Let’s face it, gift giving is a chore for most men. After the lustful glow of a relationship has worn off (2 weeks), men find little joy shopping for acceptable gifts, purchasing them, and giving them to their girlfriends. This is because men know that, in reality, gift giving is the danegeld we pay to women to put off for a few months any soul-searching emotional meltdowns. Fact: Men could do without the obligations, crass consumerism and bogus bonhomie of the holidays entirely as long as the heavy drinking and eating weren’t scotched.
In this spirit, here is a guide for getting your girl the optimal (and by “optimal”, I mean “most likely to secure you an eggnog-slicked blowjob) gift this joyous Christmas season. (This guide applies as well to you lonely revelers of also-ran holidays like Hanukkah and Eid. Kwanzaa is too silly for consideration.)
The quality and type of optimal gift to give will depend on the momentousness of the holiday or occasion being celebrated and the seriousness of the relationship you have with the girl at the time of the holiday. Generally speaking, birthdays and anniversaries require more romantic, thoughtful gifts, while Christmas and its spin-offs are a time to indulge your inner child on gifts that are fun and show some of your personality. In short, romantic gifts showcase your attentiveness to what she wants, while fun gifts showcase your creativity and aspects of your personality. Christmas is usually more fun to shop for gifts because of this reason; expectations are mercifully constrained, and you can chill out free from the pressure of finding that perfect engraved bracelet which says “I love you when I’m plundering your body”.
To help the gift-buying process along, think of the optimal gift not as a gift to her, but a gift to you — the gift of ensuring that she will put out for another three months, hassle-free.
The Chateau Gift-Buying Guide
If she is a mistress:
Something perishable, like a dinner or bouquet of flowers. You don’t want evidence of your infidelity lingering on either you or her.
Upside: Keeps her expectations low. If you give her expensive stuff she’ll assume you’re thinking of leaving your wife to be with her.
Downside: A mistress always has you by the balls, unless you have managed the trick of persuading your wife to the spiritual benefits of polygyny. Go cheap on the gifts and she may show up at your front door at 2Am with a bag of candy.
If she is a Christmas Eve one night stand:
If she is three-week old fresh pussy:
Be careful! Many a man has learnt* a painful financial lesson when his loins were in charge of his credit card. Best bet: don’t buy the potential slut anything. At three weeks, she could still be fucking her ex, or flirting with the bartender she thinks she has a shot with. If you must buy something, make it goofy and cheap, like a collection of Silly Bandz. A goofy cheap gift says all the right things to a girl who is still feeling you out for your alpha cred. She will know you aren’t emotionally invested in her, and this will kickstart her hamster to raise your value and spin a storyline that has her chasing you, instead of the other way around.
*Last night I bangt a girl.
If she is a fling (you’ve been dating for fewer than three months, and plan to keep it that way):
For birthdays, tickets to a show for a band both you and her like. Use her as a pawn to flirt with hipster chicks at the show.
For Christmas, a scarf and a bottle of Chivas. Drink until she’s hot and/or interesting.
If she is in the three to four month limbo between a fling and a girlfriend (and you’re not sure if she’s the one):
For birthdays, tickets to a show for a band she likes but you don’t necessarily like. Use the flirting hipster chicks as pawns to raise her sexing temp.
For Christmas, a stuffed animal with a homemade card (illegibly written) tucked into its arm. Feeling extra generous? Wrap the scarf you bought for her around the stuffed animal’s neck.
If she is your girlfriend, i.e. #1 crush:
For birthdays or anniversaries, bracelet or necklace (stay away from rings; the association is too strong) if you are a beta. A puppy if you are a greater beta. A hot cocktail dress with accompanying lingerie if you are an alpha. A homemade mix tape if you are a super alpha. Play her a song you wrote on your guitar if you are an emo alpha. Airline tix to Kiev, if you want to give her a gift that you’ll both enjoy.
For Christmas, ditch the conventional trinkets of romantic servitude in favor of fun and funny. Buy her a print of that awesome Kramer painting. Frame some of your best photos to hang on her wall (this serves the insidious dual purpose of continually reminding her of you should you two break up). Get her a collection of movies you know she likes. Or Wii foreplay games. Buy her some wicked “Eyes Wide Shut” masks for her bookshelf (or bedroom play). One caveat: Never buy a girl shoes. You won’t get it right, and she’ll resent you for robbing her of a chance to go shoe shopping.
Gift giving for girlfriends is a minefield. If you play the long game, you don’t want to make a habit of giving expensive or hard-to-acquire gifts, because that will raise her expectations and thus make her intolerable to live with two years down the road. Multiply her insufferable entitlement complex by ten should you make the mistake of marrying her. Remember that a girl will evaluate not just your worth, but her own worth as well based on the priciness or thoughtfulness of the gifts you give her.
Maxim #87: The more expensive or thoughtful the gift you give a girl, the greater the risk that she will subconsciously begin to think she is too good for you.
Corollary to Maxim #87: If you are dating out of your league, or you are dating a young hot babe in her prime, you should do the exact opposite of what everyone will tell you to do — *don’t* buy her expensive gifts. Be particularly wary of advice from women. No woman in the world is capable of thinking clearly or impartially on the matter of “acceptable” levels of male provisioning. Even old, fat hausfrau hogs will expect mountains of jewels in offerings from men.
Set the alpha tempo early by dispensing your gifts infrequently and unpredictably. Avoid buying big ticket items like jewelry or superlatively romantic emblems like large bouquets of roses if she still has high dating market value. (One rose is cool, though.) Grateful men give expensive gifts, but grateful men don’t excite women. Be an ungrateful man. Be a Skittles man this holiday season.
A girl who has options simply will not appreciate expensive gifts like a girl who is desperate for your love. In fact, expensive, ego-stroking gifts can shut off the tingle spigot and spur a girl to reevaluate her options on the open market. The way to nip this female neural compulsion in the bud is to frequently pull up short in your indicators of affection for her. An example of an excellent HIOA (humbling indicator of affection) is a pair of tube socks stuffed with Hershey kisses.
If she’s your aging wife in a country with divorce laws that favor the husband:
Nothing.
If she’s your aging wife in the USA:
Refinance the mortgage to buy her the moon.
If she is girl #3 in your harem:
Nothing. If you can swing an open harem without consequence, profligate gift-giving will only undermine your hard work. Instead, treat your girls to what they always get — the gift of your jackhammer. (Exception: when building a harem, it sometimes helps to play one girl off another by selectively giving them gifts of varying quality.)
If you’re trying to dump her:
A toaster oven. Or kitty litter if you’re a cheap bastard.
