A personal exploration on gratitude shaming
“Girlfriends are expensive, but I’ve actually saved money since I started dating you,” MacGyver said to me as we passed the aisle of roses and heart-shaped mylar balloons. I was proud to have been a boon to his pocketbook rather than a burden.
"My economics professor showed us statistics that proved Valentine’s Day was created for the greeting card industry,” I agreed. I’d heard the scornful remark many times, backing up my defense mechanism of denying myself such frivolities. I had not experienced receiving flowers for Valentine's Day the 15 years I had been married, so why would I expect it from the next man I dated? As a single mom with 3 part-time jobs trying to make ends meet, I didn’t have the money for things like that and I shouldn’t expect anyone else to spoil me either. Even a decade and a half earlier, when I was engaged to be married to Rex, my fiancé had bummed ten bucks off his pal from work to buy me a bouquet on the street corner on my birthday. He had admitted he nearly forgot. I should have known that was a foreshadowing of the rest of my life.
“I’m glad you aren’t like my ex who demanded I buy her things all the time,” MacGyver continued. “The expectation ruins the whole point of giving gifts.”
I laughed. But a few days before the romantic holiday, I started feeling heavy. I had dismissed my desire for decades and now I was confused. I had long decided to make it a day in which I made other people feel loved, just like Mother’s Day became the day I made my children feel appreciated rather than facing the disappointment of my own neglect. I was scared of Valentine's Day now that I was in love. I wanted to hide. I didn't want it to come, not sure how to pretend I didn’t care. At the same time, I secretly hoped my boyfriend would recognize the day as if it represented my value to him. I wrote him a love letter and made his favorite dinner, forcing a smile as I shared his relief that we weren’t going to a crowded restaurant like everyone else.
I wondered why it hurt so much when my significant other scoffed at exchanging gifts on special occasions when it hadn’t been as deeply painful all those years previously when I insisted it was stupid. Was my denial effective back then? Had I convinced myself crumbs were acceptable?
* * *
As much as lack of offerings hurt, the pain was much worse to receive. The years of married life with Rex were shrouded with poverty. Church, school, and nonprofit organizations put our family’s name on the Angel Tree. On Christmas morning, there was not one but three loads of boxes with gifts. The first year felt like a relief, unable to provide for our own children. But every year after that, I felt ashamed. It was okay to be unemployed once or twice, but when that became more the norm than having an income, I wanted to crawl under a rock. I’d been raised better than that. My parents taught me to be self-sufficient and to do whatever was necessary, no matter how unpleasant; we were survivors! But I was torn because I was needed at home to take care of little ones and tend to my depressed husband; I couldn’t outshine my man who already felt emasculated by the do-gooders providing us handouts.
It wasn’t until we’d been divorced a few years that I realized I was not the only member of the family that felt resentful. I was visiting my boyfriend while my kids were staying with their dad at his parents’ house when I called them on Christmas morning. My teenage son was angry and crying.
“I don’t want to be a charity case anymore!” he yelled into the phone. My chest ached as I tried not to break into tears myself. Far away, I couldn’t reach out to give him a hug. My kids were, once again, chosen this time by their grandparents’ church congregation to receive generic gifts.
“Grandpa said that we can pack up whatever we don’t want and donate it to Good Will. Why does everyone think a boy wants a skateboard or a basketball. They don’t have a clue who we are or what we want. Dad says we should be grateful, but I’m tired of feeling like a service project.”
When we were married, I had asked our bishop to stop helping our family financially because it enabled my husband and discouraged him from looking for a job. He told me that he would not allow our children to go without basic needs and refused to cease our financial support. When leadership changed, the support finally stopped. But after the divorce, when their dad was not paying child support, I asked for help, and the new bishop looked at my family’s records and told me I had not been grateful enough for what the church had provided previously so he would not grant me assistance. Ironically, they still dutifully dumped useless Christmas gifts on our doorstep and cheerfully delivered birthday cards and cookies, signed by people we didn’t know.
