When You Care Enough but Give the Very Worst

From the moment Joanna and John met, they were moth and flame, yin and yang, Bening and Beatty. But their love went awry that first Christmas together when Joanna, 18, gave John an expensive antique gold watch. And John, 22, gave her a cheap, green, metal tackle box for her makeup.

“I don’t fish and I don’t wear makeup,” wailed Joanna, alarmed by the unromantic stinginess of this man she was about to marry.

John promised to do better. But four years and two babies later, she says he’s only gotten worse.

“He ignores all gift-giving occasions, doesn’t even bother with cards.” On Christmas Eve, when he’d once again “forgotten,” Joanna sped from their North Hollywood home to Bullock’s, and selected “a romantic present--the kind I wish he would give.”

She wore the $450 diamond heart pendant home and said, “Look honey, you bought me something great.” He scowled, but the next day he proudly told friends to “look at what I bought Joanna--it’s my best present yet.”

Typical couple, say the experts.

No matter how good a relationship is, giving a tangible token of one’s love isn’t as simple as it sounds, and receiving isn’t such a snap either.

Each Valentine’s Day, psychologists say, hopes are dashed and illusions shattered as lovers learn that, in the gift department at least, their two hearts do not beat as one. Therapists who specialize in couples say their offices resound with post-holiday tales of horrendous gifts.

Allen Koehn, psychoanalyst and executive director of the C.J. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, says it’s basically all “reducible to the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’--any gift is going to be either too hot, too cold or just right.”

Koehn says couples in healthy relationships probably end up giving satisfying gifts--but only after a lot of trial and error. And an informal Times survey of local lovers confirms the part about errors.

Names have been changed to protect the guilty--like the guy we’ll call Stan, a graduate student at Cal State Northridge. In 1990, Stan gave tire chains to his girlfriend, Marcy, for Christmas, and presented her with an attractive doorstop last Valentine’s Day.

“It was our first year together so I gently explained I’d like something more romantic and personal. I thought he understood,” says Marcy, a free-lance writer in Culver City. But last Christmas, Stan showed up with an electric can opener and a polka-dotted T-shirt--understandably dampening her anticipation of Valentine’s Day.

Is Stan an uncaring lout?

In a telephone interview, his explanation is surprisingly touching. He bought the tire chains “because she was going to snow country, on the Grapevine, and needed to be safe. My mom always said we should get things people can use, not things they’ll put away and never look at again. She needed the can opener, too.”

Yes, but did he even try to find something sexy? He sounds embarrassed: “I spent many hours, on many days, looking for the perfect gift. I wanted her to love it. I envisioned her reaction, the way I hoped it would be. Then I worried that whatever I picked would be the wrong size, the wrong color, that she wouldn’t respond the way I envisioned it. Rather than risk ridicule, I guess I settled on something that wouldn’t make her super-happy, but that I knew she could use.”

“There’s fear attached to giving gifts,” Koehn says. “Some people think a rejected gift means a rejected giver,” so they stick with what’s boring but safe. Others risk more, go out on a limb despite their fears.

“They buy something really nice, then show extreme concern over whether their partner really likes it. You’ve heard people who repeatedly ask: ‘Are you sure you like it? Because if not, you can take it back.’ That’s a sure sign the giver has made himself or herself vulnerable,” Koehn says.

“Gift giving is a highly charged, emotional area,” says Constance Ahrons, a Santa Monica psychotherapist and USC sociology professor.

“It carries history, starting with childhood and continuing through life. It’s all stored up. Fifteen years into a relationship, we’ll hear one partner complain that the other didn’t buy a good gift for their first anniversary.”

Koehn adds: “We need to look at whether gifts were exchanged by our parents, and how they were received. Were they appreciated? Did they cause resentment and lead to fights? Was money a problem? All this impacts the behavior of children.”

John, who gave his sweetie the tackle box, says his parents never give each other gifts. “I doubt my mother ever got a fun or romantic present from my father. The only times he gave her anything was when he did something really wrong and brought her flowers or candy to make up with her.”

Worse than no gift, or a bad gift, is the great gift given for devious reasons, the therapists say. These are the people who think money can buy love; who believe big bucks can substitute for intimacy or loyalty; who buy not what they think their partner will like, but what they think he or she ought to have.

Women often are major offenders, Ahrons says. “They buy things they want men to wear when they’re out together, so their own image will be enhanced.”

The therapist says she’s had male patients who, after years in a relationship, are furious because the partner never gives them anything but expensive shirts and sweaters. “He’ll say, ‘She never understood I hated those sweaters. She never gave me anything I said I wanted.’ ” And that, Ahrons says, might be symbolic of the whole relationship.

There are those who believe it’s some kind of burden to be on the receiving end.

“If self-esteem is low, a person may feel undeserving or worry that good gifts have emotional strings attached,” says Helene Pine, a marriage and family therapist in Sherman Oaks.

Consider Mark, 27, a successful bond trader for a Los Angeles brokerage firm. He is “madly in love” with Greta, 37, whom he will marry in April. In the last year he’s bought her a 1-carat diamond ring “of excellent quality,” a diamond bracelet and matching earrings, sweaters, expensive lingerie, perfume, a Nissan 300ZX car with cellular phone--and the list goes on.

“I’ve got it, why not give it,” Mark explains breezily.

But Greta’s getting scared. “I’m flattered, but at times I feel I don’t deserve it all, like he’s overly generous with me. His gifts go beyond things I can easily use . . . almost like he’s paying homage or tribute to some kind of deity. I think he puts women--and me, in particular--on a very high pedestal.” Her true fear, she admits, is that she’ll fall off.

“I just hope he sees me as I really am,” says Greta, an insurance executive.

And then there’s everybody’s favorite type, who sometimes gives and sometimes doesn’t, so you never know where you stand.

Rebecca, 32, a health-care worker who dates Lyle, a Century City attorney, recalls a recent late-night phone chat when she told him she was cold even with all her blankets piled on.

The next day, while she was at work, Lyle used his key to come in and make up her bed with a brand-new down comforter.

A great, romantic guy, right? Wrong. He’s the same Jekyll and Hyde who mortified her in front of her family less than a year ago.

“He came on a river-rafting trip my parents organized with my sister and brother-in-law to celebrate my birthday,” she says. “The first night out, they had a party for me. Everybody offered a little gift except Lyle. I was surprised. I thought he was waiting for privacy. But there was no gift the next day or the next. Driving home, I thought he’d surely give me something--but he simply kissed me good night at the door. I was furious with him.”

Lyle, 40, explains that he was “really out of sorts that weekend because a good friend had died. I wasn’t paying attention.”

The most satisfied lovers seem to be women who have been married for many years, have no financial problems and whose husbands never give them gifts.

“From the start, he never gave me things and I learned to accept that,” says Judy, a Pasadena administrator whose husband is a pediatrician. “He’s not materialistic. I can’t convince him to buy for himself, let alone for me. So I buy for both of us and select whatever I want. To tell you the truth, if he ever started giving me gifts, I’d be scared to death that he is cheating on me.”

MaryAnn, 50, an attorney married for 28 years to a Pasadena cardiologist, says: “You’ve got to educate your partner when you are both young, let the other person know who you really are, what you really want. The courtship sets the stage for what the marriage will be. I didn’t do it because I was insecure, didn’t feel I had totally claimed him as mine for life. So when our children were born, he didn’t even bring a rose to my bedside. He’s never bought me a significant gift.

“His general attitude is that I can go out and buy what I want, when I want it. I’ve gotten to like it that way.”