Reply to When you don't like a person in your broader friend group, which is the best way to handle?

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Reply to "When you don't like a person in your broader friend group, which is the best way to handle?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Once my friend asked me if I was inviting a new friend to a party. I said I was thinking about it and she said then she wouldn't go and hoped that was ok. I learned her side and said I understood and invited this new friend to a different event and kept my old friend coming to this party. I thought this was an appropriate way to handle the issue. Just ask that I do different events that didn't put the two of them together. The new friend ended up finding another group of friends anyway and we are just acquaintances so it all worked out. I'm glad my old friend spoke up. She wasn't rude. Just said she felt uncomfortable around that person and made it her issue, not mine. It was my decision to choose who to invite.[/quote]

OP here, and +1

People are assuming that speaking up and saying "I don't get along with that person, so I choose not to spend time with them" creates drama. But it is the opposite of drama. If everyone is comfortable with themselves and has healthy boundaries, that shouldn't upset anyone. No one should have to spend time with someone they don't like.

I think it only causes problems if you are in a friend group where everyone has to do everything together. That's not my thing. All my friend groups are somewhat fluid. There are big groups and subsets within groups and people spend time one on one and in different configurations. I personally would rather know that Jill doesn't really like Margot so that I don't accidentally invite Margot along for drinks with Jill thus ruining Jill's night (and to some degree, mine too -- I don't want to spend the evening wondering why Jill seems pissed). I don't have to know why, and there's no reason that Jill telling me this info would impact my relationship to Margot unless the reason is that Jill did something terrible. In which case, maybe I need to stop spending time with Margot too. That's not "freezing someone out" -- it's responding to new information about a person.

None of this works if the group is really static, as opposed to fluid. It doesn't work if people tend to get upset if they aren't included in every single thing. It doesn't work if people's identities are very caught up in their role in the friend group, as opposed to having a separate, distinct sense of self that allows you to view your friendships with some degree of detachment.

I mean, you guys can disagree and call me names and tell me I'm stupid all you want (none of which makes you look particularly skilled at interpersonal relationships, honestly), but I think in the end it's just that people approach friendship differently and have different experiences. I could see how some groups might operate in a way that just being polite and sucking it up around people you don't like is the best way to handle things. That's not how my friend groups work and that's not how I choose to live my life. And if that bothers someone, we probably wouldn't make great friends anyway. I'm okay with that.

Oh, and to respond to someone up thread: if you read my original post, it's really clear that I wasn't asking for advice but simply interested in other people's perspectives. I see how you could misunderstand that based on the title of the thread, and I suppose at this point in the thread not everyone may be going back and reading my original query. My mistake -- I should have been more clear in the thread title. Lesson learned.[/quote]

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