I agree. It’s impossible to have every gift bowl someone over just like every kiss can’t make someone weak in the knees. If you buy the gift, for whatever the occasion, as long as your intention is to make her happy, that’s the main thing. The degree of happiness is up to her. But hopefully she can realize that the mere fact you thought of her and went to the effort to buy the gift is what makes it special Many times the actual gift itself is almost a secondary thing.

I hope your future gift-giving goes well.

God Bless you.

Just a few quick comments, if I may. My wife and I have mutually decided to not exchange gifts for ANYTHING. Well, I’m not saying never, actually but I am saying that it is not expected of each other. If we do it at all it’s nice but neither side is terribly bummed out if the other one doesn’t do it. Our logic is this: We do enough nice little things for each other during the year so that we don’t feel that at Christmas time we need to go out and prove how much we love each other by buying yet another “thing” for each other. This year she mentioned that she liked some sort of spray at Bath and Body and I took her to the mall (we were in town already anyway) and told her to buy it and that would be my “Christmas gift” to her. I was with her, there was no surprise, and no pretty wrapping paper, no pretty card, etc. etc. She was happy enough. For me, I picked out some hacksaw blades and some emery cloth – stuff I needed. Again, we were together and it’s stuff I was going to buy anyway. I told her “Honey, you can count this as your Christmas gift to me.”

Now, before you think we’re athiests, we’re not at all. I spend a fair amount of time at Church but I resist the idea of Christmas being a time when you have to prove your love by going deeply into debt. Same with Valentine’s day, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. As for our society going towards Easter gifts, I hadn’t heard that one before but it seems believeable. I remember as a kid when Halloween was only a day. Somewhere along the way the fine folks at Hallmark (among others) turned it into a season complete with yard lights! Gag.

You said your wife undertands you’re not the kind who can “knock her socks off” every time a gift-giving occasion comes along. Good for her – she seems mature enough to realize that, in the real world it’s not like in the movies.

You don’t sound negative to me, at all; you sound mature, or maybe I should say realistic.