Today, I want to talk about narcissists and the gift-giving patterns that they have. Narcissists don’t give gifts like normal people. When a normal person gives a gift, they generally think about the person that they are getting it for and they put thought and care and meaning behind every gift. But we have to remember that narcissists don’t really know you. And so they can tend to give really shitty gifts. It’s just a fact. There are very many different spectrums of gift giving in narcissists so I’m going to kind of cover a few that I know. Again, I am not a doctor. I am a recovering narcissist abuse victim or survivor as I prefer to say. But I have had a lot of experience in this particular arena. So I’m going to talk to you about my ex, my second husband crazy, crazy, crazy gifts and overdoing it in every possible way that he could.

It wasn’t just to me or my son. It was to everyone that he knew. He was just this sort of person that gave to everybody and people liked him because of it. He was buying votes. He was buying people’s love by insisting upon buying dinners everywhere we went and it didn’t matter how many people came out, my husband would pick up the check and people got used to it. They just got used to if you go out with him, he’s going to pay and they wouldn’t even bring money because that’s not the way he plays. But it was buying their love, buying their friendship if you think about it. He was an over-giver. He would not buy me one dozen roses. He would buy me five. He would not buy one pair of black shoes. He would buy 10. It was his way to overcompensate for all of the weaknesses in his real soul that he didn’t have.

Now, if I could go back, old Tracy makes excuses for people, this is the pattern that he grew up with. His parents were soulless beings that put him in boarding school when he was young and he really didn’t have a relationship with them until he was older, but their way to compensate for  abandoning him and putting him in a private school was to give him gifts and so he ended up resenting these gifts. He ended up thinking I don’t want these gifts because they’re blood money and at the same time while he was rejecting gifts and to this day he doesn’t like to get gifts. By doing this, this became what he knew and how to make people love you was to buy them things, to shower them with gifts. That’s what he did.

Being bought by a narcissist comes with very many strings attached. I have a prop. We talk about strings attached to these gifts. They are going to use these strings on every gift that they give you. They control you by accepting the gift with a string. They’re growing from it. You have that string attached to you and they attach it and they’ll bring it back whenever they need to. Luxury gifts, big items, they love to give those. This is all talking about my ex and his incredible generosity spirit. It was fake. He used to love to get luxury gifts but he also did luxury gifts for forgiveness gifts. So after he was a shit and a jerk, after I would find girls texting him and saying that they loved him and they missed him so much, when I was on my honeymoon with him, he would have an excuse for that. But then the forgiveness gifts would come if he was mean to my son, if he did something wrong, if he let him get into the things that he had done to him, but he would use gifts. There, one new Apple computer. Now, you like me again. See? That was his trick. And it’s really easy to be swallowed into it.

When I first met him and all of their money, I did not want any gifts. I refused gifts. I wouldn’t even let him pay for dinner. But the more they did it, the more it was in our face, the more I was forced to accept these gifts. And basically, I was turning into a prostitute. So it started out small. How much would she take and how much crap can we give her? And then we buy her an iPad. Would that make her better? They’re testing me and they did test me. So one of the things that really, really bothered me which was a gift-giving thing was my two ex’s family who had accepted my child as their grandson promised us they were very wealthy. They promised us, that they were going to pay for his education. They told us year after year as my normal motherly thing said, “I have to save for education. I need to put money in the bank. I have to save for education.” And they would tell me, “No. Don’t save for education. We’ve got you covered. Don’t save for education. We’ve got you covered.” And so we did it and we live higher on a hog than we should have because we had the safety net. We didn’t have to put money in the bank. And in the end, when they asked for my divorce right after my son graduated from school, they walked away from that education, that promise. They also walked away from the 10 years of saving for my college education for my son because they told me they had it covered. They walked away and they left this child. Ivy League school because that’s all they would pay for the education. He couldn’t go into a normal college. It had to be a tier 1, tier 2 school because that’s what they insist upon and my son chose a very expensive school, a really good school in Washington DC and they walked away.

So they dangled the rope. They dangled it for 10 years. And the strings attached were promises that we were going to get an education because we are family. And yet in the end, we have nothing. They left me and my son no education and just a dangling rope. Go ahead. Fill yourself up. How we were only getting narcissists and gift giving? Beware of it. Beware of promises. Beware of things they give you. There’s always something in it. They want to control you. There’s a lot more we can talk about but it’s always about control. It’s always about them wanting to control you. So be careful of gifts and clothing. Be aware of someone that you’re with that feels that giving is a controlling tool. Watch what they do. It’s okay for people to give you gifts, totally good. Be careful. With the third ex, I had just come out of this relationship. I just came out of this relationship with someone who over-gifted me and it was fake. And I didn’t like it and I was never ever, ever, ever comfortable with it. So I told three ex, I don’t want someone to give me gifts. I don’t need someone to shower me with gifts. I don’t need that. I don’t want it. And so he listened. It was a dream come true for him. He could get his narc supply and he didn’t have to buy me very much except for when he really fucked up. And so be careful what you ask for. But I think someone giving gifts under normal circumstances, it’s a ball of fun. But if there’s conditions, if there are strings attached, beware.