The Bad Gift Giving Husband

Occasions that usually requires some form of giving always makes me a little anxious. Not for me because I am an amazing gift giver if I do say so myself *ahem* but for the husband. Husbands fall into one of two categories: the amazing gift-giver – “oh honey, its so sweet of you to make this photo collage!” and the bad gift giver – “thanks for the vacuum honey. Um, I guess it is useful…”. I guess there is another category: the non-gift giver. Which I am not into so I am just going to pretend he doesn’t exist.

My husband’s gift giving skills, sadly are in need of some work. For example, this Christmas I got … (wait for it) … a candle for Christmas. Let me repeat that. My beloved, got me a candle. Yes, what people usually reserve for White Elephant Christmas gift exchanges and housewarming parties. To be fair, he has also given me some amazing gifts like my Kindle and tickets to the ballet but as a whole, lets just say its a good thing I didn’t marry him for his gift giving skills.

So, whats a girl to do? If your hubby is a bad gift giver like mine, here are some things I have done/ am doing:

• Get your sister to tell him what you want – This sounds great in theory because theorectically you get what you want without the weird dilemma of “oh-you-got-this-for-me-because-I-told-you-to-I-might-as-well-have-just-send-myself-flowers”. On the other hand, I hope your sister is more subtle than mine: “My sister told me to tell you, this is what she wants for Valentine’s Day”. Oy.
• Take him to the mall and stop very obviously in front of things you like and point them out – If your man is blind and deaf as well as a bad gift giver, this back-fires horribly. Then you just end up with a grumpy honey or of course he will remember that one thing you didn’t really mean for him to buy although you love it. “Sorry honey, I cannot afford a $7000 Valentino trench coat. What do you mean you pointed out other stuff?”
• Buy yourself something and then tell him what you got for him to give to you – this has almost no drawbacks. You always get what you want, you don’t have to beat around the bush, he doesn’t have to go to the mall, everyone is happy! On the other hand, you had to buy it yourself.
• Don’t celebrate anything – Yeah, this isn’t even worth talking about
• Write a list of everything you want, check it twice, he better be good – this is Shoestring Boy’s torture of choice. He gets to somewhat pick and pat himself on the back and you are sure to get something you want.

Hopefully sooner or later, he gets the picture. Till then, we work with what we got, eh ladies? What was the worst gift you’ve gotten? I use to think it was a gift card (yes, a gift card) but I think the candle has trumped that.

 

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