Couple's Therapy with a Payback!

We love our spouses and life partners, and we try to show that love with nice gifts.  In fact, every birthday, anniversary, valentines day, and whatever else you celebrate gives us yet another opportunity to show our significant other just how much we care about them.  But often, we don't do so well with the gift choice.  Hey, I thought all men liked watches.  Turns out my husband never wears one.  Never.  He thought all girls liked pearls.  Surprise!  

In our twelve years together we've bought each other a lot of the wrong stuff.  Probably thousands of dollars worth of bad gifts, followed by painful and ridiculous displays of false gratitude.  "Wow, a crystal sugar shaker!  That is just so thoughtful of you, honey.  How did you know?"    It's that game couples play.  We've all had to fake it at least once (if you have never had to fake it because your spouse is always the perfect gift giver, don't think you're going to win any friends by making a point of telling everyone).  In any case, your alternatives are to either:

A. Buy yourself a gift and thank your partner for it.  ("Honey, look at these awesome boots your just bought me!")

B. Tell you partner what you want them to buy you. ("Now go to Furla, and buy me the large satchel in Aubergine.")

C. Learn to pay close attention to the hidden message behind the hints your partner is dropping about what they want.

Years ago, a friend of mine gave me a book called Self Help for the Bleak by Rich Hall (Price Stern Sloan, Inc., 1994), which contains a bevy of fine advice on every topic.  In the Love section, he says:

"the most memorable gifts are those that say, "I was thinking about you, and I'd really feel awful if you died."  In other    words, it's a gift  that makes her feel safer.  Here are some sure-fire winners:  

A brand new set of steel belted all-weather radials

A radon dector

Pepper Mace for fending off grizzlies

Orange reflective clothing of any kind

But always include flowers or poetry! You don't want to give the impression you're unsentimental."

So after years of pretending to love jewelry that I didn't, I have started coming to terms with the fact that I am the one who's unsentimental.  The best gifts I've received are the Bose Noise Canceling Headphones my husband gave me 3 years ago and the Breville Personal Pie Maker my sister just gave me.  Yes, it turns out that I'm that girl who likes a nice, functional device or appliance.  Taking notice of all this, my dear, astute husband hit the nail right on the head when I had a birthday a few weeks ago.  He bought me a Jawbone Era, simply the coolest bluetooth earpiece ever.  You shake it twice and it instantly pairs with your iPhone, and it has apps you can download that enable you to text and email hands free!  Is that cool, or what? And it's beautiful, too!  He didn't even read the book, and he got me "a gift that makes her feel safer", because I can now talk, text, etc., hands free!  And he even fulfilled the second part of the Rich Hall instructions by including something sentimental ---- he wrote me a song!  It was an awesome birthday.

Instead of spending untold fortunes on golf clubs or perhaps a tattoo you might regret, pay closer attention to your partner's signals, and give them what they really want, not just what you think they want.  Who knows, maybe your partner even likes free stuff, like the pleasure of your company.  You could even go crazy and throw in a couple of beers.  Then you can put the money you saved toward paying off all that credit card debt you ran up buying all those bad gifts over the years.

I'm still trying to figure out what my husband is REALLY saying when he "hints" he wants yet another guitar……hmmm….