Advice

On gifts with strings attached

Do you really think accepting gifts is okay even when you know they’re being used to buy a way into your affections?

It’s not just a dating thing either. I’ve had a casual acquaintances load me with expensive presents when they think (correctly) that I’m not really bonding with them, just to keep me from wandering off. If I refuse them, I’m rude, and if I accept them, they’ll get all butthurty when I still don’t want to pursue a friendship/give them head. The obvious answer is to balance the scales by giving them something equally expensive, but that just ends up with both of us having too much random junk we didn’t even want in the first place. (Besides, I can’t always afford an equally valuable present.) It’s a dilemma, especially since trying to discuss this barter aspect of gift-giving makes people go “you know SOME people just LIKE bringing others joy”, which I believe is a genuine sentiment, but false at the same time; you may not notice that you expected affection and gratitude in return until you notice you’re not getting it.

Gifts are sometimes used as a form of emotional extortion and the person receiving them can only either submit to being obligated, or be rude, no other options, and that’s fucked up.

Submit to being obligated? Ugh. Girls who are afraid of being rude in the face of emotional extortion drive me fucking crazy. Quit spilling your victim mentality all over the social contract. Stand your ground, you weak ass bitch.

Accepting a gift never obligates you. If it does, then it wasn’t a gift. It was either a form of payment or a bribe. You need to be smart enough to know the difference and strong enough not to put up with that kind of shit.

If a man thinks he can buy his way into my affections with expensive gifts, he will find that he is sadly mistaken. Will I accept his gifts? Hell yes. Will I feel obligated in any way? Hell no.

Eventually, he’ll take the hint and stop treating me like an investment commodity or he’ll confront me with an explicit expectation of sexual favors. In either case, he’ll find out the hard way that I’m not for sale.

Let him get all butthurt. Good. He should be. Fuck him for trying to buy me in the first place. I’m not saying you gotta do it my way, but at least have the brass to shut down emotional extortion.

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