Buying a gift for your lady can be more like stepping into the belly of the beast than you might realise. Read on for a few tips that might do the trick for you.
Buying a gift for your lady can be more like stepping into the belly of the beast than you might realise. Read on for a few tips that might do the trick for you.
If you are the kind who believes that diamonds are indeed a girl’s best friend and can afford to buy her a diamond big enough to hug while she sleeps at night, don’t bother reading any further. Just send me your address so that I, along with a few thousand others, can come and rob you dry.
For the rest, the kind who measure the worth of a diamond not in carats but rather in terms of how many months one will have to starve one’s family members while keeping them healthy enough to sell their kidneys and other usefully harvestable body parts on the black market — this article is for you.
There is one thumb rule when it comes to gifting women — don’t ever think that you need a reason to buy her something. The second rule is more important: under no circumstances should you reveal the price of the product. The ideal gift is that which cannot be searched up online for its price to be discovered, and yet one that does not reek of cheap and “handmade” origins — like something bought out of the garage-run boutique of a bored housewife.
Flowers always win, but flowers also arouse massive suspicion for they are mostly an I-am-sorry-but-too-scared-to-actually-use-those-words sort of a gift. Flowers are fine if you pick them up often enough; infrequency of this kind of gift only heightens the curiosity around it.
Yellow gold is fine, if the recipient is your mother. Anybody younger may prefer white or rose. Girls, thankfully, aren’t so crazy about platinum and neither is my bank account. They would rather wear a branded design in 18K than one from the local family jeweller in 22K. Yes, at this rate heirloom might soon not be worth the box it comes in.
Handbags are good, but the ones that will earn you any recognition cost as much as jewellery does, if not more. Setting a bar so high will only give you vertigo each time you try and jump it.
And in case you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned either clothes or shoes so far, then clearly you are yet to experience a full-blown relationship. Your lady can buy you anything from underwear to a tuxedo and you will wear it with a smile but as a man it is your duty to never flirt with such things. With such gifts, you need to first know everything about the person you are gifting, not just what she likes but also what she already has in her wardrobe. Then you have to know what’s new on the shelves and use this data to formulate an equation — all this while knowing well that women are fickle and might be changing their preferences even as you make a purchase based on years of solid calculation. If you must get these, ensure a sound exchange policy to back it up.
This leaves out perfumes which, although less hassling than garments, can still be tricky. Keep it fruity and something that could possibly be endorsed by Jennifer Lawrence, and it should do the trick.
Puppies are good too, but they’re the poor man’s equivalent to an engagement ring. It’s like asking her to settle down with you — forget all outings or socialising as you try and get used to mopping pee and bagging poop, a faint but sure sign of pending parenthood. Don’t be surprised if she dumps you — at least you’ll have the puppy for company.
Outside of these boring, predictable options, assuming that you can successfully buy gifts for a lady is like trusting your singing and dancing skills after downing a few shots. But then again, it’s your life and you are free to depreciate it as you choose to.
The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine
