It's Not About You. It's About Me.

Okay, it’s official. Men and women don’t know what to get each other for holiday gifts (like, duh). And, in fact, they choose things for their Significant Others (“SO”) that they’d really like to receive for themselves (double duh). Results of one timely study really do give new meaning to the phrase: ”It’s not about you. It’s about me.”

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So basically, what “Why It’s So Hard…” says is that people who live with and love each other are LESS likely to choose the perfect gift for each other than perfect strangers who use “gender specific” preferences (i.e. women generally lust for jewelry and perfume, men for cars and other women). Pretty pathetic, huh? Apparently, because we think we know our honeys so well, we don’t take in new info or clues about them. We think we know everything about them already. Plus, to add fuel to the flames, while women are more likely to both give out gift-giving clues and to listen to clues from their husbands/boyfriends/honeys, men are less likely to give clues to and listen to them from their wives/girlfriends/sweeties. (Got that? Even when it comes to gifts, women talk and men don’t listen. Men don’t talk even though we want them to. Amazing how we ever got together to require gift-giving in the first place.)

All of which validates my personal time-honored gift-giving technique. When it’s a biggy for moi, I pre-select. That way I know I will LOVE it. Romantic? Maybe not. But effective? Yes. And, of course, I ask Him for suggestions for things he’d like for his big occasions. His birthday was in November. I’m still waiting. (But now that I’ve read about the above study, I may just ask a random stranger in the mall to pick it out for me – as long as what he chooses isn’t named Peaches and comes with her own pole.)