should thank him for the comedy gold. He gave the gift of laughter, one of the most precious gifts in the world!
My mother is the terrible gift-gifter in my family. Actually, she is only terrible at buying gifts for me and my SO. She buys great gifts for my kids, good gifts for my brother and sister-in-law and OK gifts for her own husband.
This year it was a white and orangish-red horizontally striped (very LARGE stripes) cable knit (very LARGE cable knit) sweater with a hoodie. Last year it was a shirt that looked like it belonged inside a tux. She also loves to buy tacky socks and pajamas on occasion that I don’t even want to wear in the privacy of my own home. Ah yes, she also wrapped up a gift that didn’t get given away at our “Yankee Swap” this year and gave it to me. Tea light candle holders - in five very different colors - that are supposed to sit in a rock bed together. Nowhere in my house will you find the colors purple, hot pink, jade green, cobalt blue and sickly yellow together. Gift cards would be welcome.
Larry Mudd, I’m fortunate in that Euthanasiast is a FANTASTIC gift-giver (and his mother always gets me something great, too!), if only to save me the eternal disappointment of opening another ugly sweater from my mother. I know why you feel the way that you do, because I love to get gifts that show someone really knows something about me. I think the wish-list solution might be a great one, not only for your wife, but my mom as well (now that she has figured out how to navigate the wild and wooly internets!). Good luck next year - but if it doesn’t work out, please share what she got you and give us all the gift of laughter we all need at Christmas-time.
Look on the bright side - at least dividing up the kitchenware during the divorce was made a tiny bit simpler, though :dubious:
Up until I was a teenager, my mom used to drag me along for holiday shopping. She used to ask me if I liked things, as though I wouldn’t realize she was considering buying it for me. I remember one year she showed me this uber fugly shirt…pink. Remember the “yoke” that was popular on cowboy-style shirts? It had one of those, and it had all the colors of the rainbow in it. It was just the sort of shirt that would get you beat up at school.
So she asked me what I thought of it. “Oh my GOD, that is bad. What do I think? I think someone ought to shoot whoever designed that. I think the person who ordered it for this store should be fired. I think all copies of it should be burned and it should never be discussed again. I think…”
Sure e-fucking-nough, there it was, under the tree, Christmas morning. I demanded, “What were you thinking?!” She replied, “Oh, here I was thinking you said you liked that.”
Passive-aggressive, I tell you.
This was probably one of the best stories of bad gift giving I’ve heard, and will become one of my new favorite Doper stories.
I guess I’m lucky in some ways-- I’m not terribly big on receiving material gifts, and I find gift cards to be fine, as long as it’s for some place I can actually spend the money wisely. Acid Lamp has done a great job over the years of surprising me with things I wouldn’t normally get for myself and also with making me useful things. My relatives were always pretty good about getting me things I liked, and so are my in-laws for the most part.
I am not sure what I’d do in a situation like Larry Mudd’s, as it seems like their communication on issues like that seems to be the crux of the issue. She’s probably not paying enough attention to things he likes and/or trying to change something about what he likes with the kinds of gifts she gives, but then appears to expect to be fawned over even though the gift was completely wrong. Have you told her that her gift giving needs some work? Made suggestions of things you like, or pointed out stuff in passing that you’d appreciate as a gift? If you’ve done all of this and she continues to ignore it in favor of giving you bad gifts, I have to agree with lobotomyboy63 on this one-- she’s deliberately being emotionally manipulative.
This is hilarious to me. I can just hear Tom Shane’s annoying, nasally, weird affect voice saying this.
Comedy gold. GOLD, I say!
My mother was the same – get you precisely what you’d said you didn’t want. Oh, she also gave good presents, but every now and then, well, it’s as if she’d gone out of her way to get it wrong, and usually for big-ticket stuff.
Once when she asked me what I wanted, I said a new vacuum cleaner, “but don’t get me one with that huge carpet-beater-brush head – it doesn’t work in my apartment.” So, of course, the one she got me had the HCBBH.
It used to drive me crazy, till I realized what was probably going on: She absorbed the general category of what was wanted, but the only details that really made an impression were the ones voiced most strongly. Since I’d voiced most strongly what I didn’t want, and otherwise been nonspecific, what remained in her mind as she shopped was a dim memory of the major theme of our conversation.
My father’s Christmas shopping for last year consisted of him circling books on some magazine’s bestseller list, then handing that to me to order them from Amazon (yes, my own present was among them, my name printed next to it). He didn’t know anything about the books except their names, as became evident when I asked him why on Earth he thought his wife would like to read YA fantasy. I told him I’d rather take the cash – he ended up paying for a coat for me instead, though, which I absolutely love, so that went rather well, actually.