What motivated people to give to others if it wasn’t out of sincere altruism? One of the things that I admired about my ex-husband when I first met him was his seemingly selfless nature. The night that I met him at the singles bonfire, he had brought several sweatshirts to offer to others, knowing how cold it got at the beach at night. He always volunteered to help new families move into the neighborhood, which usually ended up costing him a hundred-dollar chiropractic adjustment. When the congregation was chastised from the pulpit for not paying tithing, my husband wanted to increase our donations even though we were one of the families that was contributing our widow’s mite. As the years passed, I grew more and more aware of his grumbling while he served people he spoke about with contempt behind closed doors.
One day, the men’s leader from church came by to give him a book called The Anatomy of Peace by the Harbinger Institute. My husband tossed it onto the table and never opened it. So I picked it up and read it. It described 4 styles of pride: better-than, I-deserve, worse-than, and need-to-be-seen-as. I sucked in my breath.
The generosity felt tainted because it wasn’t authentic. In church, I was taught the value of Good Works were many: when we served others, we served God; lose yourself in serving others to save yourself; God will bless those who serve others; we should never deny another’s opportunity to serve or we would block their blessings. Something felt off. None of those reasons were altruistic; giving turned into a self-serving act. In giving, a person could alleviate his own feelings of guilt or unworthiness.
In the instance of my ex-husband, I know how much he struggled with his own self-esteem, so serving provided a way to make up for his shame or sense of indebtedness.
* * *
Often, a gift is a token of apology rather than a genuine commitment to change behavior. Flowers gifted as a Band-Aid feel more like a slap in the face than a sign of remorse.
When my current boyfriend Liam and I had one of our biggest fights, he went to the store the next morning and came back with bright beautiful sunflowers. He walked in the room and didn’t say a word.
I stared at him. I looked at the yellow flowers, then at his expressionless face. I stood motionless, like him. I waited for him to say something. Minutes ticked by in silence.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “They’re beautiful.”
He said nothing. I did not reach for them. I did not hug him. I did not thank him. “I told you before that I don’t ever want to receive flowers as a Band-Aid,” I said quietly.
“What are these for?”
“It’s not a Band-Aid. They are to say I love you. And I’m sorry.”
“I won’t accept flowers for apologies.”
His eyes filled with tears, his lips quivered, and he struggled to maintain his composure. I willed myself not to comfort him. I held to my boundary of not rescuing him from the discomfort of my pain. Even so, I hurt for the little boy inside of him.
“Flowers can’t fix this,” I said. “It feels more like a cheap attempt to sweep everything under the rug. And I’m supposed to pretend like I’m fine so you can feel okay again.”
His tears turned into anger. He turned on his heel and dumped the flowers in the trashcan. My own heart crumpled like the smashed petals. I felt guilty for rejecting his plea. But I chose myself that time, respecting my own pain rather than betraying myself to make his go away.
The real gift came later, when Liam spoke from his heart. He opened up to me in vulnerability and took responsibility for his part, recognizing that he had hurt me by posturing and rejecting me when I was reaching out for connection. I felt his genuine remorse, and while I did not trust this pattern to end, I accepted his apology for this instance and reciprocated by owning my own contribution in the conflict. No flowers needed, but I did retrieve them from the trashcan and put them in a vase.
* * *
Like mother like daughter, trying to buy my forgiveness with flowers reminded me of the Christmas present my daughter received one year from her dad. Amy and her brother Alan had returned home from their visit, and Isaac asked to talk to me in private. He showed me the gifts his dad’s girlfriend Stacy had given him: a card with kind words, money, his favorite cologne, a toy to add to his collection. He said he felt guilty that she had, once again, given to him thoughtfully, but Amy got nothing but a cold shoulder as usual. In fact, Stacy was still withholding the items that Amy had asked for her to return. When her dad later moved back in with his parents, Stacy did eventually provide a box for each of the kids of things that they had left behind, but Amy’s box only included things that she had previously owned before meeting Stacy. Stacy kept all of the gifts that she had originally given to Amy. She and Alan claimed that Stacy was mad at Amy for choosing her mother over her father, and for not always going to visit her dad because her mother had brainwashed her into hating her dad. They felt that Stacy’s growing anger and silent seething at the end of the relationship was all their fault, that they were a burden, and that Amy especially had been disloyal.
