Men’s worst gifts to women revealed: can a sonogram of ex-girlfriend be beaten?
- Women tend to have higher expectations for the gifts they receive than men do, which makes bad presents from significant others even more horrific
- But don’t worry ladies – you can always give them back in the divorce
When Jennifer Purdie’s new boyfriend handed her a jewellery box, she felt embarrassed that she’d been outdone. They had been dating only two months. She had assumed that they would go small and sweet with their Christmas gifts, so she had baked him cookies. And here he was, giving her jewellery.
Or was he?
Purdie, then in her mid-20s, opened the box to find a slip of paper. It was a sonogram – an image of the inside of a woman’s uterus. Purdie was confused. Maybe this was his way of announcing he was going to be an uncle? Wrong again. “I’m going to be a daddy,” her boyfriend said. No, he hadn’t cheated on Purdie – he’d just (accidentally) got his ex-girlfriend pregnant before they broke up, and this was his way of sharing the news.
“He thought he was being clever, and he was just being stupid,” Purdie says. They broke up shortly thereafter. She thinks her ex is still with the mother of his child, Purdie says, and “that makes me really happy”. It has been about 15 years since Purdie opened that jewellery box, and the sonogram remains the worst item a significant other has ever given her.
If her then-boyfriend had just told her in another way and given her something small, commensurate with the time they had spent together – flowers, say, or dinner at a nice restaurant – then that Christmas gift exchange might not be etched into her brain in such an indelible way.
When we care a lot about people, we can read a lot into the gifts they give us. We take them as proxies for the depth of a person’s feelings, or lack thereof. When gifts are wildly out of sync in ways that mirror other imbalances in a relationship, it’s fair to take note and be a little upset.