Reply to s/o Gift giving as a form of aggression

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When I turned 40, my mom gave me a gift card to J.Jill, a store I have literally never shopped at and associate with much older women. She had never purchased anything from there for me before and I'd never mentioned I like that store or wanted anything from there. She also usually doesn't give me gift cards. It 100% felt like my mom saying "hahahaha now you're old." I wasn't even feeling worked up about turning 40 but I recall that gift really feeling like an attack.

Or maybe she is just getting older. She's always been pretty clueless about my approach to fashion/style (she's given me many clothes over the years that just have nothing to do with how I actually dress). Maybe it wasn't passive aggressive at all and she just thought I'd like something from that store. I don't know. Maybe my reaction was entirely about my ambivalence about turning 40 and the gift was actually just a nice gesture.

Maybe.[/quote]

I personally wouldn't have gotten upset over this and I think you were reading waaaay too much into it.

I would bet your mother (who was in her 60s?) probably thought J.Jill was actually a store that appealed to "younger" women and was not a dig at you at all. Giving you a gift card meant she wasn't sure what you would want and was being considerate, IMO.

If she wanted to be nasty, she could have easily bought you a pair of orthopedic shoes and put a bow on them. Now that's passive-aggressive. [/quote]

PP here. I think it's honestly a toss up as to whether she meant it passive aggressively. I know my mom -- she 100% has a streak in her like OP is describing with her mom and sister. Like my mom absolutely intentionally buys gifts to annoy other people, like buying loud toys for her grandkids and cackling about how it will irritate their parents (whatever I just take the batteries out of those toys). So this is an impulse she has. I also don't think she thinks J.Jill is a "young" store -- it's where she shops. She is in her 70s.

But also, yeah, she's in her 70s. Maybe she was being clueless. It's impossible to tell. Obviously my reaction had to do with negative feelings I was having about getting older that maybe I hadn't been admitting to myself. But then, isn't it funny how my mom is so good at provoking stuff like that? In a way that no one else in my life can?

I think buying your daughter orthopedic shoes with a big bow on them for her 40th birthday would not be passive aggressive. If done meanly, it would just be aggressive-aggressive. If done clearly as a joke, it could just be funny. The whole problem with passive aggressive gift givers is that there is always this possibility that they just didn't know. Like for OP's mom's neighbor, she probably can't say for certain that OP's mom is buying the ugly scarves on purpose to be mean. Like my mom, OP's mom is an older lady and the neighbor might think "well she just doesn't know what else to give me" or "maybe she forgot I said they weren't really my style." That's the hallmark of passive aggression -- it's just under the radar enough that there is plausible deniability. And in fact very passive aggressive people are very good at utilizing this out when confronted about their behavior. When you have someone like this in your family, you become very accustomed to this pattern. But it doesn't mean that didn't do it to hurt you. It just means you can never prove it.[/quote]

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