Leaving price tags on gifts

[OutlawSally]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, hope you had some drama-free time.

So uPD MIL pathologically leaves price tags on presents. I have been with DH 10 years and it's been happening the whole time. Possibly longer as DH will often intercept a present after it's been unwrapped by the receiver but before it's been closely inspected, and whip off the price tag. Which suggests to me it's been happening before I was on the scene if it's something he knows to look out for and mitigate.

This is not just me who gets priced gifts, it's FIL and DH too. There is always a charade about it being a mistake and she always forgets before wrapping (hahah, oops!) so there is plausible deniability. Don't get me wrong, I know we've all done it, it happens, but this happens so often from MIL it has to be deliberate. Even cards often have a price tag. Which is weird, who cares how much a card cost?

Why does she do this? What does she get out of it? It's not just pricey things either, even cheaper stocking-stuffer type gifts will often be priced, so I don't think it's showing off how much she's spent. Or maybe it is and I'm overthinking. But it just feels like some sort of power play, but I'm not sure to what end.

From reading posts on here gifts seem to be such a focal point for PD behavior. Has anyone experienced this?

[goldtracedcloud]

I know what you are talking about.  One of my PDs would do this, in part, because they were often lazy with gifts.  But, it also very well could have been intentional to try to communicate whatever reciprocity they felt was owed.  There were strings attached to most anything they would give big or small. 

[OutlawSally]

Good point, there are definitely strings. She doesn't want gifts in return I don't think, but I think she expects our time and attention, and highlighting the price is maybe a way to keep us feeling obligated? 

She loves giving gifts and is very funny about giving and receiving cards too. Every year she counts the number of birthday cards she gets and expects it to be more than the year before. She's acutely aware of who sends a card and who doesn't and if someone misses her she'll know and be offended. Her and FIL often give each other multiple cards for different events and the message is very important.

I sometimes feel like I'm on an alien planet with them, and all social interactions have these strange coded meanings that don't exist on Earth. A card isn't a simple token, a present isn't a nice gesture, they are loaded with meaning.

[bee well]

Outlaw Sally,

Oh yeah, I have had more than one relative (and friend, unfortunately)  that continuously left on the price tags.

I do agree about the strings, and in my and DH's FOOs, when disagreements arose, they were often connected to the to the "after all I have done for you" FOG. Money spent=time and attention owed.

At a certain point around  NC I largely reduced the sending and receiving of gifts. In the few occasions when I did, it was in in honor of special, once in a lifetime occasions, holidays, not so much

On the part of my MIL there were the continuous gifts of recycled, sometimes unusable items. Other times food items, some good and appreciated, others extremely voluminous and so near to expiration that they could be considered health hazards. Most of the time we did not have the courage to refuse. I wish we had done so.

If you like this tradition of giving and receiving then just scrape or tear off the off the tag, don't look and  laugh it off if you can, It's tacky on their part to leave them on time after time. That's on them!

But If you feel there is an unbalance, and it's causing you a lot of discomfort you may want to re-evaluate how you approach the tradition, and what is emotionally best for you in your relationship with your MIL . Hard, I know, because as you suggest, most people who buck tradition are generally treated as space aliens.

[goldtracedcloud]

She doesn't want gifts in return I don't think, but I think she expects our time and attention, and highlighting the price is maybe a way to keep us feeling obligated? 

I think you are so right about this.  My NPD who would do this with the price tags usually expected 3 - 10 fold the time, favors or praise for any gesture of hers.  I have never known a narcissistic person who wasn't ultimately out for control with their gifts.  They all seem to believe that people are bought, in my experience at least.  The response I have gotten from many when no longer catering to their every whim, is they stop giving all together.  I guess for them it's why bother if they can't get what they want out of someone?  Has been revealing. 

I also have a BPD mother who is similar with cards.  She can be manipulative with gifts and will have meltdowns when she doesn't get the attention she wants, but is not as calculating about gifts in general (not always all about the reciprocity of everything she gives).  Will sometimes "get over it" when a boundary is set, but this often happens because someone else has taken the top spot on her d-list, causing her to go back to idealizing whoever she thinks will be nicest to her (me).  My full blown NPD people don't ever seem to get over anything, and seem to keep records for decades of any perceived slights and anything they feel is owed to them.

I am in a personal era of trying to say "my soul is not for sale" anymore with these relationships.  If I sense I am doing something out of a sense of obligation rather than actually wanting to do it now, I try to pause and consider before I do it.  Not always easy for sure. 

[Cat of the Canals]

My own PDmom will RIP a gift out of your hands if she realizes she forgot to take the tag off. But now that you mention it, pdMIL routinely leaves the tags on. I'm not sure she's clever enough to do it for any particular reason. My theory is that she doesn't actually care or remember. Gifts are never about the recipient for her. Instead, they seem to be an excuse to buy something, which is kind of her only "hobby."

We have received many a late night Home Shopping Network impulse buy. "I saw these little flashlights and figured everyone should have one!"

She also routinely uses gifts as an excuse to demand time. She brought a gift! A kind, generous gesture! That means you are obligated to spend time with her!

[T-dog]

It's so weird that someone else has brought this up-I was just thinking about it when I was wrapping Christmas gifts a couple of weeks ago and there was a price tag that I almost missed.

My uNPD mother was always leaving price tags on gifts. It became a thing for me and my siblings to have a bit of a joke about every Christmas or birthday, but it was odd. There would sometimes be that quick snatching of the item to remove said price tag, other times it didn't seem to be an issue.

I used to think it was deliberate, then I started thinking that she just didn't check gifts before wrapping them. I'm not sure if it really means anything, other than carelessness.

We also used to have some really awkward moments with her habit of regifting, especially when she regifted to the original gift-giver. Probably need a whole new thread for that 

[bloomie]

OutlawSally - for those who view relationships as 'transactional' and for the more grandiose types leaving price tags on gifts could be a way to send all kinds of messages and keep in the forefront of our minds we are to show appropriate appreciation and reciprocate in some way.

Either way, one way I have handled this is to treat it as if... it is indeed an embarrassing mistake and kindly say.."Opps! I'll let you remove this." as I hand the gift back for the giver to remove the tag. Every. Single. Time.

[Cat of the Canals]

We also used to have some really awkward moments with her habit of regifting, especially when she regifted to the original gift-giver. Probably need a whole new thread for that

My PDmil has just straight-up given us gifts back, years later. Like, "Oh, do you want this back? We don't use it." Like we let her borrow a hammer or something. If we did that with one of her gifts, she'd lose her mind.

[OutlawSally]

The gift-giving is not so much something I want to continue as much as it is me picking my battles. I am still in contact with them, and the (passive-aggressive) uproar that suggesting we forgo gifts would really not be worth it. The would never let it go. I have bigger boundaries to draw for now.

I do like the idea of handing the present back and getting them to remove the price, that's brilliant. It's not something that really bothered me too much until recently. Usually I would not look and DH would quietly remove it because as a non-PD adult I genuinely do not care what a gift cost, and think that it's polite not to look at prices. But that kind of subtlety is not allowed when a PD with many histrionic traits is nearby. I usually get either a theatrical throwing of face in hands and a woe-is-me-I'm-useless act, or the loud cackling I-always-do-this-aren't-I-silly act. Both draw attention to the present and me which I'm so uncomfortable with. And risks becoming an anecdote to be repeated to all and sundry with me in the feature role, ugh.