I want to be dating a guy, and for him to randomly show up at my door with flowers. Maybe some nice chocolates too but really just to show up one day, knock at my door and offer me a bouquet of flowers. Perhaps carefully chosen to show that he’s listened to me, but even just a random allotment of roses that he got from Walmart.

Edit: I’m a gay dude btw

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    23 days ago

    Hrm.

    I always thought that … if a gift is given with a transactional expectation, of any kind… its not a true gift, it has strings attached, which are often not verbalized, not made clear or explicit.

    This is transactional, controlling, in a messy way.

    …

    I have always thought that a gift should only be given out of… just genuinely caring, and appreciating a person…

    … if anything, the only non ‘perfectly’ altruistic element of it would be you hoping to experience the other person genuinely enjoying receiving the gift, hopefully not performatively pretending to enjoy it… their joy makes you happy, because in some sense, platonic or romantic, you love them.

    Or I suppose at the very least, ‘I don’t need this anymore, but I know you well enough that I think you would find joy or use in it’.

    I think that that mindset of gift giving is … more healthy, comes from you, is much more in your control, you don’t have any expectation of being able to make them like or love you more… worst that can happen is they don’t really appreciate the gift, or find it offensive?

    And if those latter scenarios occur… well, be ready for that to possibly happen, prior to giving the gift, prior to buying or making it or w/e.

    …

    Its… also not good to try to do the uh, apology gift type of thing either, “I fucked up and was shitty, here’s something to asymmetrically compensate you.”

    Thats also another kind of transactional gift giving.

    …

    I am not sure if this is entirely making sense, but I do think that being more altruistic with gift giving, and … giving gifts you can actually afford to give… doing this is you doing something yourself.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        What is fair?

        Well, I have tried to outline what I think is fair.

        Roughly:

        Be honest with yourself, be honest with your gift reciever, do not have unspoken expectations, expect as little as possible in return.

        To… fully get into some kind of exact and precise description of what constitutes ‘fair’ would be an extremely lengthy discussion revolving around altruism.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism

        This is a brief, and I do mean brief summary of ways people have come at this concept.

        What you are describing as your standard is basically ‘perfect altruism’, which uh, basically does not exist in practice.

        So I am really just trying to say:

        ‘with gift giving, aim to be as close to “perfect altruism” as possible, while realizing that “perfect altruism” is basically impossible… this is a better approach than not even realizing you have unspoken expectations, or knowing you have expectations of the gift reciever, but not making them clear to the gift reciever’.

        Actual perfection is impossible, nonetheless, strive toward it to the best of your ability… while also realizing people can and will disagree about to what extent you are succeeding at that.