I’m another person who is difficult to buy for. As others have said, it’s a combination of usually buying what I want and being insanely picky.
The worst gift-giver I know would have to be my BiL. I ranted in one of the other pit threads about how he thought a $10 tin of shortbread was an appropriate gift for a $50 Secret Santa exchange. We pretended that we liked it, but when we got home my husband said in a puzzled voice “did we annoy him at some point? Is he holding a grudge?” In hindsight I should have gotten a clue from this conversation my husband had with him:
Husband: Kayeby and I got little bro and his girlfriend for Secret Santa. We don’t really know his girlfriend that well. Do you know if they share any interests? BiL: I don’t think so Husband: Crap. BiL: You should get them biscuits
Still, I guess at least we got to eat the shortbread. In other years BiL has gotten his parents and given them DVDs and books that he wanted but was too cheap to buy for himself (Japanese anime for a woman whose tastes normally run to BBC productions, poetry and classic literature?)
BiL always gets a gift that reflects his interests - for everyone else it’s like an unlucky dip where some random person gets shafted with biscuits or anime.
I’d heard they were a lot better quality before they started making bags overseas. I don’t mind their non-logo’d bags’ appearance and I guess I’d be OK with one of those if I’d wanted a bag of some kind, but I could live without seeing that big repeating “C” pattern again in my lifetime. (I’m looking at you too on this, Yves St. Laurent.)
My mother used to take me along to the mall on the Friday after Christmas, and then stalk me. If I picked up something and looked at it, she bought it for me. The problem was my tendency to pick things up and think to myself, “Sweet Jesus, who would ever buy this?”
Sometimes she’d just give me the credit card and send me shopping, whereupon she would seize my purchases, hide them from me, and eventually wrap them and put them under the tree. And God help me if I didn’t feign surprise when I opened it.
Mom is not a good gift-giver, but at least she admits it.
I was also getting harrassed by CrazyCatLady’s extended family, because they all buy something for each other and I only see them a couple of times a year so they don’t really know me well enough to pick stuff out. I solved both this and my mother’s issues, as well as my own desire to be surprised, by creating an enormous Amazon wishlist. It’s all stuff that I want, but there’s enough of it that I don’t know exactly what they’ll pick out.
I would like to suggest to the OP that he needs to address this with his wife because this child of theirs will have needs and wants that also will have to be addressed. IOW, does he want this kind of crap (and it IS crap–passive/aggressive crap. She had a melt down because you went to bed too abruptly? You are catering to her a bit too much, even now) to happen to his kid?
I’m sorry, but OP’s wife sounds immature and manipulative. She may well be a poor gift giver, but if she really wants to please you in this way, she’ll (at the very least) do a gift receipt and acknowledge that you have the right to return stuff that is miles too big or wildly inappropriate. I am curious to know where she would have bought such T shirts for you, given that those type of shirts are cheaply made, come in small sizes and are nowhere near the men’s department.
You may well have other issues besides the gifts (IMO, they’re a symptom). I am serious when I suggest counseling, if only to raise your wife’s awareness of how she hurts you in this. The getting upset because you don’t love what are obvious wrong choices is a red flag to me. Do you want your child to suffer this way, too? It may sound shallow and unimportant, but I don’t think it is. Giving gifts is an emotionally loaded, significant ritual for most people. She makes it so by insisting you uphold your part of it, but she is not doing her part.
Me, I wouldn’t mind a Coach bag–I prefer a more elegant, “quiet” one. I don’t like loud patterns in leather.
Everyone I know always gets something that reflects my interests. I never buy anyone anything I wouldn’t be happy getting myself. I am, however, an excellent gift picker outer.
Do you really want your kid to grow up feeling like he or she is walking on eggshells all the time around Mom? That’s what you’re going to get if you let things go on as they are.
Did you guys miss that wife is ultra-about-to-burst pregnant, due in 3 weeks? Although the bad gift giving is clearly habitual, I didn’t gather that the high level of emotionality is. Cut the girl some slack.
Suck it up, Nancy. Women are allowed to complain about our gift giving skills. We, on the other hand, only have the right to be thankful we didn’t get socks.
I’ve been given to understand that this sort of thing is pretty much par for the course, when it comes to pregnancy. And to be fair, it was jarringly abrupt, and I walked past her without saying goodnight or anything, just “I’m going to bed now.” I didn’t think much of it, and just sailed past her and pooh-poohed her complaints about it until she broke down in tears. Ordinarily, no biggee - but, you know - she’s nine months pregnant. It wasn’t my most sensitive moment.
Breaking news – I actually talked to her about this last night, and it went much better than I expected.
