Encumbrance

Gibbs always had an encumbrance of some sort financially. With 3 ex wives, it felt like he’d never get rid of alimony. He was always happy when an ex re-married as it meant his spousal support stopped.

Even before his exes, he’d gotten used to penny pinching not out of choice, but out of necessity. As a marine, he never had time to spend money as he was practically always on duty and if he wasn’t he was in a country where he couldn’t very well spend his money on anything fun.

After he married Shannon, his money got spent more, but that was because Shannon spent it while he was away on either herself or their daughter. So even then he never felt unencumbered. In fact, it seemed as if he’d never get rid of encumbrances.

When he left the marines it was because he’d lost his wife and daughter. While he did go on crazy spending sprees it was mostly alcohol as he attempted to drink himself to death in a bad attempt at coping with their death. And by the time he leveled out, he had spent so much that he again was buried under financial encumbrances.

He returned to his penny pinching ways as he started NCIS and finally got a bit of a support group despite his desire to keep everyone away as an attempt to get his feet back under him. A lot of his bastard ways had happened accidentally or on purpose related to the fact that he had never been without an encumbrance of some sort. It wasn’t until Tony joined his team that he could even begin to see that it was possible to not be buried under financial encumbrances and other encumbrances even when they were there. He watched DiNozzo at first to see how he worked, but then he saw how little DiNozzo let an encumbrance affect him and he was a bit jealous wishing he could feel that way.

He continued watching DiNozzo in hopes of learning how to deal or get rid of encumbrances in this manner. Of course, how pleasing DiNozzo was to the eyes didn’t hurt either. However, he refused to tell DiNozzo about his feelings. He claimed it was due to rule 12, but it was really that he didn’t want to burden Tony with his financial and emotional encumbrances that he’d never conquered in his mind.