When we think about the best Valentine’s Day gifts, a bouquet of flowers, a fancy dinner date, or a romantic getaway might spring to mind. But, of course, everyone’s definition of “the best” varies greatly.
Instead, some people receive what could be described as the “worst” Hearts’ Day present. These may range from cheap cards to hair trimmers, an ironing board, and a piece of meat (yes, you read that right).
These examples are responses to a Reddit thread from years ago, which becomes relevant around the days leading up to February 14th each year. Scroll through and see which ones you can learn from.
#1
I saved a patatoe in the freezer that was the perfect shape of a heart. I put it in there in June for February. When I got it out and proudly gave it to my wife it literally turned black and started leaking juices in front of her. In theory it was cute in practice it was like a death threat.
Image credits: W00dzy87
#2
My ex gave me a stuffed dog teddy bear, which I thought was strange because I am 100% a cat person. There was a little card pinned to its ear which had been signed "Love Sara". He regifted an old vday gift...
Image credits: RedEyeCodeBlue
#3
A nice dinner at a steakhouse.
She's vegan.
Image credits: pickle0
#4
Well my husband two years ago got me a scale for Christmas. It was my big gift. It connected via Bluetooth to an app on my phone. Now I will say that I am forever trying to lose a few pounds, but that gift stung a little.
Image credits: ophelias32
#5
I bought my wife a microwave for our first Valentine's day back in 2005...she had just moved into her new place and needed a microwave...not sure why everyone didn't see how thoughtful I was being
Image credits: RealAnthonyCamp
#6
A scrapbook containing "all your happiest memories together," that when you open it turns out to be blank.
Image credits: BosqueBravo
#7
Candy with walnuts in it. Anaphylaxis - take her breath away.
Image credits: Puterman
#8
I bought an ex gf one of every Valentine's Day gift; bear, candy, lingerie, wine, balloons, all of it. She got me a turtle that sings "Can't Hurry Love". Took me a while to get that hint.
Image credits: AMontyPython
#9
He sent me a copy of the King James Bible. Because I was Catholic and my bible was 'wrong.'.
Image credits: helmkamptk421
#10
My dad gave my step mom a toilet seat once for Valentine's Day. He genuinely thought he had the best gift ever. This happened over 5 years ago and we still laugh at him about it
EDIT: it was the most generic toilet seat ever. Not even one of the ones that go down slowly.
Image credits: makingmc
#11
My mother lived in a tiny apartment with her friend while she worked in a tiny flower shop. Both of them worked long hours trying to make it, her a florist wanting to open her own place, her friend a starving photographer.
My dad raced motorcycles for a living back then and told my mother that he just won a big race and wanted to take her out to a nice dinner on Valentines Day and he has a gift for her that will he knows she will love. So naturally, my mother was sure he was going to propose.
After a great dinner at a very nice restaurant, he told her to hold out her hand and close her eyes for her gift. She stuck out her hand, palm down. He then turned her palm up and slapped a giant smoked summer sausage (salami) in it. Back then you bought that s**t in the mall and it was expensive. He literally said, "You and Bridgett can eat off of this for a week!!"
After she left crying, he got the hint. A month or two later, he showed up at the flower shop and order tulips from my mother. She, thinking "who the hell is he ordering tulips for??" told him that they were sold out. He then got on one knee, ring in hand, and asked, "Well, then, can I have yours?"
Seriously. My damn dad.
Image credits: titney
#12
Herpes, in a five-year marriage, where neither party had it before.
Image credits: JAJAY797
#13
My dad bought my mom a pencil sharpener one year for Valentine's Day. It was the only gift he ever bought her on that day.
My sister and I pestered him relentlessly saying it was weird he had never bought her a Valentine's Day gift, so he listened for what she wanted. She had been complaining that their pencil sharpener was junk, so he went out and bought this really nice electric one (this was in the late 80s, so actually a pricey gift). My mom was SO mad and so he never bought her another Valentine's Day gift again.
EDIT: I just wanted to say my mom isn't a jerk at all. She did apologize later. After 18 years and two kids he for the first time ever got her something on Valentine's Day. She was expecting some romantic gesture and instead got a pencil sharpener. We all think it is hilarious now, but at the time she was confused and a bit let down. She didn't handle it well, but such is life.
This year is their 45th anniversary, so it wasn't that big a deal. It's just a running family joke. Every year on their anniversary my dad gets my mom a rose for each year they have been married, so he's not totally unromantic. Though it costs him about $200+ these days for her massive rose bouquet.
