Present buying

[anewyear]

Are you any good at present buying? I'm absolutely rubbish at it, I've literally just come in at 1020hrs on Easter Sunday after buying Mrs an Easter egg. Every birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day, Easter Sunday I end up in the same hole.

My guess is that because I don't like being the centre of attention and receiving gifts with fanfare, I forget (or more specifically, don't give enough emphasis to) buying gifts for others. Not an excuse, just an observation. Mrs know's that it's not an uncaring thing, literally it's just a being bollox at buying gifts thing. Doesn't stop it showing behind her eyes though and therefore triggering last minute dashes from me.

Anyone else the same?

[humphrey]

I am just no good at it, I now just give them money. Birthdays, Xmas etc. I just don't know what they would like. When people ask me what I would like I just say whatever as I hate receiving gifts, usually just tell them to give me money.

I suppose I am like all SA'ers I just hate all the attention of gifts.

[anewyear]

My sister and I have birthdays 5 days apart. We have an agreement where we get each other a bottle of wine, works out well.

I cut it fine this morning with that egg. Mrs was out when I bought it. When she came back I said "I forgot to give you this earlier when you were giving an egg to {our son}". When I gave it to her she got one for me out of the cupboard that she'd obviously bought a while back and had been waiting to see if I'd bought one. Lucky escape..


Humphrey - an alternative to cash is Amazon vouchers. I've used those a few times. If you buy through the site you get some with fairly fancy packaging, pop up cards etc.

[hellotiger]

I get anxiety from present buying. I will spend weeks if not months searching for the perfect presents. Even if I find something good early on I'll talk myself out of it, deciding that really they probably won't like it and I should carry on searching.
The worst time for this is Xmas when I have 17 people (and 4 dogs) to buy presents for. It takes up most of October and the entire of November and December and even then I'll be getting things up until a few days before Xmas. This month is pretty bad one too as I have 4 family members with birthdays.
I'm currently spending every evening searching for the perfect whisky glass for my oh (I've got it down to 4 options ).

For a few years I was just giving vouchers to people but I started to sense disappointment that they had picked out something for me that they thought I'd like and I just went the easy route. So I decided that I'd only give voucher as a last resort.
It's obvious to me why I put this pressure on myself to find perfect presents. I want the people I care about to be happy and to know I put in the effort. They don't know just how much effort I put in though.

I hate the exchange of presents. My family sit in a circle and stare. I overthink my facial expression and worry that I'm not reacting the way normal humans do. I also worry about how long to spend admiring what they've given me as I don't want to seem ungrateful but also want to speed this all up.

[gregarious_introvert]

I think I am one of the lucky ones - I have nobody for whom to buy presents and never receive any; however, when I have had people for whom to buy presents, my attitude was coloured by my mother, who would let someone know (in no uncertain terms) if a present didn't meet her approval (I don't think my father's presents ever met her standards) so I do try to put some thought into it - although I don't start looking until, say, a month before the event as this helps the inspiration.

Even when my parents were alive, we didn't celebrate religious holidays so I never had to worry about that Christian thing in December, just birthdays and anniversaries - I also have an aversion to buying flowers because if anyone bought them for my mother, she would use them to beat that person (like vouchers or money, in her eyes flowers required no thought so were not acceptable).