Catalyst: I’m working late, and she calls me. “Oh, by the way, I cleaned out your sock drawer today, and got rid of all your unmatched socks.” “Great, it was getting a bit out of hand, thanks!” “Oh, and I was out shopping, and I picked up a few pairs of new socks for you.” “I really did need some, thanks for thinking of me.” “They’re unisex - you know, for men or women.” “Oh, okay - I’ll check 'em out when I get home.” Already: :dubious:
Yeah, she picked up some Secret® socks for me. Half of them are actually acceptable - just plain black socks, and they fit - which is rare because I am freakishly small. The other half are just barely too femme for me - they have a textured pattern (not unlike that of a knitted jumper) that covers the entire sock, not just the ankle portion. This doesn’t register as “girly” to her at all.
Anyway, no biggee but it opened a door - she complained (again) that I never like anything she gets for me, and I told her that she would find this happened less often if she stopped bringing me things that were designed to be worn by women. I told her (not easy!) that there were often design elements that differentiated men’s and women’s items, things that other people were generally more sensitive to that she was.
She argued that she sometimes wore t-shirts that were designed for men, and that it was no big deal, but conceded that this sort of subtle transvestitism is much easier for women to pull off than men.
In the end she agreed that she had made some bad choices and said that she would be careful not to do the same in the future. She took this much better than I expected, (I kept the socks that work for me, with thanks, and she’ll wear the others.)
Oh, happy day! (I don’t think I would have said “boo,” if I didn’t have the responses in this thread to strengthen my resolve. I would have just left the slightly-too-girlie socks neglected at the bottom of the drawer. Thanks again, folks.)
I got a 6 in everything. Does that make me incredibly needy?
This year I came up with a mystery for my boyfriend for Christmas. I wrote probably twenty pages of diary entries and letters. I procured tintypes, antique masonic emblems, and a silver freaking vesta case, as well as one big gift. I hid clues all around town and constructed an insane melodrama involving the Sepoy Rebellion, an illicit affair, and a buried treasure. He LOVED it.
I used to tell my wife, “Get me some cologne that you would like me to wear”. Now mind you I wear cologne like 4 times a year, so I never to think to buy it for myself, but I realize it something that is good to have. And since iot is primarily to make me smell nice for my wife, I would tell her to get it.
Well now I have three colognes that barely get used.
We are now doing the wishlist, we specifically make the wishlist vey big, so it is a surprise as to what we actually end up with.
I think this is quite common. I think it’s comparable to people who are following recipes right out of the book and screw it up because they used mayonnaise instead of sour cream because they didn’t want to get a whole tub of sour cream just for one recipe, and mayonnaise is “close enough” by virtue that it is white and is kept in the fridge.
Ah, my kindered twin. I got one year 6 pairs of winter gloves. And I don’t wear gloves unless I’m raking the yard. Or the other year I got 4 sweaters. At least they were all my size, but I haven’t worn any since I could dress myself. Or the one year my mother got me spiffy ties (never had a job that needed them) and dress shirts (salmon was one color) that didn’t even match each other. We call that The Year Shecky Returned All His Gifts And Got Himself The Ice Cream Maker He Really Wanted.
My wife finally figured it out this year: something gadgety, something off the Amazon wishlist, or something geeky. I got the t-shirt that Says “I am God” in binary.
I hope you don’t have kids- this sounds like every christmas at home with my mother going off on crazy screaming rampages over how my father didn’t get her the “right thing” and ruining our holidays year after year. I guess the thought doesn’t count after all. I would have enjoyed picking garnet earrings out of the tree and would have just worn them with a black shirt.
Ah, but you see, you’d only have worn one of them. Because the other one was gone, gone, gone.
I know you’re not one of mine because I only had boys. I hate Christmas, and the whole season, and while I thought I was doing a good job of faking it for the sake of my kids, I wasn’t. One year when my oldest was a senior I had just blasted them for the usual things–messy room, not doing homework, not telling me they needed a new pair of black shoes for the band concert tonight–and my eldest responded with, “Well, guess Mom’s getting into the old Christmas spirit early this year.”
Not every thought counts the same. I prefer the thought “I’ll get her what she wants” to “I’ll surprise her by getting her something close to what she wants, but not the exact thing because that’s too easy.”
Yeah, I hope I’m not the only one who also sympathizes–with the “inept” gift-givers. What the hell? Someone gets you a nice gift and you scream at them? I’d be so incredibly pissed if someone yelled or even complained about this. It’s like pitting someone for having sex with you but not doing it just right. I just don’t get this mentality at all. And I agree–they sound like nice earrings. Plus, if I didn’t like them, I’d say “Thank you” and be gracious because that’s what you do when someone gets you a present.
You know, sometimes the thought really doesn’t count. Like when the thought is “I’ll get her jewelry/perfume/flowers, women like that kind of crap.” Or when the thought is “I know she just wants something that’s essentially disposable for shits and giggles, but I’ll spend an ungodly gob of money getting her something fancy instead. She’ll like that so much better, even thought it won’t suit the purpose she wants it for very well.” Or when the thought is “I’ll hide her present somewhere no sane person would ever look and wait for her to happen across it, no matter how long it takes.”
Those kinds of thoughts really oughtn’t be counted because they can only lower one’s score.