Friends being cagey about plans. How would you react?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're way overthinking this OP.

This. I can’t get over all the people who would be upset about this. OP, you said yourself you aren’t close to her. Who cares if she doesn’t invite you to her birthday party?! Don’t blow up a nice group over something so silly.

The birthday girl blew up the friend group by not inviting OP. Put the blame where it should be.

Bullshit. OP admits that she isn't close to the birthday girl. Why should she be invited to her birthday party? Does an informal group of friends mean that if one person is invited that everyone has to be to everything for all time?

I agree. The "friend group" is not a formal committee or a sports team. It's four couples who apparently enjoy spending time together, but that doesn't mean they are exclusively friends with each other or equally close to everyone else. Cliques are for middle-schoolers and immature adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, it’s the coverup that implies something weird is afoot. Because if it weren’t weird, no one would have been cagey, they would have said ‘oh headed to Susies birthday let’s gtg next week’ The cagey friends are complicit.

Yup, although they were put in a super awkward position with conflicting social pressures.

It was inconsiderate to the friends to put them in that position.

Unfortunately this group will never be the same. What's happened has happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

+1

Frankly, it's weird to have such fixed rules about friendships. It's not like you're all in the same second-grade class. You're friends with these people -- you seem to think of it as a package deal, but maybe other people don't. They sometimes want to spend time with the people they are actually closer to without the bigger group. And that's okay! It's okay to have closer friendships with some people than others.

Exactly. This "group" or "package deal" is a very strange cliquey concept. It sounds like OP has a deep fear of being excluded.

The people responding that others are cagey are looking at it exactly wrong. They were raised like others mentioned to not talk about things to which others are not invited. THAT is rude. Not "being direct" and talking about an event to which someone else did not attend or was not invited.

Nope, sorry. The problem with "don't talk about it" is that no one actually has the power to withhold information like this. OP wound up finding out through her DH, which was a foreseeable problem given how these couples socialize. I guess all the women who were invited could have instructed their DH's not to mention it, but that's so elaborate! No such subertfuge is needed if everyone just owns their actions and feelings. It's okay to only invite your close friends to your birthday party. It's also okay to feel left out if all your close friends got invited to something that you were not invited to. There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of this, and part of maturity is recognizing that and learning to live with the discomfort and occasional bad feelings associated with being a person who exists in the world.

Trying to hide this information from OP is (1) unrealistic, as evidence by the fact that it stayed hidden for all of a few days, and (2) makes it seem like something shady is happening. Nothing shady is happening. Everyone is acting according to their needs and desires and that's all fine. If you are up front with people about stuff like this, let them feel sad or disappointed if that's how they are going to feel, and then move on, it actually makes it a lot easier for people to be polite and gentle with each other. Because everyone knows where they stand. And then OP would know that she isn't under an obligation to include this woman in things either (though she can if she wants!). And she knows her friends are not having conversations behind her back about how she's too fragile to know about some birthday party, which is a surefire way to make someone feel more hurt than necessary.

Also, informing someone of something ("I can't hang out Saturday, Larla is having a small birthday thing") is very different from "talking about" something in a way that would actually be exclusionary and rude (posting about the event on social media, telling OP all about how fun the evening was, sharing inside jokes from the evening in front of OP or others who were not present).

It might be briefly uncomfortable to disclose something like this, but in the long run it's better to get it out in the open.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, it’s the coverup that implies something weird is afoot. Because if it weren’t weird, no one would have been cagey, they would have said ‘oh headed to Susies birthday let’s gtg next week’ The cagey friends are complicit.

Or the friends knew that OP would of course over react, so they didn't want to mention it. It is rude to talk about social events in front of people who aren't invited in my book.

Acting cagey is normal because it's not normal to exclude people (or shouldn't be anyway). They knew it was rude, they were complicit. They may not feel the same way as the other lady, but they're also not going to "take a stand" because of all the reasons people are stating in prior posts. But regardless of any valid reasons, it's still socially wrong to exclude someone who is usually part of the group, and they knew it.

[Anonymous]

It's weird that some adult women are assuming that not inviting someone to an event is a significant gesture rather than something that happens because not everyone gets invited to everything every time.

You don't talk about it in front of people who aren't invited because there's no reason to rub their noses in it and because conversation is supposed to be about topics that everyone in the conversation is interested in.

That said, it's not s state secret. You don't have to swear everyone to secrecy because if an adult finds out that other adults did something without her, a mature adult just think, "Oh, I hope they had fun" and goes on with her life.

OP, if you can't manage that, you now know why they don't consider you a close friend and never will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the responses. I am considering reaching out to the birthday person to ask why I wasn't invited because I just want to get to the bottom of it. It feels really hurtful and I want to know what I did. I will let you know how it goes. I know this may seem bold, but I feel like I need to be direct (yet polite).

no OP no. there is nothing to get to the bottom of. here, I'll tell you the answer: She didn't want you there. The why is meaningless and not changeable.

and it doesn't seem bold btw, it seems foolish.

i'm sorry these things happen and it totally sucks but energy into other friends, other activities, etc is your next step.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She’s trying to edge you out of the group. Proceed with caution.

+1

This.

[Anonymous]

They knew it was rude, they were complicit. They may not feel the same way as the other lady, but they're also not going to "take a stand" because of all the reasons people are stating in prior posts. But regardless of any valid reasons, it's still socially wrong to exclude someone who is usually part of the group, and they knew it.

