OPINION: Flaunting the watch you’ve just given your partner on social media makes you look like a jerk

Luke Benedictus

To celebrate the birthday of his fiancee, Dee Devlin, Conor McGregor recently posted an Instagram snap of the couple inside a Patek Philippe boutique. On his partner’s wrist, conspicuously pointed at the camera, was a diamond-set Aquanaut Luce that the caption implied was a birthday gift. This was a fairly standard flex for McGregor, a man who’s hardly renowned for his humility or discretion. But more and more people seem to be doing this exact same thing, using social media to flaunt the expensive watches they’ve given to their partners.

Admittedly, a watch can make an ideal present for your significant other. Not only is a watch both practical and luxurious, it’s an intimate item that’s worn next to the skin day-in, day-out. If you really want to crank up the emotional value, you can go further still, and have the watch engraved with a meaningful inscription. So, yes, giving your beloved a nice watch can be a winning move. Posting about your lavish gift, however, cheapens the act.

Yes, everyone knows that Instagram is primarily a medium for showing off. We accept that what it offers is a artfully choreographed version of an individual’s ostensible “life”. But even in this airbrushed world of photogenic labradoodles and #couplesgoals, posting about the fancy watch you’ve given your partner isn’t a great look.

That’s because essentially what you’re doing here is flaunting your generosity and giving yourself a hearty round of applause, or at the very least a ‘self high-five’. Aside from advertising the depth of your wallet, you’re loudly trumpeting what a kind-hearted and devoted partner you are. (For a prime example go to the video below for the presentation of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak.)

Privately showering your partner with thoughtful gifts is one thing. It’s another to use her wrists to enhance your own social currency. Yes, men have exhibited their wives in public as a sign of status since the dawn of time. But the notion of the “trophy wife” is no longer a positive thing due to all those objectifying connotations.

The French anthropologist Marcel Mauss once claimed that “there is no such thing as a free gift” because under the surface all presents carry their own sub-texts and agendas. Certainly, when a man buys his partner a fine watch, ulterior motives tend to be rife.

Example? Buying your wife a Datejust of Oyster Perpetual might be a tactical move to improve your standing with your AD and give yourself a better chance of moving up the waiting list for that Daytona. Or you may spend big on a birthday watch for your spouse to justify that incoming splurge for yourself.

I certainly had an ulterior motive when I bought my partner her last watch. While I’ve grown quite fond of her over the years (she’s a good wife), she has no concept of time and is constantly running late. A nice watch, I hoped, might  improve this lack of punctuality.

That didn’t work, of course. Yet if I try and unpack my motivation further then things get murkier still.  We both like the 1960s Jaeger LeCoultre piece that she now wears. But I now realise that I’d inadvertently chosen a watch that very much reflects my own preferences (vintage, understated, a little bit quirky). So was I using my wife’s watch as a glorified accessory to project my own half-baked aspirations?  That’s probably one for my shrink.

Of course, I get that if you like watches, then it’s natural that you’ll get a kick out of your partner wearing a nice one, too. So feel free to indulge your better half and buy her that Cartier for Christmas. Just think twice about posting all about it on social media. It might not reflect on you quite as well as you think.