Carolyn Hax: They didn't make daughter's guest list, but could have sent a gift

Washington Post

a day ago

Dear Carolyn: My daughter got married a year ago. It was an immediate-family-only affair, which is how she wanted it, since even then the guest list was over 100 people.
Many of my friends did send my daughter a gift anyway — not a huge gift, but at least a nice acknowledgment and gift card, and it was so thoughtful. I'm disappointed in two very close friends who didn't do anything and am having trouble getting over it. I have sent very generous gifts to their kids. One of the weddings we couldn't attend and the other we did. They contributed $35 to a shower gift.
I know it isn't a tit-for-tat thing and I know the rule of thumb is that if you aren't invited, then you aren't required to send a gift, but — they've known my daughter forever. And having given their kids really nice gifts, I would have expected them to do something. What do you think?
— Disappointed
Disappointed: I think there is no way to indulge this line of reasoning without emerging worse for it on multiple levels — while having nothing whatsoever to gain.
You introduce judging, cherry-picking, materialism and petty bean-counting (just for starters) into what you describe as 'very close friendships' for what — a few hundred bucks on a gift card?
I've seen some wastefulness around weddings, but this might take the bouquet.
It's like giving your 'very close friends' a friendship test they're never made aware they're taking, without benefit of study materials, and there's no objective basis for the right answers.
I can see, to be fair, how it makes sense in your mind. When their kids got married, whether you attended or not, you made an effort (in dollars, and I'm sure in thought) — so where is the friends' effort in this analogous situation?
But I also have one idea how they might see it: It's not just that they 'couldn't attend' your daughter's wedding, they weren't invited. After they watched her (helped her?) grow up. So it seems as if it's not analogous. You assured them it was immediate-family only, no doubt, but maybe that was tough for them to square with photos of 100-plus(!) people.
In other words, maybe you didn't pass their double-secret friendship test that you didn't know you were taking, weren't allowed to prepare for and were graded on subjectively.
If they value inclusion above gifts as markers of enduring friendship, then they could be carrying around their own year-old hurt feelings about this. To no one's benefit in this case, either, also to be fair.
In which case, why are you off the hook for stiffing them on an invitation but they're not for stiffing your kid on a gift? Cheap shots all around! Kidding, nothing was owed except benefits of doubts. (Remember, gifts aren't ever required, or else they're fees, not gifts.)
I've got alternate theories, too: They were low on cash; they've always been more about giving time, effort and meaning than material gifts, and you lost sight of that; they're over in Miss Manners' queue, asking whether, ah, that shower invitation without a wedding invitation was a faux pas?; this is part of a larger drifting-apart in your friendships and it took a gift imbalance for you to notice; they thought the shower gift covered it and would be stunned you're so enduringly bent over this.
A common thread in all of these is that prosecuting your snit about the gift, even just in your heart, takes you no.whe.ruh.
If these friends are a longtime, treasured, integral part of your life, then have the courage to live that fully — without small-dollar scorekeeping toward perfect reciprocity.
If instead you have a genuine emotional obstacle to doing so, of which the non-gift is simply a visible sign, then that would explain why you can't get past it — and that's the thing you address with your friends. But with the gift as one piece of evidence, not as the central point.