Amy tried to hide her feelings of having purposely been excluded, but she was unsuccessful. Despite denying her feelings of rejection, her dad knew she was being punished. But he never stood up to Stacy about the way she treated her. He cried in front of his kids and tried to make it up to Amy, begging her to pick something online. This made her feel worse because he couldn’t afford necessities let alone another gift to compensate, but she let him buy her something for $50 just to make him stop crying. She went into another room to be alone to cry by herself. She didn’t want a gift. She wanted her dad to stand up to the bully and defend her. Instead, she felt guilty that her pain caused her dad to feel ashamed of himself. So she did what she had learned to do so often: deny her own feelings so others could be okay. I honestly can’t remember her actually wearing the gift he bought her, even after he died.
It's no wonder Amy spent years angry about the idea of gift giving. I didn’t push when she refused to participate. She felt undeserving of receiving as well as resentful of giving. Too many instances of apparent generosity were poisoned for her to trust the intention. But her attitude has since relaxed, and she takes much pleasure in selecting gifts for her family now. I’m proud that my tradition of writing letters of appreciation to supplement the gifts has been carried on by my kids. But it wasn’t always so.
* * *
It used to make me sad that my kids never thought to draw me pictures, pick me flowers, or write me notes like I used to do for my mom when I was little. I used to secretly blame their dad for not being an example of honoring me with such things, yet I could not understand why my own example of doing that for them was never reciprocated. Perhaps it had less to do with their dad and more to do with the lack of emotional warmth from me…
The one time I remember being honored with a gift by my son while their dad was still living, I was ashamed of my reaction. MacGyver and I had broken up, supposedly for good, but we were both still co-managing a dance hall together. We were recognizing my birthday at the dance we were hosting and my kids volunteered to attend to support me. The next day MacGyver and the kids were going to celebrate my birthday, but Isaac begged to visit his dad instead. His dad had been refusing to see the kids for the duration of the divorce and telling them it was me that was preventing him; I was tired of them getting hurt by his lies so I had told Isaac he was no longer allowed to ask his dad but had to wait for his dad to initiate the visits. But on my birthday, when Alan moped about me not letting him go see his dad that day, I gave in. I would rather he visit his dad on my birthday than feel obligated to celebrate with me, and he took off on his bike.
He returned home that evening excited to present me with a birthday gift: a giant Ferrero Rocher chocolate ball wrapped like an ornament!
“How did you get this?” I asked, astonished at his thoughtfulness. It was perfect.
“Grandpa gave us each a gift card for Christmas. So I asked Dad to take me to the store. I didn’t tell him it was for you.”
I got angry.
“That was nice of you to spend your money on a birthday gift for me,” I began. “But it hurts to know that you deserted me on my birthday to see your dad. I feel like you bought me chocolate to make up for choosing him over me on my special day.”
As soon as my words left my mouth, I regretted them. His face crumpled as if I had torn up the picture he had drawn for me or stomped on the flower he had picked. But I didn't want him to learn that he could bandage things up with flowers or chocolate.
It was much later that it dawned on me why he had chosen to visit his dad. Not only had it made him uncomfortable to share my birthday with the ex-boyfriend who had broken my heart, but he had also wanted to surprise me by getting me a gift all by himself. The only way to do that was to use his dad as his cover and his transportation. Years later, he told me that after I refused his gift, he sat on the floor that night in front of the TV and devoured the chocolate ball in one sitting, leaving him feel sick and worthless, misunderstood and rejected. But all I saw that day was a betrayal, when really it had been a premeditated genuine plan to honor me.
