How Can We Be Better Gift Givers?
I believe when it comes to forming and keeping a healthy relationship, one of the key ingredients is empathy. As much as we may hate to admit it, the fact is most of our relationships are uneven. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless only one party is fully aware of this imbalance. Chances are, there will be times when we love our friends/partners more than they do, and (hopefully) there will be other moments when the reverse happens.
This is what is typically known as an asymmetric commitment relationship.
If things don’t turn out that well, it might be the case that one party is utterly devoted and keen to make plans, whereas the other person simply goes along and enjoy the convenience of the relationship. For some of us, when we’re in such a situation, we start to cut our losses. We start to sit back and see what happens when we don’t try as much. More often than not, it backfires. I am for the idea that if the relationship really means something to us, we ought to initiate a conversation and talk things through. There is no guarantee of change, but at least we know we tried. If a hard conversation compels us to go separate ways, it shouldn’t be something to be afraid of.
It potentially frees us to find a relationship that better suits us.
The concept of an asymmetric commitment relationship is akin to gift giving. I believe in one way or another, all of us has made this mistake before. As gift givers, we focus too much on the moment when the recipient opens the gift. We want the wow factor. We want the recipient to be totally blown away by the expense of our gift. The issue is recipients of gifts are less concerned with the experience of opening a gift, and more concerned with the thought of the gift. So when we pick a gift and give it to our friends/partners, and they don’t elicit the response that we anticipate them to show, we start to sit back. We want to see what happens when we don’t try as much.
So, we become less invested in the relationship each time we feel that we got rejected.
As gift givers, we are seriously mistaken if we think that the more thought we put into a gift, the more the recipient will appreciate it. Sometimes our thoughtfulness isn’t that obvious, and it doesn’t explicitly show through the gift. With this in mind, it is nobody’s fault that the recipients can’t always tell how much effort is dedicated in the gift. So there is no reason to start moving away from this relationship. This is where empathy comes into the picture. Sometimes it isn’t about the surprise, or how expensive the gift is. I believe a good gift is one where we can show our understanding of how the gift is unique to the recipient. A good gift is one that translates — “I get you.” It is as simple as that. A little more attentiveness, a little more observation and a little bit of second-guessing. Perhaps we all just need to keep in mind that gift-giving has very little to do with the gift, and a lot more to do with the giving.
