I am writing this because this situation has bothered me for YEARS and I’ve always wondered if I’m wrong in this situation.

I became friends with a small group. We did things together almost every night of the week. I had never dated anyone but they did and their partners joined our small group. Totally fine with me as they were cool people. The more the merrier! About me - I’ve never been big on gifts. I like buying them for others but hate receiving them. I’m also not big on spending a huge amount for gifts. I think quality and thoughtfulness means so much more than $$. I would prefer a batch of cookies or a homemade scarf over a diamond ring any day. My friends still lived at home and paid no rent so their money was their own. We all worked full time jobs. I also lived at home still but I had to pay rent, car payment, insurance, and if my parents covered anything like car repairs, I had to pay them back. So I didn’t have as much disposable income as my friends. But I got by and we had very active social lives. We did a lot together and had bunch of fun. I realized pretty quickly that for birthdays they went ALL OUT. I mean spending several hundred dollars each for the birthday person. Totally blew my mind and was completely foreign to me. I tried to keep up as best I could. As Christmas approached, I started worrying about affording gifts for all of them at one time as well as my family. Especially since I knew they would again spend several hundred on each person. I started floating the idea of instead of gifts, how about we do an experience instead? I didn’t care if they still wanted to buy for each other. They just didn’t need to buy for me or I for them as I would prefer doing something together versus actual gifts. They agreed. I had a feeling they would’ve preferred gifts but I just could not swing it with their expectations.

A few weeks before Christmas, I met someone. They were my first date and eventual boyfriend. He didn’t join our group as I was still feeling out this new relationship. I had no expectation to exchange Christmas with him as we had just met. However, I found out by accident that he had bought me a VERY expensive Christmas gift that was something I had wanted forever. How he realized that, really impressed me. It was something I would never ask for. I also found out that he usually spent Christmas alone as his family lived away from him. No tree. No meal. No gifts. Nothing. This made me very sad as I love Christmas. So since he got me a gift, I thought I should get him some to open on Christmas Day. I didn’t really have the money so I used my credit card to get him some things he could really use. New shoes, cologne, and some clothes including some tshirts of his favorite team. Wrapped them all up so he had things to open. I personally didn’t see anything wrong with that. Unfortunately my friends became very angry that I bought gifts for him even though I just met him but I didn’t get them gifts for Christmas . (We did have an outing together instead) I explained about him getting me a gift and the fact he would be alone. They didn’t care. If I could buy him gifts, then I should buy them ones as well. I was shocked. I tried to get them to understand. I wasn’t expecting gifts from them or anything. I didn’t get any from them so this floored me. I thought it was honestly very childish and immature. To me they were throwing a temper tantrum. But I didn’t want to lose our friendship so I tried apologizing and explaining but they wouldn’t hear it. They ended their friendship with me and we haven’t spoken since. I’m still to this day so confused and have wondered, was I in the wrong here?