Christmas Gift Rejected

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I have an older friend with (I think) undiagnosed ASD. I have known him for about six months and he lives a distance away. He'd seen and admired an object that I had crafted and said he would like one for himself. So, I made him something similar to give as a Christmas gift. It took a couple of weeks and a lot of effort to make and I mailed it to him last week.

Today, I received a text message from him. He hasn't said thank you, just says he doesn't want it. What he wants to do is to send it back to me or donate it to charity (a thrift shop). I tried to call him to talk but he won't pick up the phone. Millions of unwanted Christmas gifts must be given and received every year and end up donated to charity but without the giver knowing so that feelings are not hurt. But this is something he asked for, something I made for him because I care about him and the rejection of it stings.

What am I missing here?

I think it was crass for the person to reject your gift like that.

You put your heart into it, so you could make the other person happy.

This person seems too so-called practical for my taste.

I wish it wasn't the person's prerogative to reject the gift--but it is the person right (alas).

This is why we have social rules, so people won't feel bad.

Please don't let this ruin your Christmas.

Your friend doesn't appreciate you.
Wish I had a friend like you.
You sound very creative
and more than that,
very kind.

...

For him to take the time to text you and say he didn't want the gift and wants to return it or give it to charity and now doesn't answer his phone tells me he's mad about something. Doing what he did is going out of ones way to be rude. You may not even think you did anything wrong, but something has happened. Right now I have a friend who won't talk to me either and I have no idea what I did wrong and I found out she was rude to my Mama so she's on my"S" list. .

This lady did nothing wrong. The guy went off the deep end for some reason.

I would bet Asperger's has nothing to do with it. Aspergians are not this unappreciative.

I once bought a girlfriend a gold bracelet. She threw it back at me saying it wasn't "real gold." The liquor really got to her, and made her paranoid. Instead of coffee, she used to drink wine every morning.

If he's Aspie for sure, then you're probably right Mr. K. If he's NT, then he's po'd about something.

If he's po'd about something, it's all in his head. Aspie or no Aspie.

What did the guy want--a Ferrari? LOL

Maybe he feels bad that he now "owes" you a gift and has been "trapped" into an obligation to reciprocate. Obviously this is not the case, but people often concoct weird situations in their own heads that have little to do with the actual event that triggered it. Since he won't even talk to you now, write him an email and ask him to explain himself. Apparently he feels no obligation to follow normal social conventions of not behaving rudely/inconsiderately, so don't bother with them yourself when dealing with him. He is the best source of an explanation for this behavior.

The O.P. brought back a bittersweet memory from high school where one of my best friends gave me back the XMAS gift I sent him claiming he "already had that record". After that I never offered any more physical gifts to him, though we did stay friends and even saw each other again a couple of years ago after nearly three decades. The only good result of his action was that it gave me the opportunity to "regift" the album to someone else.

Thank you to everyone who has replied to my post. In the short time I have known my friend, I have learned that he doesn't explain his actions and that he is very prone to “shutting down” if he is annoyed about something. A couple of weeks have passed since the incident. At the time, I left him a phone message saying I was disappointed but to give the gift away if he really doesn’t want it. The silence continues and I think I have to accept that he regards our friendship as over. I guess I shall never know why and must learn to let it go.

Wishing forum members a very happy Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you, too.

This thread made me think about one of the worst, but also most heartwarming gifts I've ever gotten. I guess the opposite of your situation. A close family member and good friend of mine is an aspie and we were both teenagers when this gift happened to me, so it was at least 20 years ago. She got me this plastic tree Christmas tree with gum drops that you could fix to the ends of the limbs. And then I guess, have a gum drop whenever you were feeling like one? Usually she and I got each other socks, so this gift was strange.

At the time, I was like, what IS this?? But years later I still remember it affectionately. Christmas gifts are like that. Sometimes you put a lot of thought into it and sometimes you just grab something out of frustration (I think that's what the gum drop tree was).

It sucks that your gift that should have been a hit wasn't received too well. You might want to tell your friend that directly, if you think you can do it in a nice way.

Your friend is being rude. It's never okay to reject a gift and this is why. You are supposed to like the gift. If someone didn't like my gift, I probably would never give them anything ever again. Then they will wonder why they never get anything from me. It's the thought that counts.

True. The best advice is still the same as it was way back in 1965...

It sounds like you have done everything that you can and you're in the process of moving on. Autism or not human nature is a funny thing. Usually when someone ignores you like that it means they have lost their interest because you did something that was offensive to them. This is even the other party thinks they are doing something innocent.

While it's true that shutting down is a part of autism, people start giving you the awkward silence because of two reasons

1. They are afraid to hurt your feelings because they are too bothered/angry/ frustrated etc.
2. They are scared about leading you around if they continue to call

I have never understood that kind of behavior personally. I think it's even meaner to ignore someone suddenly unless the other party is doing something really inappropriate.