* * *
Sometimes though, kids can be deceived into creating a covert alliance with gilded gift giving. What looked like a beautiful gesture all wrapped up in bows could be the Trojan horse of mutiny. Gaston was the king of love-bombing; this boyfriend loved giving gifts, as if he believed it was everyone’s love language, and he didn’t understand how shoving goodies down a person’s throat would make them gag.
It was my birthday once again, and I woke up late and indulged myself in a half hour steamy shower with ambient music and dim lights. When I went downstairs, Gaston was annoyed that I had taken so long I had missed the fanfare delivery and installation of a brand new royal blue oven. We had gone window shopping a few weeks prior because my ancient oven was on the fritz. I loved cooking but I wanted something simple. What I beheld was a gorgeous modern appliance with every imaginable digital smart option just short of Siri. “Happy birthday,” he smiled through gritted teeth.
I smiled back sheepishly, wishing I’d been able to select my own oven. I almost forgot to say thank you, but his eager look eliciting my appreciation was unmistakable.
“Your special day has just begun. Even though your late start has delayed the festivities, we are still on schedule,” he boomed. I plastered a smile on my face, worried what surprises he had in store when I had repeated a hundred times how I didn’t like surprises. “Ah, but you just haven’t experienced Gaston Surprises. Everyone loves mine,” he had insisted every time.
“We will start with Amy and you baking brownies together and you can test out your new oven, followed by the newest legal driver Alan chauffeuring you to the skating rink to roller blade together. For dinner, we will be going to a steak house for the finest the city can offer, topped off with a stroll through the Botanical Gardens Christmas light tour.”
I looked from Amy to Alan, confused. “Megan, you hate cooking with me. And Alan, I stopped inviting you to go roller blading because you said you didn’t like it anymore. Are you sure?”
“But you love doing those things,” Gaston answered for them. “Besides, they are the ones who came up with the ideas, didn’t you?”
The kids agreed that the activities were indeed their own ideas, prompted by Gaston having asked what I liked doing. I let it go as they shoved wrapped boxes into my hands. Again, I was confused, Amy especially having shown increasing hostility at every mention of presents that Christmas season. The boxes encased items I would have chosen for a white elephant gift exchange, and I wondered where on earth he had gotten the idea I would like a fancy bottle of balsamic vinegar, a hand-held battery operated massager, and a paperback book of the country's national parks. He shrugged at my confused look and said "I couldn't resist the Amazon Lightning Deals."
Weird. But I kept the beauty pageant smile on my face. This game was eerie.
As the morning turned to noon, I was cheered by the appearance of the sun. After two weeks of gloomy weather, my California blood required more sunshine to raise my spirits. “Look! It’s sunny and 70 degrees! Can we go for a walk in the park instead of staying inside?”
“That isn’t on the agenda.”
“But it’s what I want for my birthday,” I said.
That chronic flashy smile never reached his eyes when he talked. And it had started to feel menacing these days.
“Honestly,” I sighed, looking him in the eyes, “I don’t want your surprises. It was thoughtful of Amy and Alan to remember what I like doing, but I can’t enjoy a gift when I have to pretend not to know they are pretending to enjoy themselves. I don’t like steak or fancy restaurants. You’ve known me a year and I have told you what I like and don’t like. I am not sure why you must insist on giving me things I tell you I don’t want.”
“I have never met such an ungrateful woman!” Gaston seethed, still smiling. “I bought you the best damn oven, even in your precious favorite color. You hardly even looked at it!”
“I am ungrateful because you aren’t listening to me. You didn’t ask me what I wanted but decided to tell me instead. I love the oven, even if it doesn’t match the rest of the appliances and will take me a year just to learn how to use it. I am grateful my kids traded Christmas Eve with coworkers to take my birthday off to spend it with me. But I don’t want our special day spent enduring activities for me like it’s a duty,” I said, not backing down. “I am going to my room for a little while.”
