Which friend would you prioritize?

[Anonymous]

Cold calculated information.
I'm 51.
When I was 40, I would have been torn.
Stuff will happen in the next 10 years with your parents, kids, marriage, finances, job, health that people who have known you longest will understand and support you through (even if you call them after 6 months of easy breezy meme exchanges).

The moms may or may not be there for you and you may want to talk about it outside your day to day people if you might experience social backlash.

For all the reasons, college friend.

[Anonymous]

Don’t cancel on your longtime friend. You aren’t that important to the group planning the mom trip, unfortunately.

I’m planning a mom trip now with a big group and there was a weekend that worked for everyone except one woman, and we chose it. She reached out that her feelings were hurt and obviously that really stinks and I apologized and tried to help her feel less upset, but the cold honest truth is that it wasn’t worth changing the whole trip dynamic and planning for her. There are other people that I would’ve tried to offer up other, less convenient dates for me that would make them able to be included because I’m closer with them! If the birthday girl really wanted you there, you’d either fly in for 36 hours or they’d have picked a different date.

Your oldest friends are the ones who are really there for you. These mom friends (even though we all have them!) are mainly friends of convenience. If we’re lucky, a couple of them will transition to real, true lasting friends. Don’t be a flake to this woman, especially since you said she’s the type who is sensitive.

[Anonymous]

Go on he birthday trip.

The only reason college friend is coming to see you is out of convenience (which is fine, but let’s not make it bigger than it is.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP, it would not make sense to fly to the birthday celebration for 36 hours so going on Saturday isn’t really an option.

College friend could still stay at my house but my parents would need to come watch my kids which would be a bit awkward, and our kids don’t really know one another as they aren’t the same ages and we don’t see each other often.

I have been close with the mom friend for 9 years since we both moved to the same neighborhood and our oldest kids were born one month apart.

Why would it not make sense? What time is everyone arriving on Friday. You are missing one evening. But as others have said, if you are that close the mom friend would work around your dates.

I had a close mom group and we all worked around schedules for something like a weekend away. Just a dinner then whomever was free.

You sound like you really want to be part of this mom’s weekend. So own it. It’s not going to be pleasant and you will feel terrible when you hang up the phone but you clearly want to cancel.

[Anonymous]

So the birthday girl was willing to work around others’ conflicts, but not yours?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:About a month ago, a good friend from college asked me if she and her family could come stay with us for one Friday night in a couple weeks to break up their drive to a wedding the next day. Of course I said yes since I am excited to see her and catch up.

At the same time, one of my current closest mom friends has been trying to plan a 40th birthday trip and of course, literally the only weekend that works for the majority of the group is the same weekend my college friend is supposed to be visiting.

I am strongly considering cancelling on my college friend to go on this trip since all of my close friends will be there and it seems a bit crazy to prioritize a friend who needs a place to crash driving over a big celebration, but is this horrible? And what do I say to my college friend? She can be sensitive and if I tell her I am going on a trip with other friends I know it will hurt her.

This is the best I got, but I'm not sure you can pull it off. I might float something like this depending on how close and honest I can be with my friends. FWIW, if one of my friends was in this dilemma I would 100 percent want them to tell me bc crashing at someone's house out of convenience is < an amazing wknd with mom friends. (As a mom myself.)

Hi College Friend-
I'm so looking forward to our catchup! I wanted to check in on specifics of your plans. Do you think you'll arrive in time for us to go out to dinner? So I can plan for the morning/breakfast ideas, what time are you aiming to get on the road?

I also wanted to check if there's any possibility that you all could stay with us on your drive back on Sunday--especially if we might get to spend more time together? For full disclosure, I was planning a trip with a group of friends and didn't realize this weekend was one of the options--that's what they decided to book. You are still my priority but I thought I would check in to see if it's possible for me to make it to both.

If that's not doable no sweat; I know how tricky it is to coordinate travel with kids, and I will look forward to hosting you all on Friday.

Actually, better to just ditch college friend then put them in this uncomfortable spot.

+1 If I’m the college friend I’d rather you just cancel on me (and own that choice) rather than send me an email all but begging me to cancel on you first so you don’t have to be the bad guy. That’s so weasel-y.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would probably do the birthday weekend and see if there was a time I could go visit the college friend. The college friend isn’t coming specifically to see you

I am usually in the camp of honor your first commitment but in this case I would do what this PP suggests.

