Comparing lives

My husband and I have 3 children. our youngest son is 21 the middle son is 22 years and our oldest is our daughter who is 25. our middle child is living with his girlfriends parents at the moment. He met her whilst he was at university. they want to move in together to a different town eventually and work close to London. he is staying with her family for Christmas which im hurt about because this will be the first year he as ever done anything like this so it will just be our two other children with us. I don't know if its because he doesn't want to be at home because of me or because he just wants to be with his girlfriend this year. he never got me anything for my birthday last month and I felt really hurt. not even a card. he was intouch with my husband on my birthday but did not mention about it. Im sure he knew it was my birthday but just didn't want to contact me. it ruined the day for me because I don't know what I have done wrong. my husband said he would find out from him what's going on but he never bothered to ask him. his girlfriends parents have got lots of money, a lovely home, good jobs, they stay in lovely hotels and go abroad and they only have one child. we have met them once and they seemed ok but I feel we are not good enough because they have everything and we don't. we are privately renting a house which we both regret moving into because it needs so much work done on it and the landlord is not interested in doing much about it so we are looking to move after the 6 months is up. we don't have much money and my husband only works at the moment and I am looking for work. I don't want to see the parent's again but I have a feeling we will be. I feel jealous of there life style and what they have. they both come from London but live in a different town now and they both leave for work at 7am and get back 7pm each night so they do long days and they do this 5 days a week. I know I shouldn't compare there lives to ours but its hard not to. my husband said I shouldn't and why should we compare ours to there's and does that mean that everything we do is not good enough cos of them. I would love to have a life likes there's and they only have one child where's we have 3 so that's a big difference straight away but I just cannot help myself. they took there daughter to the Ritz for her 21st birthday we just took our soon to a reasonably priced restaurant and I feel we have let our children down by not being successful like them. we are going to see our son soon to give him his xmas gift's but I don't want to see the parent's so what do we say. our son will say to go into the house but I don't fancy sitting there and seeing her lovely house and thinking of the one we are in because its not as good or will ever be to there's. do we tell our son that we don't feel we fit in with them or do we pretend and say we are both ill and don't want to spread it to them. It's getting me down knowing they have everything whilst we are struggling all the time and we have a hard life and they don't.

Well, I think that you should understand and accept the fact that money does not always bring joy and happiness. Do you think that they live a happy and healthy life from 7 a.m. to 7pm… They may have a lot of luxurious items and what not but that doesn’t always mean they are internally happy with their lives. They clearly make big sacrifices by having to work such long hours full-time. Also, I want to mention that you can’t compare your life to your son girlfriend house. It is not something that you should compare and instead I would be happy and grateful that someone he loves has two hard working parents that work very hard to produce the best life for their daughter just like you do for your 3 sons. I think you might be getting a little “fuzzed up” on the purpose here. Your son might also just have a lot going on and maybe he did forget since you never stated in your response why he forgot or did not give you anything. Also, it doesn’t look like it’s a priority in getting the answer as well. I think you should talk to him yourself and ask him. I have learned that there will always be someone that makes more money than me for the rest of my life but I also know that there are people that make less money than me that are much older than me or less fortunate than me as well. We have to be grateful and accept what we have rather than what we don’t have. I hope this helps in any way possible and Good Luck!!! !!!