Reply to Friends being cagey about plans. How would you react?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]+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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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