A lot to unwrap with wife’s gift phobia

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/08/2021 (1870 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My new wife is not a happy or generous gift-giver or receiver.

It looks like she thinks she may be unwrapping a bomb when she opens a wrapped present and only tolerates half-wrapped flowers because she can see what’s poking out of the top of the package!

She feels guilty over not giving gifts, but is so averse to buying them she offers terrible excuses and opts for feeling bad instead. This August on my birthday, she actually ran out of excuses and went to bed “with a headache,” leaving me all alone on my birthday. She blushed when she saw my shocked face over no cake, no gift, no nothing. Before she ran upstairs, she tried to push money into my hand to go buy my own!

I don’t know where this came from. She won’t talk about it. In fact, I brought her to tears by trying to get at the heart of it last night. She admitted there is a story, but she won’t tell it. I really want to find out why I carry all the responsibility for gift-buying — even for myself! How can we ever have a loving, giving marriage? What the heck is wrong with her?

She’s a good person in most ways, but gift giving and receiving turns out to be a hang-up for her. No wonder she was glad to get married when COVID started, and there was next to nothing happening gift-wise. She forced herself in the beginning of the marriage to give gifts, but now she seems finished. Please help! I’m so frustrated.

— Confused and Hurt Husband, Charleswood

Dear Confused: Here are some possibilities for you to try to check out — but be very gentle in asking. Someone who is worried about opening a package has probably opened some scary gifts. Was there a joker in her family or a previous boyfriend who liked gifts that blew up in the opener’s face? Was there a former lover who gave her self-serving sexual gifts because he wanted her to do things for him she didn’t want to do? Could she have gone to great pains to create homemade gifts for a former boyfriend who rolled his eyes and sneered at them? Did a man throw throw her gifts back in her face and tell her she had no taste and say he’d pick out his own gifts from now on?

Now let’s look at the other side. Did she have a boyfriend give her an engagement ring she loved and then dump her, maybe demanding the gift back? There could be past trauma related to family birthdays and holidays. She may associate these events with negative gift experiences in the past.

She is obviously carrying some traumatic secret. You need to get to the root of this and help her with the healing — as you’re now also suffering. If you simply can’t get the answer from her, quietly ask a close family member or even a best friend.

If any readers can shed light on this unusual problem, please write in.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My mother is making me some clothes for high school this fall, and I don’t like them. I told her, and she got mad and said I should make my own then! We’re not poor, but we can all sew in this family because my grandmother used to be a seamstress. She taught all the girl cousins to sew at 12. I want clothes with store labels, like other kids. I don’t want homemade jeans. Yech!

My mother says it will save us money, but I told her I’d get a job and pay for my own. She said, “No way, sew your own clothes and save the money.” Now what?

— Not Wanting Homemade Stuff, southern Manitoba

Dear Not Wanting Homemade: Try to talk your mother into a compromise. You design cute tops you both like, and you and Mom sew them. But you get to buy your jeans from the store, and maybe pay for them with babysitting money. I used to design and sew some of my own clothes in high school, and it was fun, but my mom was scandalized by some of my best efforts, particularly the pink, stretch V-neck jumpsuit and tight red mini-skirt. She soon discouraged my sewing in favour of store-bought clothes, but she insisted on coming shopping with me.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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