This Week's Drama: Receiving Gifts

Jesus created presents to be a source of joy on his annual birthday but man has twisted gift-giving into a test that determines the health of a relationship and I think that rules.

On February 14th, the nation celebrates a holiday all about love GIFTS! And in a couple of weeks, the nation celebrates MY BIRTHDAY!

I feel like gifts are misguidedly the most judged love language. Just because you measure your love in QUALITY (SCREEN-FREE) TIME you think you’re better than me? Come on - THINK about it! Gifts can say soooooo much about whether your attachments are secure. If I can’t get through one episode of television next to someone without checking both my insta and my finsta? We could be soulmates. But if they take me to the Michael Jordan Steakhouse & Sportcafe at Mohegan Sun for our anniversary? We are not soulmates. We are, in fact, enemies.

Remember when Big bought Carrie the Judith Leiber swan clutch because he wanted her to be an upper east side blonde lady who lunches rather than an upper east-side blonde lady who brunches and smokes cigarettes? That said SO MUCH. We should have known then that he would stand her up at the altar and then she would marry him anyway but he would die of a tragic Peloton accident because the network didn’t know how to deal with the #metoo claims made against the actor who plays him.

It is my opinion that whether or not your romantic interest thinks to get you a gift can indicate the space they allow you to take up in their minds and hearts. Whether that gift is something you might actually enjoy can indicate so much more, like do they listen to you, do they notice your preferences, do they understand that slippers are nice, and very functional, but not romantic?

When I was twenty, years old, God gave me a boyfriend (not to brag) and no, he was not a college sweetheart, but rather a thirty year-old unemployed finance guy who invited me to the Guggenheim on our first date to show off his bank-sponsored exclusive museum pass. I showed up forty-five minutes late and immediately asked for a snack.

Somehow, we were together for over a year and we broke up for many reasons, including what is, in my opinion, one of the top ten most relationship-dooming gift types, an IMPERSONAL GIFT.

His twenty-first birthday present to me was some sort of vaguely science-y, (perhaps solar?) calendar, with no numbers on it from (of course) a museum gift shop. What was not getting through to this guy!?! I don’t like museums! I don’t like walking around in silence looking at things that meant something in 1401 BC! Like “oh building this life-sized, perfectly proportionate marble statue was an amazing feat back then because they didn’t even have a metric system yet” okay well now we do and people can literally print a 3D replica of Lady Gaga’s meat dress, so why do I care what they did before?!?!?!

Imagine spending a year with her (below) and thinking she’d enjoy an obscure numberless timekeeping device on her twenty-first birthday?!?

This is all to say, when someone gets you something THEY would like that really has nothing to do with YOU, I believe that’s a sign of their self-absorption. And when thirty year olds want to date twenty year olds, I think that’s a sign of… something else.

Another of my early-twenties boyfriends had a lot of disposable income that he spent on SHINY OBJECTS. These distracting gifts didn’t necessarily foreshadow a failed relationship, but they did divert my attention away from some red flags.

This boyfriend was also in his thirties and dressed in a suit every day to take care of what I presumed to be serious business. I may have still been dressing in bandage dresses, unicorn-themed jewelry and rompers that showed my ass cheeks, but I was an old soul! And he genuinely enjoyed high school, as well as the movie Rudy.

And the gifts…. the gifts! This guy would surprise me with designer bags, a diamond necklace, fancy hotel stays and spa days and spur of the moment shopping trips. I felt like Julie Cooper and I WAS LIVING!!! Slowly, though, my goddamned brain got in the way as I began to wonder why my boyfriend would come home with handfuls of cash every so often and how he, with a degree in “sports management”, was able to so quickly ascend to COO of a healthcare-based company where he recently started as an intern.

Well, it turned out the “company” was a fyre-fest esque scam that even my boyfriend himself started to question before it all fell apart. Our relationship conflict suddenly mutated from “if he would only leave that job” to “now he’s home all the time and it turns out we don’t really like being around each other”. Plus, my brain was still biologically forming and his was set in stone, at max capacity, when he told me that his dad voted for Trump and was “the smartest guy he knew”. We were doomed.

A few boyfriends later, I experienced LOVE BOMBING for the first time. I know that term gets thrown around a lot but this was textbook. In the first six months of our relationship, I was sent love letters, playlists, and a custom mashup of all of my favorite songs. He designed elaborate dates and gave me a necklace with a gold goose pendant because I had at one point mentioned my affinity for the poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver. We spent our first Valentine’s Day in Vegas in a penthouse suite with a jacuzzi. I didn’t even care that it gave me a UTI!

A year later, when my birthday came around, this same boyfriend gave me…. the absolute most relationship-breaking, cursed gift of all - NOTHING. Not even a damn card. I had said I didn’t want anything (it was a global pandemic and I had to at least pretend I had perspective) but……. not even a piece of notebook paper with “HBD” scribbled on it or something?! This was a sinister clue of what was to come.

This year, on valentine’s day, on your anniversaries and birthdays, on any holiday that involves any sort of exchange, I urge you all to place immense emotional capital on the material items that are presented to you by crushes and supposed “loved ones”, to beware of impersonal gifts and love bombing and if you get NOTHING, RUN!

And I urge myself to remember to resell that diamond necklace bought with scam money so that I can afford tickets to Beyoncé’s Renaissance Act II tour.