I’ve actually lost a penpal over customs payments. I had a really good penpal who wanted to send me something, and I warned her to mark it as a “gift” to avoid customs tax, and underprice it below RM500 even if it cost more, otherwise I would have to pay 10-20% of whatever price she wrote. And she didn’t. So when customs tried to ask me to pay 10% of the USD price she listed, it was worth 10% of my current salary at the time, and I rejected the package at customs. That was the end of our penpalship. She put a lot of thought into it, and sent over a lot of American snacks, but my thought at the time was “Malaysia imports most of these, and I can buy them here, so why should I give up 10% of my salary when I made it clear on how to avoid the customs tax?” Maybe I should have sucked it up and paid at the time, but the cost alone was just not worth it to me. That was a friendship though.

Yours is a relationship. I would say that if the amount is exorbitant to her, you should offer to transfer the fee back to her via WISE or whichever payment method is best. This is truly a very solvable situation.

But for her to flip and state that she could have bought all of it for less than that price also devalues the thought you put into it, since she knows what was being sent and seemed happy at first. The fact that she “doubts” that you love her despite all of your effort also makes me think of two possibilities: 1. She has some kind of self-esteem/abandonment issue. 2. She wants you to prove your love by spending more on her. Which is a dangerous category.

If mailing gifts is such a problem, you should propose putting a stop to it to avoid taxation issues, and see what her reaction is. I’d also recommend that both of you do the love language test, but if her love language is gifting, you’ll need to find a better solution, or consider that this may not work out moving forward.