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If the giver is unlikely to observe me not wearing the merino I’d just pass it on to someone that it fits and would appreciate it. I’ve had lots of inappropriate things given to me over the years, I just don’t sweat it anymore. I have a spot where I put those things and when the occasion arises I have a look see.
If I can’t change the giver’s actions I just work around ‘em, saves me a lot of stress. This change in me didn’t happen overnight.
withered_preacher
I can sympathise. I struggle to receive gifts. It puts me in a real funk that’s a mix of lots of things.
I get given something, I am rubbish at hiding my reaction, I feel annoyed at being given something pointless, I feel bad that I’m feeling bad about being given a gift, I feel annoyed that I’m such an ungrateful shit, I feel annoyed that despite my awareness of all this, I still react like an ungrateful shit. Rinse and repeat.
Telling people that we’re not really doing gifts this year has definitely helped. It makes Christmas a bit anticlimactic (especially when we weren’t able to see family, the bit we were actually looking forward to), but it’s really helped with a lot of the associated stress and guilt.
A difficult part of it is that we don’t have much money, so we have to rationalise our purchases, so being given something that we don’t need or want seems frivolous. But we have also “trained” ourselves out of necessity to not really need or want things - because generally we can’t have them.
Today a birthday present arrived in the post. It was a really nice merino top. It’s the wrong size. It was bought from a shop local to the gift giver so it’s not particularly straightforward to return/exchange.
Already it’s stressing me out. I hate buying clothes and trying to find anything that fits (I’m an odd shape). I feel like a cunt that I’m annoyed because it’s a really nice gift. I hate exchanging gifts because it feels like a fuck you to the person who gave you the gift.
And I can’t just escape the feeling that I didn’t need the thing, and now having it is just stressing me out. I also know that I’ll actually really like it in about 6 months when I finally get over all these ridiculous feelings. My wife bought me a sick Bluetooth speaker but it took me an age to get over the guilt of it - yet I now use it daily, it was a great present!
And then to finish it all off, there’s the self loathing about being the kind of person that complains about receiving presents! WAC!