Reciprocity differs culturally. My Japanese family get very uncomfortable if they receive gifts without having any prepared in return, and there's a sense of st

Reciprocity differs culturally. My Japanese family get very uncomfortable if they receive gifts without having any prepared in return, and there's a sense of stress and urgency that doesn't let up until they've repaid. It's not negatively reciprocal, but it is immediately generalized. Most of my American family uses delayed reciprocity. Gifts are gifts, totally unidirectional, and no one keeps a tally. Some people only receive kindness and rarely "pay out". The price of having family close is expecting that and making sure people are comfortable with being hosted. There's often a little pressure to offer to pay depending on the expense, whether by thanks, gifts, or cash. Some of them, however, only give things or do things for others so they can ask for something in return. They're not gifts as much as leashes. Our Middle Eastern family are perpetual hosts. Not allowing them to host and treat you is akin to walking out on a tab in the US or trying to pay for something for a Japanese person. Even thinking about paying them back might actually be considered haram. We have some older first-generation Filipino family friends who invited us to a home cooked dinner at their house... and then handed us a bill at the end of the meal. We were very confused until their children apologetically explained that it's customary to chip in for being hosted. Weird is, of course, relative, but in places with extreme wealth inequality like the US, there can be tension between people who don't share either a mutual understanding of expectation or a way to reciprocate an expense. Nothing feels worse than accepting what you believed to be a gift and having the other person bring up how much it cost them or how much they've done for you for the rest of your life.