[Anonymous]

Honor your prior commitment.

[Anonymous]

I vote for college friend because you committed so ethically unless there is a health, family or work emergency, you keep the commitment.

However, people saying someone you went to college with for 4 years, a decade ago and haven't stayed in contact with, is somehow more important than someone who's been your friend for a decade and is a part of your life and social support network.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:About a month ago, a good friend from college asked me if she and her family could come stay with us for one Friday night in a couple weeks to break up their drive to a wedding the next day. Of course I said yes since I am excited to see her and catch up.

At the same time, one of my current closest mom friends has been trying to plan a 40th birthday trip and of course, literally the only weekend that works for the majority of the group is the same weekend my college friend is supposed to be visiting.

I am strongly considering cancelling on my college friend to go on this trip since all of my close friends will be there and it seems a bit crazy to prioritize a friend who needs a place to crash driving over a big celebration, but is this horrible? And what do I say to my college friend? She can be sensitive and if I tell her I am going on a trip with other friends I know it will hurt her.

If she wanted to see you, she still could've put her family in a hotel and could've visited or meet you for dinner. After dinner, her family could've gone to hotel while you two could've hung out for couple of hours before she called Uber or you dropped her on the way.

[Anonymous]

I posted earlier that you should not drop commitment 1 for shiny new plans.

Coming back because I’ve thought more. There are some comments which suggest that the college friend’s visit isn’t as important because it occurs in conjunction with another event. I don’t think that. A 2-for-1 sometimes is part of the landscape with adult friends with families who live in different towns. It’s how I’ve managed to keep up friends who live elsewhere. I’ve always appreciated and never it was a lesser visit. She didn’t have to call. But she did, and OP said she was excited about the trip.

Now OP wants to ditch the friend who called her to hangout in favor of a group of friends who didn’t care enough about her presence to schedule around her conflict. Sounds pretty lame for a 40 year old.

But despite all that, I’ve changed my mind and think OP should cancel. If I were the college friend, I wouldn’t want to spend the weekend with a friend who would rather be elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

I think you can only answer this question yourself based on your friendships.

I can call my long distance best college friend up and tell her straight and that I’m torn. If we are gonna have quality time I’m sticking with her. But if it’s just a rest stop then what does she think?

We are close enough friends and honest enough she would tell me and I’d make her the priority if she asks for it. But what are her expectations of the visit?

Sheesh people. Communication.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m interested in the part where everyone in the big group is sharing their open weekends, and it gets to be the weekend you aren’t free.

This happens to me for book clubs, parties, all the time. It’s not me being paranoid, and I think I’m hearing their conflicts, and it’s like “but I’ll be out of town, but that’s the week my son has a tournament, etc.”

It’s actually.. more exciting for you to the be the friend that has something. Have something. Something else besides this group. Don’t have FOMO now, and don’t have FOMO later. You may have more fun spending an hour or two with your one friend than being just one of the many doing braggy girls trip stuff.

Be the friend who hosts and sits in the dark talking for just a little too late. While her DH stresses that you need to get to bed lol. And then see them off in the morning.

I imagine that’s a better friend than the one who’s doing a big girls dinner in another city. The rest of them got their pull for the weekend, you didn’t. Could be a sign of the natural pecking order. It’s slightly ‘wannabe’ to just follow that group.

This. And as another poster said, what does it signal to the group when you are at the birthday weekend anyway. Desperation, willingness to toss a friend to the side, can’t-miss-out or have your own life. They’ll ask questions, so what happened with your college friend. Are you going to tell them, “I told her another time”? Or are you tempted to lie “oh yeah she cancelled.” Because a lie will come back around, and the truth sounds lame.

[Anonymous]

The big group isn’t going to hand over a reward because you chose them. Truly.

[Anonymous]

Presumably you told the mom group that weekend didn’t work for you, and they chose that weekend anyway. I’m not saying they chose it BECAUSE it didn’t work for you but it does say something about your place in the group. It would seem really desperate to ditch your previous plans so you could join the girls trip.