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If only I had realized the gift I chose for my husband would be the last, I would have made a different selection. It was March 2020, and on his birthday, I was in Istanbul for work, delivering a talk at a conference and discovering the city. Reflecting on it now, it feels like a time long forgotten, when hugs and shared food were the norm.
As an academic, he could never have enough pens for his work, so I picked one up from a quaint stationery shop. I can’t pretend it was an extraordinary gift, but it was shiny and elegant. Yet, despite being a rollerball, I believed it carried my affection.
The shopkeepers seemed taken aback when I didn’t negotiate the price. I thought the cost represented my love for him. The pen had a lovely writing feel and weight in my hand. Leaving the shop, I was enveloped in the enchanting atmosphere of Istanbul and felt a surge of excitement to return home and present it to him.
Having spent over 25 years together and raised three children, finding meaningful gifts that wouldn’t merely add to our clutter became challenging. Still, that drive to show my love endured. His face filled my thoughts during my quiet breakfasts of olives and sheep cheese overlooking the Bosphorus. “Miss you!” I texted him as I described the vibrant market I had just visited.
Three months later, we found ourselves sitting on a bench in Cambridge when he confessed he no longer loved me in a romantic sense, “not like that.” He mentioned it had been three or four years since he had felt that way. The phrase left me in turmoil. If he didn’t love me, why had he professed his feelings repeatedly? And why was he attempting to kiss me at that moment? Just a week earlier, he had complimented the beauty of my hair in the sunlight. I was left shocked and bewildered. The day had begun like any other, with him bringing me tea in bed. Despite our busy lives, we still shared a home and a bed. It would be a couple more months before he delivered the letter that revealed his love for someone else.
After his departure, I began to reflect on not only our relationship but also on all the items it had produced—emblems of a shattered love. Many household objects seemed enchanted or jinxed to my sorrowful mind. Without his love, the simple pleasure of holding a salad bowl or playing the piano lost its warmth. A heart-shaped tin, in which I had baked our wedding cake, fell from its shelf two months into our separation, as if it were trying to communicate something profound.
I roamed the house, searching for signs that our love was never meant to be. Instead, I stumbled upon countless reminders of how we had celebrated each other’s birthdays and holidays right up to the end. Over the years, he had gifted me beautiful books, fragrant bath products, and even a garden shed for my writing sanctuary, although he ended up using it more than I did. In turn, I had gifted him numerous bottles of Armani Eau Pour Homme, a scent he adored, and I had also given him bourbon, ballet tickets, and a beautiful blue suit that became his favorite. The hanger for that suit in our closet now hung empty, a reminder of what once was.
“His thoughtful nature was one of the many things I adored about him—his loyalty made me feel secure enough to pursue any endeavor, as long as it didn’t involve dancing (a task he detested) or flowers (which triggered his allergies).”
Photo: Courtesy Bee Wilson
The gifts we exchanged were so intertwined with the essence of our lives that I often forgot who gave what. There was the kitchen radio I gifted to comfort him following my miscarriage, during which he mourned the loss of a child that would never be. Or the mezzaluna he gifted me, which we both enjoyed using for our culinary experiments. He sought one out through numerous shops because I, not alone in my admiration for Nigella Lawson, craved a mezzaluna that year.
What I loved about him was his genuine thoughtfulness, alongside the unwavering loyalty that allowed me the freedom to explore life fully, so long as it didn’t involve dance or flowers. His sister once shared that he had never felt desire for another woman during our time together, until now.
People can move on astonishingly quickly; he remarried just 18 months after he left. Meanwhile, the items accumulated over our lengthy marriage remained hard to unravel. I had two cashmere sweaters he gifted me, far pricier than anything I would choose for myself, which I couldn’t let go. Upon arriving to pick up our son, I was surprised to see him still wearing a petrol blue sweater I had bought him for Christmas, despite its unflattering fit. It struck me how he could walk away from our marriage yet still cling to that sweater.