OK, sorry, I am just (still) in that fucking mood. Yesterday I got a call from my mom and as usual, she was trying to foist something off on me that I didn’t want. In this case, it was some pamphlet about God.
Mind you I have been to church and sometimes I would consider going again, but the fact that my mom suggested it—like I’m not 45 years old and can’t make up my own goddamned mind, you know?—would automatically force me to stay away. Sorry, it just reminds me of when I was 15 and she played the “You have to do this…I’m your mother” card on the most batshit insane stuff.
But I digress. Suffice it to say she was one, maybe two sentences away from me hanging up on her. I almost pitted her.
Hey, not my thread, sorry…just wanted to give my two cents on the OP but also thought I might need to frontload my “resume.” Let me also say, however, that I don’t want to stir the shit. IMO and IME this is a game and if you’re to be married to this woman, maybe it’s time to get to the bottom of what’s driving that behavior so that you can avoid further long-term damage.
Friend, I know whereof you speak. Whisper it, shout it, leave hints, have others intervene…nothing changes.
I’ve posted elsewhere about my sister and the beagle. It turns out that beagles love attention. If you want to love on them, play with them, etc. great but if not, they will give you no peace. Beat them, scold them, whatever, but they will NOT be ignored. With situations like your post describes arise, I wonder if it is a cry for (bad) attention.
“Systemic” is the magic word, isn’t it? By design, intentionally, on purpose, after forethought, with care, after sizing up the task, taking everything into account…plan on it happening for your birthday, next Christmas, etc.
You’re playing her game. There are certain sacred cows, and one is that being “ungrateful” makes you a poor excuse for a human being. She’s relying on it.
Operant conditioning: if you acted a little disappointed, how do you think things would have changed? I don’t know all about your situation but as they say, crazy is doing things the way you’ve always done them and expecting different results. Maybe next time you could try acting a little disappointed and seeing if it changed the outcome? I would hope you could get beyond the surface with her.
How do your gifts to her seem to go over? My first WAG is, wife gets bad gifts from husband, tit-for-tat she gives him bad gifts. It’s immature I’ll grant you but emotions often are. Second WAG, you’re in the doghouse for some reason, e.g. computering/gaming too much for her taste and she needs more attention.
Has she ever given you good, thoughtful gifts? When did it stop? What happened around that time that she might still be punishing you for? What ongoing issues do you two have that she may not have forgiven and forgotten?
I just don’t like this at all. See my post about the uber fugly shirt. Sorry, I think this is about humiliation. Demanding that a man use beauty care products, which he may not be comfortable with at all, and then it isn’t even truly for his own good, nah. Not just “no” but “hell, no.”
Not that he’s a big expert, but Jim Belushi wrote a book about “Real Men.” A lot of it’s tongue-in-cheek, but it makes you think. One point he made is that men have to set boundaries for women and defend them—that’s one thing that makes us men. He recommends that you go ballistic, don’t let them even think they can challenge your core values.
Stop it with the moisturizer already and if she doesn’t like it, tough. (As Darren McGavin): “He looks like a deranged Easter bunny!”
One tactic you might consider is dragging the vampire into the sunlight. Next time you have people over, like her parents or others whose opinions mean a lot to her, wear the bathrobe. “Look at this gift she gave me!” Don’t demean it…play it straight. Hopefully they’ll give her a “What the fuck were you thinking?” look. When she says, “He hasn’t taken it to be altered yet,” say, “Yes, I’ll have to find some place that does that. Where would you go to have a bathrobe altered? I wonder what it would cost…how much should you pay for something like that?”
Some honest person in the room may break social protocol and say, “Well I’d just get the right size in the first place. I mean, who alters a bathrobe? What if tailoring costs more than the robe? And gee, shouldn’t the giver give a gift that useful from day one?” OK that last bit was too much to hope for. Then you act like you never thought of that and ask your bride if she kept the receipt. Resist the urge to use the tone of voice normally reserved for retarded people.
[underlining mine]
It sounds like a prison movie where another guy has made you his bitch. Buying you clothes from a ladies store?
underlined part: If she won’t get real with you, I think you should consider marriage counseling. I don’t buy the idea that she’s sooo out of touch after all your hints etc. that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but if so, she needs treatment. But, hmm, maybe she got bonked on the head and got brain damage or something. If she’s genuine, she needs some reality calibration. And you, having been on the receiving end, could probably use some therapy to cope with her.
Sorry, calls 'em as I sees 'em.
@EddyTeddyFreddy, I hear you but my sibs and I have long since concurred that mom asks a question and doesn’t even wait for an answer: she’s already made up her mind and asking was just a pleasantry. She’s always been like that: if she likes it, everyone else must like it. If she wouldn’t do it, nobody else should do it. If she thinks so, everybody else should think so.