How did you handle it? Did you say anything? Or just squirm?
Is the receiver obligated to graciously accept without comment?
What if you don’t say anything and they keep doing it?
How do you say something? What if it’s NOT extravagant to the giver but it is for you?
(I’ve asked a few people, but won’t reveal how they sided, till later in the thread!)
I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this as it’s much on my mind at the moment.
Except from my parents (probably not what you’re asking about) I have not been in this situation myself, from either end – giver or receiver.
A gift cannot, by (my) definition, obligate the intended receiver to anything, not to accept, not to be gracious, not to turn it down, not to reciprocate, nothing. A giver has basically no rights in this situation except to either give or not give. What the intended recipient does may affect the future of the relationship, but so does everything that happens between them. If the giver is after something (even if it’s only a particular reaction or feeling) then it’s not a gift.
I would be very uncomfortable accepting anything extravagant from anyone I know, except my husband (and even then, I know how much money he has, so there’s a limit). I would be chary of offering an extravagant gift to anyone lest it make them uncomfortable. I am in general not a big fan of big gifts anyway. It’s like borrowing money, it tends to throw up barriers and discomfort. Small, well-chosen gifts are more meaningful anyway.
I once received an incredibly expensive gift, far more than I would ever dare spend on myself for a luxury. I half-jokingly made a remark about this and the gift giver reminded me that it was a tiny fraction of his disposable income. That made me feel a lot better about receiving it.
I had a gaming buddy that was a helo pilot for the German army, met him online back in 1999 and we got to be very close [as close as 2 people separated by an ocean can be =) ] and at one point in about 2002 I was complaining that I had broken my watch, and he offered to get me one of the issue watches - would have been some version of a Breitling, which commercially go for several thousand dollars. I was personally horrified - I was raised that women do not accept extravagant gifts like that [or any jewelry, really] from any man that she is not related to, engaged to or married to. I had to gently tell him that while I appreciated the thought, I could not figure out a way to explain to my parents or anybody seeing it on my wrist that it was a gift, and that no, I wasn’t screwing the guy … so he turned around and bought me a mechanical Timex like the one that died. [it has to be mechanical, I have issues with quartz watches, I can get a g-shock to flip the pixels or whatever upside down, and to run the time backwards in 3 months. I did it to one of mrAru’s I was wearing after my timex broke]
Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved the watch, and mrAru knew that nothing was going on romantically between us even though we joked that Vanille was our ‘junior husband’ - we spent a lot of time online together and our characters were married online =) but the idea of trying to explain to his command that I was wearing a watch that cost more than any 2 of our vehicles combined would have been difficult and keeping a security clearane is very important for submariners.
My MIL was given an expensive silk scarfe but a guy she didn’t want to date. She accepted it, but gave it to me. It’s large, so when i have gone to Orthodox Jewish events where i need to cover my hair, i wear it.