This is where people disagree, because, it's quite unclear this is some formal "group" or that people did think it was rude or even exclusionary. The existence of a "group" of some formality may be entirely in OP's mind. The people who were rude were actually the other dads who mentioned it in front of the DH although maybe they didn't realize.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the responses. I am considering reaching out to the birthday person to ask why I wasn't invited because I just want to get to the bottom of it. It feels really hurtful and I want to know what I did. I will let you know how it goes. I know this may seem bold, but I feel like I need to be direct (yet polite).

no OP no. there is nothing to get to the bottom of. here, I'll tell you the answer: She didn't want you there. The why is meaningless and not changeable.

and it doesn't seem bold btw, it seems foolish.

i'm sorry these things happen and it totally sucks but energy into other friends, other activities, etc is your next step.

+1

[Anonymous]

PP here - but I think it is ok for OP to feel hurt. Just maybe consider this other lady has a ton of "groups" she socializes with, and just could only fit in 12 or whatever the number was. Maybe it didn't even occur to her to invite you. Invest energy into other friendships for sure but do not confront or get too upset about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's weird that some adult women are assuming that not inviting someone to an event is a significant gesture rather than something that happens because not everyone gets invited to everything every time.

You don't talk about it in front of people who aren't invited because there's no reason to rub their noses in it and because conversation is supposed to be about topics that everyone in the conversation is interested in.

That said, it's not s state secret. You don't have to swear everyone to secrecy because if an adult finds out that other adults did something without her, a mature adult just think, "Oh, I hope they had fun" and goes on with her life.

OP, if you can't manage that, you now know why they don't consider you a close friend and never will.

It's not weird. Often people have different ideas about how friendships work. And friendship isn't some official status with clear rules and boundaries. Everyone has to negotiate it themselves, every time. You can't just assume someone will approach it the same way you would. And if you do, you can bet that feelings will be hurt.

I think OP's experience is very common. I would not be upset about this specific thing because I don't engage in friend groups like OP is describing (particularly not with couples, I find that very pressure-filled and complicated because of all the dynamics at play). But I can totally relate to feeling slightly blindsided when I learn that a friend thinks about our relationship in a different way than I did. On more than one occasion I've thought a friendship was one thing and it turned out they thought it was something else. Or I've just had different expectations than my friend as to level of commitment, loyalty, etc. And yes, feelings got hurt. Sometimes mine, sometimes theirs, sometimes both.

This is so, so common. If you are really this unfamiliar with these sorts of situations, I would suggest that you probably have a much narrower definition of friendship than most other people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here - but I think it is ok for OP to feel hurt. Just maybe consider this other lady has a ton of "groups" she socializes with, and just could only fit in 12 or whatever the number was. Maybe it didn't even occur to her to invite you. Invest energy into other friendships for sure but do not confront or get too upset about this.

Oh, I'm sure the birthday gal knew exactly what she was doing. Nobody is that dense. She deliberately didn't put OP on the list, and maybe for good reason, but there will always be fall out to decisions like these. Children learn these tactics at a very young age and they try to bludgeon their class mates with the "I'm not inviting you to my birthday party" in order to get their way or prove a point. I would extract myself from this group or only see the others when birthday lady wasn't around. This is no longer a group of 5 couples, if it ever was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This is so, so common. If you are really this unfamiliar with these sorts of situations, I would suggest that you probably have a much narrower definition of friendship than most other people.

No one likes being left out of an activity they would enjoy, but adults understand that people have lives that don't include them. So while there might be an initial twinge upon hearing that people had fun without them, most people don't get wound up about it. They don't wonder what it all means. They don't decide to ask the birthday girl why they weren't invited.

I mean, where does this stop? Can they have dinner without you? Go to a movie? Go on vacation? Do you have to invite all of them for everything you do?

Couple friends of mine took the family to a city where another couple/family lives and used points to get the family a suite at the hotel where they were staying. It sounded really fun, and if they'd said, "Hey, want to go to Asheville for the weekend? Emily has a conference, and we're going to see Jennifer and Peter and the kids," I'd have said yes. But that wasn't the weekend they had planned, and I'm glad they got to do it. We're all still friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's weird that some adult women are assuming that not inviting someone to an event is a significant gesture rather than something that happens because not everyone gets invited to everything every time.

You don't talk about it in front of people who aren't invited because there's no reason to rub their noses in it and because conversation is supposed to be about topics that everyone in the conversation is interested in.

That said, it's not s state secret. You don't have to swear everyone to secrecy because if an adult finds out that other adults did something without her, a mature adult just think, "Oh, I hope they had fun" and goes on with her life.

OP, if you can't manage that, you now know why they don't consider you a close friend and never will.

I think this PP nailed it. It is rude to discuss in a group setting something about which not everyone can join. It isn’t rude to have smaller gatherings and to inform people about your plans to go to one that the other person isn’t invited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This is so, so common. If you are really this unfamiliar with these sorts of situations, I would suggest that you probably have a much narrower definition of friendship than most other people.

No one likes being left out of an activity they would enjoy, but adults understand that people have lives that don't include them. So while there might be an initial twinge upon hearing that people had fun without them, most people don't get wound up about it. They don't wonder what it all means. They don't decide to ask the birthday girl why they weren't invited.

I mean, where does this stop? Can they have dinner without you? Go to a movie? Go on vacation? Do you have to invite all of them for everything you do?

Couple friends of mine took the family to a city where another couple/family lives and used points to get the family a suite at the hotel where they were staying. It sounded really fun, and if they'd said, "Hey, want to go to Asheville for the weekend? Emily has a conference, and we're going to see Jennifer and Peter and the kids," I'd have said yes. But that wasn't the weekend they had planned, and I'm glad they got to do it. We're all still friends.

+1 I would be hurt, but would try to step back and remember that maybe the host was inviting a few people from different social circles that she feels particularly close to.