Image credits: gfjq23
#14
A bag to pack your belongings in so you can get out. I literally did this. I broke up with the same guy on valentines day, years apart. The first time was just bad timing, he was just very annoying and we were young teens. The second time was when we were adults. He had cheated on me and so I was already over the whole thing, but we got into an argument the morning of valentines day (seriously telling me I needed to hire a babysitter for my 1 year old so we could go grocery shopping... I don't think so) so I handed him a new bag that he had been wanting and told him to pack his stuff and go. And he did. Goodbye!
Image credits: modestacid
#15
Once I ordered my girlfriend flowers that didn't arrive (or were stolen from the porch), so I gave her the delivery confirmation instead.
It was not as funny as I thought it would be.
Image credits: wacht
#16
When asked what my SO wanted one year, she said she wanted a H2O steamer mop. Cost me about £100 and she got flowers, chocolates and a date night on top of it. But of course, whenever telling the story, it has become the time I got her a mop for Valentine's Day.
Edit: Guys, please. As I said in a follow up post, everything said is in jest. We both laugh about it and I tell the story just as much as she does. Nobody is holding anything over anybody.
Image credits: anon
#17
My girlfriend gave me a pack of cigarettes because I was trying to quit smoking, and she thought it would help me relax.
Image credits: samohkt
#18
"You can go get a new pair of glasses and I'll pay you back." Thanks?
Image credits: SuchANiceGirl
#19
A break up text after hyping your SO for some extravagant gift.
Image credits: jasonhuang717
#20
Last Valentines, MY gf found a sweater that my ex left a long time ago in my closet. I didn´t have the heart to tell her it was from my ex, so I said I had bought it for her for Valentines. She was so suprised and happy, and she absolutly loves the sweater, she wears it all the time...
Image credits: raffagapro
#21
My (then) girlfriend and I met at a Wendy's, which was being torn down for remodeling. My bright idea was to have dinner, a movie, and then swing by the wreckage and take a brick to remind us of the fast food chain that meant so much to us. Yikes.
Bonus! I locked us out of my car and my mother had to come unlock it for us!
Image credits: Weisskopf
#22
In college there was a butcher on campus, near the ag department. It sold all sorts of meat at wholesale.
I bought my girlfriend Bacon for Valentines day. I loved her. I loved Bacon.
Skip to the end we broke up the following March.
Edit: Not going to answer as to which college it was.
Second Edit: I didn't add this before because what I did was dumb. She didn't like bacon. Apparently we had many conversations about it. She explained several times apparently, but I never remembered. I bought bacon as a gag gift because I had to move back home and I thought it would be funny. I was dumb. She was a great girlfriend and is still one of my closest friends.
Image credits: AJM5K6
#23
Girl I started dating a couple of months before Valentine's Day just got out of a long term relationship with her high school sweetheart. I didn't know she was still in contact with him when we were dating. She handed me a cute little bag with candy and a card. As I opened the card and read her pouring out her soul to her ex boyfriend about how much she still thinks about him and loves him. Evidently she made two gift bags. One for me and one for the ex and mixed them up.
Image credits: Shlong_Roy
#24
A s****y attitude. Not really a gift per se, but I don't remember at all what that girl actually got me, I just remember how horrible the day was.
It was my first time having a gf for vday so I was excited; spent some money, made a little scavenger hunt, got her friends in on it; like I really worked hard on it. The whole night we spent together after all of my shenanigans all she did was talk about how much she hates Valentine's Day (this was never mentioned before) because her exes were always rude to her about it or always gave her a bad experience.
It made me feel so terrible. It wasn't even a "oh that was so nice usually I hate Valentine's Day but thanks for the effort". Nope. she was excited for the gifts and everything for all of 5 minutes then back to being all grumpy.
I really felt like I screwed up
Edit: I should clarify; I wasn't bummed that my gifts and such didn't sweep her off her feet, but I was sad because I tried so hard and got essentially tossed in the trash. If your partner is really putting in effort it's nice to at least acknowledge it, even if it's not your cup of tea.
#25
A bowl of those stringy things on bananas.
Image credits: anon
#26
This wasn't a valentines day gift but it's a pretty great example of a gift gone wrong:
A friend of mine had been in a relationship with this girl for a few months when she went to work a summer job in British Columbia (we live in Ontario so this is the other side of the continent). He is a pretty messy guy and doesn't always think things through. His girlfriend is really into fresh produce so he thought it would be nice to send her some as a little surprise. So he went to the farmers market and got a few different types of fresh organic vegetables which he proceeded to send by mail. While he was putting the package together he found a pair of panties in his room behind his bed and thought he might as well return his girlfriend her underwear since he was already sending a package. So off the package goes. By regular post.