It began to dawn on me that the gifts exchanged within my marriage—both given and received—might not be the straightforward reflections of affection I once believed them to be. Marcel Mauss’s theories supported this idea: he claimed that gift-giving, particularly in tribal societies, can signify power dynamics and competition rather than love itself. He posited that there is often a hidden agenda, even if it’s merely to elicit the other person’s affection.
The first gift I presented to him back in the 1990s was a modest paperback of George Herbert’s poetry. My intention was to wow him with my taste. He had once been my college professor, but by the time I handed him that book, we were already embroiled in a secret romance. I was 19 when we met, and the seven-year age gap seemed insignificant.
When I selected that collection of poetry, we had already fallen in love and were seeing each other clandestinely for several months. I was captivated by Herbert’s lines, thrilling and sensuous despite being a 17th-century priest writing love poems to God: “You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: / So I did sit and eat.”
These verses reminded me of my husband’s invitation to dinner. While most students survived on ramen and toast, he drove me to a nice restaurant with elegant decor. He ordered oysters and steak tartare. My upbringing had filled me with social anxiety and an unhealthy relationship with food, but he provided me with the chance to enjoy life and food once more.
One of the mysteries of marriage is that with an unhappy turn, you may find yourself growing further from your partner instead of closer. Our gifts became mere tokens exchanged between estranged individuals. We were both too polite and skilled at dodging tough conversations that much of our emotional worlds remained hidden from view long before he departed, even though we spoke casually daily. In the years leading up to our separation, purchasing him gifts lost its excitement, transforming into a monotonous chore as I pondered what the point was in acquiring yet another sweater for someone who, like the character in Nina Simone’s song, had little interest in fashion.
A few years before we split, he gifted me a bottle of Jo Malone Pear & Freesia cologne. The scent elicited a visceral dislike. Was this truly how you want me to smell? I questioned. It was a lovely, subtle fragrance, but it didn’t represent me. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued that gifts serve as a means of control over others. Just the idea that he could envision me wearing that scent became suffocating. Desiring to spare his feelings, I thanked him profusely but left the perfume untouched, just as he left the pen I bought him in its box.
When caught in the midst of any situation, some truths elude our grasp, no matter how intently we scrutinize. Gaining perspective requires distance.
<pObserving my situation, I recognized that exchanging gifts was neither necessary nor enough to sustain a marriage. Nearly two years after his departure, I had lunch with a friend on my birthday—someone I had always considered to be in a wonderful relationship. This was a couple that had never stopped sharing laughter, still holding hands like young lovers in their 50s. She confided that her husband had gifted her merely a handful of items over the years since he didn’t see the point. I pondered whether our marriage's longevity might have improved had we granted ourselves that same relief and prioritized our shared laughter rather than preserving the obligatory cycle of exchanges.
Sometimes leaving can itself become a gift; I could sense that it weighed heavily on him, particularly because it meant he was no longer part of the loving family unit we had built together with our children. He wrote to say how challenging the choice had been, particularly given all I had contributed to his life.
Once the tears subsided, one undeniable truth emerged: his absence had also granted me a new life—one in which I could explore facets of myself previously stifled in his company, no matter how much I loved and missed him. The liberation to embrace a more complete version of myself is perhaps the most profound gift one can offer another. I finally experienced the dancing I had longed for over the years, even if it was with others, and enjoyed sociable evenings filled with lively conversations, despite his absence from the dinner table. My cooking grew more adventurous without his lingering preference for certain herbs over others.
I began cultivating roses, reveling in the fact that I was no longer sharing space with someone who could not tolerate them indoors. When I met him for a slightly awkward cup of coffee to discuss the children, I happily mentioned my newfound passion for roses, adding—half-jokingly—that he had bestowed the gift of flowers upon me.
The Heart-Shaped Tin: Love, Loss, and Kitchen Objects
