Weaponized Gifting
A narcissist can turn anything into a heat-seeking missile.
One phenomenon that happens to many victims of narcissistic abuse is the feeling of dread around gift-giving holidays. After years of receiving gifts that are not “just gifts”, the lesson is learned -> Sometimes, gifts hurt.
You don’t know when or which ones will be the ones to cause you pain. This eventually means that all presents have the potential to be harmful. The fun and excitement of receiving one has been warped into yet another method for abuse.
Why Abuse?
The entire purpose of narcissistic abuse is to train their victims to become subservient and compliant. This way, they can extract supply and feed off of them for as long as the reservoir is flowing. (Or until they get tired of that particular flavor of supply.)
They need you to stick around. Ironically, abuse keeps people in their lives because it promotes the feeling of I’m stuck.
You can’t be abused if you aren’t there. You can still supply them in some fashion if you are not around, but it won’t be the same without your presence.
Abuse becomes essential. It’s necessary. It will never cease to be a part of any narcissistic relationship.
This is why every avenue becomes a road to abuse. Anything and everything is a possible method.
Even gifting.
Gift-Giving Abuse
This type of abuse is best described using examples.
I recall vividly how gifts were used to elicit pain in my previous marriage. It was a common theme between birthdays, Mother’s Days, anniversaries, and Christmases. It was one of my ex’s go-to methods. I have dozens of examples I could write about.
To this day, I have a hard time celebrating because I feel the rug is about to be pulled out from under me. We have been divorced for many years, but the feeling lingers.
Because this kind of abuse is difficult to describe, examples of how they commonly show up are useful. They can demonstrate how varied this technique can get.
One Example From My Life
I was gifted a beautiful necklace for our 10th wedding anniversary.
It was a gold necklace with two aquamarines and one emerald jewel in the center of a gold loop.
Normally, I would have loved to receive this as a gift. The problem with this one was -> I had been telling him for over 2 years that I was planning on building a necklace with these exact jewels on my own. I had it drawn out on paper and styled it the way I wanted. I had a vision in mind! I knew exactly how it would look.
Not only that, I wanted it to be an experience. We spoke many times about the crafting. I had even planned out the trips to gem mines to search for the jewels and had found various pieces I could get handcrafted into the sizes and shapes I needed.
He gave me a version of it that was close without being close to what I had been talking about. It was similar to the one I planned on making, but it was different, and it wasn’t made by me. He talked about the trips he took to gather the jewels (on his overseas missions) and the jeweler he used to arrange the setting (in another state).
I tried to love it, but I couldn’t. I wanted to praise it, but I was hurt that he took it from me. I had spent so much time and energy on the planning of my own piece, and he had known it. It wasn’t a one-and-done talk; I had been dreaming this for a long time.
That wasn’t the worst part. In the following years, I didn’t stop hearing about how hurtful my reaction had been and how I was ungrateful and selfish for not loving the necklace as much as he had wanted me to. I was reminded on future anniversaries that I was a terrible gift receiver, and this was the reason he wasn’t putting effort into gifts anymore.
Any time I wore the necklace, it was brought up. If I didn’t wear it, it was because I was spiteful. Whether I wore it or not, I was on the losing end, and I was going to hear about it. There’s no chance in Hell I wasn’t going to hear about it repeatedly.
I was the bad guy forever. I could never redeem myself.
I couldn’t continue with my plans to make one of my own because they were received with anger and resentment. I heard, “Why isn’t mine good enough?” and “You always want more, never satisfied.”
What began as a “gift” turned into years of demeaning words and behavior, and was twisted to turn me into the perpetrator and abuser.
The clincher -> After we divorced, I took it to a jeweler to have it appraised, and it was worth a whopping $0. The entire thing was fake! From the gold to the jewels. Not a piece of it was real.
For all I know, he bought it at a roadside stand. All the stories he had told of its value and how hard he had worked on it were BS.
This is how the mind of a narcissist works.
He knew they were fake
He knew I had made plans for years about this one item.
He knew it would make for a good “reason” not to buy gifts in the future.
He knew it was a ploy.
It was an intentional action meant to hurt and belittle, but it was wrapped in gold, aquamarine, and emerald, so it didn’t look the part.
An Example I Hear About Often
This is one I have heard of from various clients and experienced it myself. The exact method differs, but overall it is the same.
This one is the last-minute BS gift.
We all know it. It’s when someone forgets to get a gift at all and then goes out to grab one at the last possible second. As if they didn’t have an entire year to prepare themselves for the date.
One year, I was gifted a keychain, a bag of rubber bands, 2 lottery tickets, and a bottle of windshield washer fluid for my birthday. The cherry on top was the card that wasn’t even signed.
I have also received the letters IOU written on a piece of paper for Mother’s Day. ( 4 years in a row.)
Now I get it. Being shitty at gift giving doesn’t make someone an abuser.
The abuse often isn’t the gift itself. The abuse is what happens around the gift. The abuse is in the reactions, snide remarks, messaging, repeated put-downs, sulking, reminders, and ambiance regarding the present.
The gift is like a vehicle that drives the abuse home.
The abuse is -> the thing.
The gift is -> the conduit.
When someone waits until the final moments and brings a thoughtless gift, it doesn’t feel good. Most clients reported they would have preferred to receive nothing rather than have a last-minute BS present of something they didn’t want.
The narcissist can do this for many reasons:
They may not care about your birthday, so they do the bare minimum to fake effort and say, “I tried.”
They may want you to feel hurt so they can pick a fight because they want the attention back on them.
They may want to be kicked out so they can go drink or sleep around.
They could want you to think they are “just bad at it” so you don’t expect much in the future.
They may want to send you a message, so you know how little they think of you.
Whatever the reason, what they don’t care enough about are your feelings.
Why They Use Gifts
When the victim of abuse complains about receiving a gift, it sounds absolutely ridiculous to the outside world.
Imagine if I had told people that I was upset that my husband had bought me a supposedly expensive, beautiful necklace.
Who would listen to that?
Who would believe that it was meant to be distressing?
Who would consider it a big deal?
On its face, it is a laughable complaint. Underneath the surface, it’s diabolical.
One gift gave him years of ammo to use against me. I was trained to never complain, never expect more, pretend to be happy, and apologize for alleged wrongdoings.
It worked.
That’s why they do it.
It works.
Has it ever worked on you?