So a full two weeks later the package arrives and his girlfriend opens it. Inside she finds an assortment of rotting vegetables and a pair of panties that do not belong to her. Turns out my friend hadn't cleaned his room (or at least behind his bed) since he was seeing another woman. His girlfriend has no idea how to take this - is it some sort of message? They cleared things up in the end but I still like to bring this story up for a laugh now and then.
TLDR: Guy sent his girlfriend rotting vegetables and another woman's panties.
Image credits: pr0foak
#27
My ex hurt me for the first time at a Valentines party in front of all of his friends. He got blackout drunk and tried to fight his roommate, I got in the middle of it to stop it and he grabbed me by the throat and slammed me into a wall while screaming at me not to get in his business and held me there until I nearly suffocated. Everyone at the party was shocked silent. I burst into tears and ran to the back room. I could hear everyone at the party trying to calm him down. His roommate was the only one to come back to comfort me. When my ex walked in he yelled at him and told him to get out (it was a shared bedroom). He kicked him and everyone else out of the house. When I asked to go home it was like a switch flipped and he was his sweet, soft spoken self again. He insisted that we go to bed, I crawled out of bed in the middle of the night and slept in his roommates bed and cried.
The next morning (actual Valentines Day) he woke up and slowly started to remember everything. He got very serious and decided to drive me home. He broke up with me on the way. I could barely speak through the tears, when we got to my apartment I handed him his present and got out of the car. It was just a teddy bear and a card that I had written that I was falling in love with him. He told me years later that he still kept that to remind him how badly he messed up.
#28
My ex gave me a hermit crab one year for valentines day. He said he thought it was a perfect gift for me because it matched my personality. I'm not a hermit, we had just moved across the country, I had no friends and hated my new job. I was very lonely and unhappy. He worked all the time, so I was always alone.
Later that year I found out he had a fling with a coworker. He sent her Elton John tickets & and sent a $300 bouquet of flowers that same Valentines Day.
Good times. Amazing I can tell that story with a sense of humor and not be in jail for murder.
#29
Got my girlfriend a scratching post for her cat... so really, her cat is my Valentine
Keeps the cat's claws out of the couch, though...
#30
A woman I work with just found out her husband and father of her child has been cheating on her for a few months with a coworker. during the ensuing fight, he ruptured an aneurism in his aorta from his chest to iliac crest. Now he's in the ICU, and during which stay my coworker has found on his phone messages from two other people who have also been with her husband in the past few weeks.
In short, the best gift for her this Valentine's Day is explaining to her son why dads in the hospital and why the divorce lawyer keeps coming over. She'll be signing end of life care papers today.
#31
I did this last year...not recommended but I literally just picked up a cheap card and wrote "See last year for further details of my love" Have a good one, love Greg x.
Image credits: DJ_Gregsta
#32
My friend was dating a dude once who showed up to our house and told her had a surprise for her: a bottle of Mountain Dew and a pack of condoms. She did not continue to see that dude.
#33
One year a girl I had been dating for a few years gave me a plaster cast of her foot. I'm not even a foot guy. I tried my best to appreciate it, but it mostly just weirded me out. She painted it this dull gray color. It looked like a dead zombie foot, and it was way way larger than I thought her feet really were. I think she got the idea from Cosmo. I'd say, in general, try to go with a gift from the heart, not something out of Cosmo!
#34
My Dad gave my Mum an Iron and an Ironing board once.
Now they're divorced.
Image credits: KnLfey
#35
5 years ago, I was meeting up with a girl, just as friends, because she'd just gotten out of a long term relationship. I knew she had feelings for me but I was taking it steady, seeing how it went.
My mom really liked her and insisted I buy her things, etcetc and I was like 'no, it's not like that, really. I don't wanna get her hopes up' but my mom being my mom bought her things from me anyway. So I gave them to her and she'd got me a few bits, but she loved the fact I'd made an effort and just presumed I wouldn't have bothered.
We're now engaged and she says that that was the turning point that she knew we'd be together and that I did care about her like that.
She still doesn't know that I didn't buy those things.
#36
My SO was trying to surprise me by saying he made an appointment for us over the Valentine's Day weekend.
My first thought was he scheduled a therapy appointment for us:
"Happy Valentine's Day sweetie, you have problems."
Turns out it was couples massage.
Thank god I got a massage instead of an intervention.
Edit: it was not a serious thought! My SO and I have talked about doing both couples therapy, then doing premarital counseling when we get engaged in the summer!
But come on it's a little funny. What's more *romantic* than surprise counseling?
Image credits: LittleGoblin
#37
I thought I'd be clever and buy a (now)-ex a shake-weight for Valentines day as a gag gift, she kept asking me what I was getting her but I wouldn't say. She did, however, tell me that if I gave her a shake-weight, it would be "seriously not funny". I completely chickened out and returned the weight then cooked her a nice dinner.
