An over-the-top gift or gesture as a birthday gift sounds like the standard in any good romance story, but there’s a reason real life is stranger than fiction, and a young man took to Reddit to share how an extravagant birthday gift may have just ended his relationship.
After a man surprised his girlfriend with a brand new car for her birthday, he was not expecting her rather cold reaction. What he believed was a kind gesture was something that his girlfriend found extremely inappropriate.
Sharing his story to the subreddit, r/relationship_advicethe 26-year-old man revealed that he and his 25-year-old girlfriend have been dating for almost a year and a half. For her 25th birthday, he wanted to do something special for her. The man prefaced his post by saying that he comes from wealth and currently works for the family business. For him, buying expensive gifts for his girlfriend has always been one of the ways he’s demonstrated his love for her.
For example, after three months of dating, he bought her a $6,000 tablet. “She seemed okay with it,” the man wrote. “I don’t like to think I’m careless with how I spend, but I also know I’m probably not the most mindful when it comes to my spending either.”
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Seven months into the relationship, he bought her a $6,000 bracelet, and that’s when things changed. “She wouldn’t accept it and told me to return it,” the man wrote. “I kept telling her it was fine, but she didn’t want it.” The man’s girlfriend later told him that buying such an expensive bracelet was a “red flag.”
On their next date, however, the man tried to keep it low-key by taking her to an inexpensive dinner at a local dining spot. “She told me in the car that though she had a good time she expected something fancier,” the man wrote. He kept her comments in mind and decided to go all out for her 25th birthday a few months later by buying her a car.
“At this point we’ve been together a year and five months, are in love, talk about our future together, so I assumed it was okay to get her such a gift but apparently not,” the man wrote. Even though his girlfriend thanked him for the car at that moment, she later told him that buying the car was his “third and final strike.”
“She said she doesn’t know what I can do to fix things,” he wrote. He added that while they have not officially broken up, they are not speaking to each other. The man was unaware of how much the expensive gifts made his girlfriend feel uncomfortable. “When I buy these gifts I make it clear I don’t expect anything back so she doesn’t feel like she has to keep up,” he wrote. “She’s important to me and I guess I can be materialistic but I like to buy nice stuff for people I care about.”
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“I feel like after the first expensive gift is when they should’ve had the conversation about how the expensive gestures made her feel,” one Redditor commented. “I had an ex who liked those kinds of gestures and I personally hated it because he was buying me something that I wanted to give to myself, and after he bought me that expensive thing I had that talk with him.”
For some people, being bombarded with expensive gifts can make them feel inadequate, especially if they do not have the means to return the favor. Other people may feel like they’re being love-bombed, especially if they are given such expensive gifts early on in the relationship.
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Experts believe that those who love bomb their partners buy them outrageously expensive gifts early on in the relationship in an attempt to make them co-dependent and to prevent them from ever leaving the relationship. “If someone is throwing overly generous gifts at someone they barely know — expensive dinners out, fancy bottles of wine, 5 star hotels, vacation destinations, jewelry, name brand clothes — you can be sure the love bomber believes they’re purchasing something you then owe them,” Lissa Rankin, MD, a trauma informed expert shared on her blog.
“Whether they’re seeking to control you, exploit you, leverage your connections, get a boost for their career, make money off you, or buy your loyalty, these gifts are not given with the generous heart of someone who really loves you and expects nothing in return.”
It doesn’t seem like this boyfriend was trying to do anything other than give the woman he loves a really awesome gift. Unfortunately, their financial differences make those indulgences a burden for her rather than a blessing.
“While cars are a nice gift, not all cars are the same and depending on the brand and type, a car can sometimes have parts that are hard to find and expensive thus making it sometimes unfeasible for someone who can’t afford it,” another Redditor noted. Others concluded that neither the man nor his girlfriend was necessarily at fault, but both needed to work on their communication to better meet each other’s needs.
Expensive gifts can shift the focus of the relationship toward material things rather than emotional connection, which is what truly matters when it all comes down to it in an authentic relationship. Perhaps after they both get vulnerable about their feelings, there will be more room to compromise when it comes to gifts — she can be more gracious, and he can be more reserved.
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Megan Quinn is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing. She covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on justice in the workplace, personal relationships, parenting debates, and the human experience.
