All I Want For Christmas is...Stuff?

Match.com just published it's Top 10 Romantic Gestures of All Time. Regardless of how you feel about Ben's jewel-encrusted toilet seat for J.Lo, Eric Clapton's stealing another rock legend's wife with a song, or one inventor's painfully practical In-Sink-Erator to his dish-dutiful wife, a gift can says a lot about a relationship.

At the time, Richard Burton's multi-million-dollar rock for Liz Taylor may have made many a woman wish he was her knight in shining platinum gold armor. But once they split up, it might be called sadly trying. On the flip side, I know women who pamper their men with niceties often make me wonder if they're playing girlfriend or mother.

So what do people really want from eachother? Like sex, a gift given that is disproportionate to the intimacy that actually exists in a relationship can often be used as a pretense of true love, or even worse, manipulation. Rather than letting a person in and learning to care and even suffer with us (or vice versa), we are content to just convince others -- and ourselves -- that we look loved by what we've gotten. Whether Richard actually loved Elizabeth Taylor either time he married her, or Ben actually gave those rocks to Jennifer as a declaration of how much he truly valued her, I don't know. But dramatic fallouts that rivaled the size of their gifts make me wonder if these were more instances of gift mistaken for love.


Square-cut and pear-shaped are nice, but only a person is a best friend.