#38
My friend's dad got his mom a vacuum cleaner for Valentine's Day once. She had been asking for it and it was an expensive one. Needless to say, it did NOT go over well--she was livid. Don't get a woman anything to do with house cleaning on Valentine's Day boys! His mom won't even talk about it, she's traumatized.
#39
When i was 16 my first boyfriend printed a card for me from the computer which featured a bear firing a machine gun. it was printed in black and white and crumpled in his backpack and i was less than pleased about it.
however, now i think i would enjoy that, so maybe the worst gift would be an actual bear firing a machine gun at everyone you know and love?
Image credits: anon
#40
My dad got my mum a hair trimmer set and photocopied her card she got him one year.
They celebrate their 25th anniversary this year so maybe it's a good one.
Image credits: UnofficialKing
#41
I dumped my gf on Valentine's Day once. We'd been having problems, and she could tell over the phone that I had decided it was over. When I told her we'd talk the next day, she said, "I'm not going to wait until tomorrow just so you can say you didn't dump me on Valentine's Day."
We'll be celebrating our 6th anniversary and second daughter in the next few months... my path was successful, but inadvisable. Also a terrible gift.
Edit: The rest of the story was that we broke up in Feb., and didn't talk for a while. I was dating someone else when we started talking again & finally discussed all the problems that we always said we'd deal with "later". By the end of the summer we were hanging out all the time because we were best friends! New gf did not appreciate this friendship, so that was the end of things with new gf.
My then-ex and I started dating again around September, but we decided that there was no point in screwing around; we knew each other (we had dated 3 1/2 years already), and we either needed to get married or never talk to each other again. I proposed that Thanksgiving, and we got married in April.
So, 14 months from breakup to honeymoon. I just tell people that if there are foundational problems in your relationships, deal with them ASAP; it turns out we had to demolish everything to get to the issues and start over. I'm just glad our story ended up happily!
#42
I got a 15$ gift card to iTunes. Married for 4 years at the time and together maybe together 8. I'm not a fancy girl so I wasn't expecting anything, but he probably grabbed that on his way out of the store. Which makes no sense since I use our shared bank account for my iTunes purchases. And he bought that with said account.
#43
Dated a girl in high school who, months before Valentine's Day, kept talking about how she had the "best gift ever" planned. She talked it up so much for so long and I was so unbelievably excited. She kept talking about how much thought she put into it and how I would love it and love her so much for it. So, I started getting freaked out that my gift wouldn't be good enough. I then kept buying more and more s**t in order to compete with this "amazing" gift I was about to receive.
It was a f*****g Build-a-Bear. I bought her flowers, candy, jewelry, and was afraid I could compete with a *f*****g stuffed bear.* I was so pissed.
Also, my birthday is in March, so for my birthday she got me clothes for said bear. A sweater that said "Happy Bear-thday." Yeah, that was a bunch of s**t.
#44
A regift.
My sixth-grade boyfriend* gave me a jellybean-filled plastic teddy bear with a little balloon attached to it, which I later discovered had been given to him by a girl in another class who had a crush on him.
*this was the 90s so sixth-grade boyfriend meant holding hands and kissing sometimes.
#45
Last year I got a gas station Muffin, that had a bite taken out of it.
Image credits: anon
#46
A diamond ring, then after she opens the box and sees it, you say "oh no, it's not THAT kind of ring. I just thought it was pretty" (mind you this happened on Christmas not valentines.).
#47
Waaaaay back in the day, like sometime in middle school, my boyfriend gave me a new knife to self harm with. I thought it was cool then but now I think "what then actual f**k".
#48
My husband once bought me A $10 Walmart hatchet. We are not outdoorsy people.
#49
I gave a cactus as a gift to a girl when I was in High School. My pitch to her was "I am like a cactus- thorny, rough on the edges, but soft on the inside...." did not work. Lost the girl, ended up in a hospital- it took them three hours to take out all the thorns from my scalp.
#50
Currently single now, but for the last girl I dated funny enough it was flowers. She said they were pretty and all, but since they die fairly quickly they're rather useless.
#51
A dishwasher. Which is silly, because that's just a damn useful thing to have. I think where I went wrong, though, was that I had handed her a mirror with the word "dishwasher" along the bottom in Sharpie.
Image credits: GeneralMalaiseRB
#52
My first pregnancy scare. It was the first relationship for both of us, so we went through a lot together. Actually I'm pretty sure she got her period on Valentine's Day, so I guess that was the best present I ever got.