“No.” He blocked my way, his sinister smile dropped from his lips. “You don’t get to do this. After all we did, you don’t get to turn your nose up at it and throw a fit like a spoiled child.”
“Yes, I do,” I stated. “I get to be with Little-Me. I get to have my own back.”
I walked past him upstairs to my room and sat on my mediation mat, leaning my head against the wall with my eyes closed. Five minutes later, Gaston walked in and sat on the edge of my bed looking down at me. Before he could say a word, I looked up at him and said quietly, “I am not in the mood to listen to a lecture, but if you are here to repair, you may stay.”
“I think you owe your children an apology for rejecting gifts that were thoughtfully planned just for you,” he said.
“I said that I wasn’t interested in listening to a lecture. Please leave me alone right now. I need some space.”
“There is something wrong with you that you don’t like surprises. Normal people don’t refuse to accept gifts they know they like,” he accused.
“A surprise is nothing more than making someone accept something without first asking for consent. It is an assumption, and you know what they say about people who assume…” I said, using one of his own sarcastic jokes against him.
That lit him up! He told me that while I was sulking in my room, my kids had gone for a drive to get away from me. They had told him that they couldn't wait till they were old enough to move out so they wouldn't have to deal with me anymore. It felt so deja vu, reliving my ex-husband's manipulations to alienate my children.
"I don't believe you," I said, even though I did. I picked up my phone and called my kids. No answer. I calmly left them a message telling them that I loved them and wanted to spend my birthday with them. Would they please come back? I'd like to talk things out.
I got what I wanted for my birthday that day: repair. The kids came home. They angrily plopped themselves on my bed. I invited Gaston to join us, but he sat silently in his Disapproving Chair with his arms crossed. I don't remember what I said to the kids, but I remember the tension in their shoulders dropped. Their fierce eyes softened and their shouting quieted. We hugged and cried...as if Gaston wasn't even sitting inches away, seething about being cast as the trouble maker he was. (He deserted us the week after the new year.)
* * *
There were so many times when I naively believed agenda-tied gestures were genuine kindnesses. I would think "this time, it's real." But it would just be another covert contract. The ribbons would fall off to reveal a debt they had promised was not part of the package, the martyred giver angrily claiming I had taken advantage of them. I felt like I had been cheated and then blamed for it.
Three years prior to Gaston's feigned generosity, Byron had befriended me during one of the lowest times in my life. With him, I finally let myself to be taken care of. I had noticed that my self-protection against disappointment had prevented kindness from getting through my own walls. With Byron, I decided I deserved to be treated more graciously and I opened to receptivity. But again, I chose the wrong man with whom to take such a risk.
“I don’t like girly things like perfume or bath products,” I had told Byron when he said he wanted to indulge my femininity.
“Sure you do. You just don’t know it yet,” he said. “All girls love getting pampered.”
“No, really, I don’t.”
He gave me a gift bag with a variety pack of shower gels, a loofa, a bath bomb, perfume, and a gift certificate for a manicure. I was a loyal user of Irish Spring bar soap. I regifted the bath pack but I gave in to the pressure of getting a manicure when Byron kept asking when I was going to get my nails done. I was mad at myself when I left the salon with my fingers torn up and my head aching from the noxious fumes.
I had told Byron I didn’t want to date him, but he waited for me for 9 months, trying to break me down and change my no to a yes. He was so nice to me when MacGyver had failed to propose and I was in mourning over a future that would never happen. Eventually I consented to a kiss but wouldn’t sleep with Byron. When MacGyver (technically still my co-manager at the dance hall) came to cover a wedding reception for me while I attended my ex-husband’s funeral, Byron flew into a rage. He cussed me out and accused me of sleeping with the man.
