Dorophobia

Getting gifts makes me anxious. I'm sure it doesn't truly rise to the level of a full-fledged phobia, so my heading for this post is a bit misleading. But it still bugs me.

Why, for heaven's sake?

I think it has to do with what I perceive to be all the implicit obligations on the part of the recipient. There is nothing "free" about a gift, after all. At any rate, if it comes from somebody you care about then you have to be delighted to get it (even when you aren't). You have to keep it (even when you have no use for it). And heaven help you if you don't reciprocate with something at least as "nice" -- either at the same time (if it's a general potlatch event like Christmas) or when it is your turn (if it's a birthday). This means you have to have a good instinct for things, and for understanding how the other person will translate the value of your relationship into a corresponding value of things. It also means you have to have a good memory for what things the other person has given you before, and a good sense for what those things are worth.

There are people who are really good at this; there are people for whom it is effortless. I'm not one of them. I don't understand things at all; I don't know how to pinpoint what things adequately express how I feel for which person; I have no use for most of what anybody ever gets me; and I scarcely remember what I got last time, because whatever it was generally wasn't very important to me. After decades, my immediate family has finally begun to catch on. They haven't been willing to stop giving me anything, which is what I have asked for. But at least instead of giving me yet another book on some subject that doesn't interest me (because "Hosea likes to read") or yet another sweater to add to the large number I don't wear now (because "Hosea looks good in sweaters") ... I say, at least now they have learned to give me alcohol, which I will drink up and not have to keep around forever and ever. Or food, which is almost as good.


But I remember one Christmas not too many years after we were married, when I gave Wife the kind of gifts I would have liked -- little token gifts, mostly food, to express that I was thinking of her but not to clutter the house permanently because they would be eaten. She bought me two cashmere sweaters, which I had absolutely no desire or use for. And then after we opened our gifts to each other Christmas morning, she ranted and wailed for the rest of the day at what an uncaring cheapskate I was, because I hadn't spent nearly as much on my gifts to her as she had spent on her gifts to me. And after all, as every fool knows (but apparently I didn't), you can directly measure how much one person A cares for another person B by calculating how much money A spends for B on Christmas and at birthdays. More money = more love. Simple as that. So plainly this meant that I didn't love her. Cue the tears and unconsolable wailing, the unreasoning recriminations, the incalculable self-pity. This happened almost twenty-five years ago, and it still feels like a knife twisting in my heart to remember it at all.

In the end, I was never able to teach Wife to do anything else. She has finally stopped buying me presents, because we split our money in the summer of 2009 and she believes she has none. My worry now is whether I can teach D to stop buying me presents, or whether she too believes that this is the only way to show me she cares for me. I sure hope I don't have to go down that road again ....