My in-laws think we're too rich to need presents. I don't know how to handle Christmas

My little family of three is not rich, but we are richer than my in-laws. As my husband and I developed our careers, his parents and sister let their resentment grow quite openly with them. Their perception doesn't quite match reality: we live in an expensive neighborhood and while we don't value our jobs and the training we took to get them, we've sacrificed a lot and worked long hours. as they made conscious choices to work fewer hours, share child care, live in a rural setting, and set different priorities.

They now seem to think we're so rich that we don't need Christmas or birthday presents, and I see my husband is upset. For his birthday, he received nothing from his sister and a simple card with just a signature from his parents.

I know my "love language" is to give gifts. Not about the prizes, but about the thought and care behind the perfect gift: a handmade scarf, a fun-named soup packet, a childhood toy, nail polish in their favorite color. To me, not buying a gift for a loved one's birthday seems unthinkable, no matter their age or financial status, or my age or financial status.

I really don't know how to handle Christmas, or address my husband's feelings about it. It all has to do, I think, with their assumptions about our finances. But it's not about finances for me and I can see it's not for my husband either. Seems like the richer they think we are, the less capable they are of loving us.

Eleanor says: The first thing to notice here is that your loved ones might react not only to perceived wealth levels, but also to perceived class.

Different members of the same family may end up occupying different class brackets (or appear at). It's not just about "what's in the bank", but also about a whole interplay of knowledge and expectations. What do our houses look like? What occupies our free time? What do we wear, drive, eat and buy? How do we talk? Where do we feel most comfortable? These are all ways to fall into class brackets without even knowing we are.

It's easy for families to feel divided and resentful of each other when their Answers to these questions begin to diverge. What, you think you're better than me? What, you think I'm up myself?

If it looks like it might be happening to your family, the answer "we don't have a lot of money !" isn't actually a defuse - because the gap may not just be about your capital estimates. It can also be a suspicion on both sides that the other is privately judging them for where they ended up. When a child deviates significantly from their parent's classroom or lifestyle, it's extremely common for parents to experience this change as some kind of rejection.

So what can you do? ? A starting point might be to temper some of your resentment about their resentment. I'm not saying your feelings are misplaced - they could be entirely appropriate. But sometimes those cycles only break when one of us decides to put aside the feelings we're allowed to have.

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It can help to imagine everything we don't know. You might be right that your in-laws made "conscious choices" to "prioritize differently," but what do we know about why they made those choices? Or how they feel about them now? Could the fact that you chose to live in an expensive neighborhood seem like a gripe to them that they didn't?

Or could they feel unable to find a gift you might want, given their feeling of a lifestyle gap? Don't they want to try for fear of being wrong? Buying your husband something that reveals they no longer understand him?

Your examples of...