Byron wasn’t the first nor the last man to throw a fit when I refused to sleep with him. Most of the time, the tantrums included “after all I’ve done for you.” Whenever I tried to seek solace from my mom and share my pains with her, she would deny my experience and insist that heroism was in men’s nature, and all I had to do was let them help me. Her life experiences were so much different than mine, she couldn't fathom that gifts came with strings….
Even if the strings were simply the fulfillment of the giver’s need to feel loved or needed. The “give-to-get” principle mentioned in Robert Glover’s No More Mr. Nice Guy is based on the people pleasing tendency a person has to be accepted: if I do something nice for someone, they will like me. The giving is not for the other person at all but to get something from that person.
* * *
I am among the many who grew up trying to earn love, yet I would not have admitted it until now. I was just doing what a good person would do.
For my mom’s birthday, Mother’s Day, or Christmas, I always found it a challenge to find something to give her. She continually told me that, because of my financial situation, she would rather I didn’t buy her anything. But I lived far away, so I couldn’t spend time with her or do anything for her that didn’t cost money.
Knowing that she and my step dad loved going to performances, I bought them tickets to a show downtown San Diego, including paid parking. But I heard what a nightmare the experience was afterwards: they hated driving downtown; the parking spot reserved for them was stolen by someone else; the covid protocol congested entry so much that they were still in line a half hour into the show so they gave up and went home. “In the future, please don’t get me any gifts,” my mom reminded me. Listening to her complain made me feel like I’d been kicked in the teeth.
But if I didn’t give her something, she would feel neglected, so I tried again. Because the only thing my mom ever asked for was family photos to put on the wall, I went halves with my brother to buy a digital picture frame so all of us could upload and change pictures all the time from afar. My sister was visiting them for Christmas so I timed it such that her computer savvy husband could set it up and save my parents the headache of technology. But it arrived broken and a replacement wouldn’t arrive until after my sister and her husband left, and my parents did not want to deal with anything digital, so it got returned instead. I was angry my mom rejected my efforts again. “I don’t want any gifts,” she repeated.
Finally, I decided to ask my mom first before purchasing tickets to a local show only a couple miles from their house, featuring their favorite music from their generation. My mom told me that it was a fantastic idea, but they had been to that venue before and the food and service there was horrendous. So I struck out again. At least this time, I realized that if I wanted my mom to believe me when I told her I didn’t want something, I needed to do the same for her. From now on, I just give her a greeting card.
My mom had spoken her boundary, yet I hadn’t listen until now. I had been trying to get her approval, hoping to come up with something to make her happy so that I could feel like a good daughter who pleased her mom. My desire to give was coming from desperation, wanting to win a feeling I could never get. I am sure that she could feel the insincerity, even if I couldn’t identify it myself. I judged her as ungrateful and rejecting when, in reality, I had not respected her wishes.
* * *
Since childhood, I was taught to be polite.
“Say thank you,” Mom instructed.
“Thank you,” I obeyed.
“You’re welcome,” they parroted back.
But was I really welcome? Or was the giver only feeding their own ego? Charity is usually defined as giving to others. But if the church’s definition of charity is “the pure love of Christ,” then charity is really compassion. And compassion is a feeling, not an action.
“Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth,” is gratitude shaming. Well-meaning forefathers taught me I should be grateful for whatever I get; I didn’t deserve more. I learned to gaslight myself and stuff my feelings or risk punishment for not wanting what was offered. I lost my ability to discern between genuine and counterfeit intention.
Over the last decade, I have reclaimed ownership of my needs and wants, and it has in turn, made me a better receiver and giver. Now when I want to give to someone, I try to be honest and ask myself these questions: Do I want to do this so I can feel a certain way? What do I hope they will feel if I do this? Have they expressed a need or desire that this would fulfill?
Only when a gift is given for the sake of sharing genuine care with another is it worth more than its surface value. MacGyver was right: girlfriends are expensive. I’m worth a lot more than a gift horse.
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