COMMITMENTS : Real Gifts Have no Strings : Presents can be wrought with all sorts of symbolism. But the adage that ‘It’s the thought that counts’ still rules.
The pressure is on: It’s a birthday or anniversary or big holiday and you’ve got to get your beloved a gift.
Maybe last year’s present was fabulous and you don’t know how to top it. Or perhaps it was a dud--returned because it was the wrong whatever--and you know you have to do better this time. Or, maybe there’s a message you want to convey.
Then, too, perhaps you’re on the receiving end and are tired of opening presents that fail to delight or even tickle your fancy.
Even for the easygoing and the lighthearted, getting and receiving gifts from a special someone can sometimes be frustrating--and may signal a problem in a relationship, according to psychologists who have sat through long sessions with patients who discuss their fury at getting the dead-wrong gift.
Barbara Polland, a Westside psychotherapist and professor of child development at California State University, Northridge, remembers a woman who was constantly talking to her husband about wanting to leave her demanding, fast-track job to spend more time with the children. When he gave her a very expensive, high-style leather briefcase for her birthday, she flipped.
“She thought there was a big ulterior motive, but I think her husband just wasn’t tuned in to how unhappy she was with her job,” Polland said. The woman returned the briefcase to buy herself a host of other things she wanted.
Or consider the case of another woman who was tired of getting lavish gifts from a husband who kept her on an excruciatingly tight day-to-day budget. “I met alone with her husband and suggested he give her an extension course in money management and investment, and a check to invest,” said Polland, who added that the gift turned out to be a big hit: It symbolized freedom.
Or the woman whose husband gave her a big diamond pendant for her birthday, and then told her that he expected the lavish gift to make up for his screaming tantrums over the years of their marriage. She cried.
Why do gifts have such power?
“Because we’re raised in a world in which getting stuff is equated with love and security,” said Jane Conoley, associate dean of Teacher’s College at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. “The politics of material exchange is a bad policy; it’s not the currency of love at all, but it’s tempting to confuse the two.”
Whatever the situation, true gifts have no strings, Polland said. “The minute a gift has a hidden agenda it really is not a present.”
Conoley said the adults who are especially at risk for overvaluing or distorting the meaning behind a gift are those who were raised to see presents as rewards or love offerings. “When love and gifts are equated, children start to judge other people and their own worth by material objects,” she said.
Sometimes, though, there are dynamics to gift-giving that can make the effort of finding the right present especially daunting, even if the stakes are no greater than the earnest desire to please.
Alan Stone, a graphic artist based in Van Nuys, said he is sometimes frustrated by wife Terry’s behavior the week or so before her birthday. She always buys herself something special--such as a bread maker or something else for the house--leaving him without viable gift options. “Then Terry will get upset because I’ll mumble and grumble because I can’t think of anything,” he said.
The Stones have talked about their problem, he said, and have decided that Terry just likes the simplicity of going out and getting whatever she wants. And there’s no need to say thank you. “Getting a gift means you have to reciprocate,” Alan Stone said.
The real trick in gift-giving, Alan Stone said, is to manage to communicate to your beloved that you thought about him or her intensely and carefully.
Once, he filled Terry’s office with more than 100 bright helium balloons for her birthday. “It was like saying, ‘Hey, look how much I thought about you,’ ” he said.
The best gifts communicate that thoughtfulness, Conoley said. “The idea about giving a gift is that you’ve noticed, you’ve taken some trouble to do some research or you’ve been attentive to the other person’s interests.”
Kay McGinty of Lake Forest remembered the best gift her now ex-husband ever gave her. It was the first time the two had been away without the children, and she woke up on a birthday morning and felt a small present under her pillow. It was a gold ring with her initials engraved on it. The gift seemed to suggest the rebirth of their relationship, she said.
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Despite best efforts, sometimes gifts fail to work. Marion Taylor of Van Nuys remembered when her ex-husband gave her a surprise birthday party. Her joy at the surprise was diminished by the fact that when the guests arrived, she was in an old bathrobe, without any makeup. “I thought he could have taken me out to dinner before so at least I’d be dressed up to look good for the party,” she said. “He didn’t go quite far enough.”
Polland recalled throwing away all her pajamas right before she got married and buying elegant nightgowns for her new connubial lifestyle. What was her husband’s first gift to her after the wedding? Pajamas. “I never even put them on,” she said.
Sometimes the gift-giving act becomes a test, a sort of midterm examination in the course of the relationship geared to tell whether the other person truly knows you, Conoley said. And sometimes, the sense that you always have to get something more expensive and more spectacular than the previous occasion is an unconscious effort to keep proving and doing more for the other person, she said. “For some, the gift-giving is about always pushing the goal line back.”
Conoley says you should talk about the politics of gift-giving with each other.
And forget ESP. The woman who is quietly hoping her husband will figure out what she really wants should express herself, Conoley said. “If I really want a big diamond ring, I need to sit down and discuss it.”
Polland advocates not tackling the gift issue head-on, but rather, suggesting a whole new approach to the gift exchange. “Say something like, ‘Just for fun, let’s change our gift-giving policy . . . let’s do it together--buy a painting for the house, get some Rollerblades for each other,’ ” she suggested.
And Polland strongly encourages couples to go for the practically free gifts--such as self-made coupons good for a free carwash or a massage, or a surprise picnic at the beach--over frank materialism.
Conoley urges couples to put the intensity of gift exchange in perspective and to remember that a gift is only a symbol. “The real sign of love is living generously and kindly every day.”