AIBU to be confused and hurt over no invite

You are not being unreasonable but please, please do option 2. Go to lunch, have a nice time and then don’t bother making any effort moving forward and wait to see if she reaches out to you.

please ignore the advice about confronting her, no one is obligated to invite anyone anywhere and it will just through up something unpleasant. No good comes from finding the answer to that question but the fact of the matter is if they wanted you there you would have been invited and you weren’t. Don’t take it personally, these things happen.

I don't think that would make it OK.
What if OP were single, no invite either?

I was thinking this as well. It sounds like there are loads of these celebrations, as everyone is having a milestone birthday this year. Is there usually some chat about rides or timing or what everyone is wearing? If there is normally, then the absence of it in this case is suspicious. Is there no one in the friend group you feel comfortable asking?

I agree with the poster who wrote that they’d be tempted to comment “it looks like you’ve had a lovely birthday” on the sm post.

Shamelessly placemarking here..I need to know what happens!!!!!

I’d need to know just incase it was accidentally. But if it was a deliberate snub then I’d back off from the whole group.

I’m sorry op. I hope there’s a good explanation. You never know!

Because they all thought OP couldn't make it. Because the organiser mistakenly confused her with someone else.

I agree, it's a stretch. But shit happens sometimes.

I wouldn’t wait for lunch to ask. I’d ask now. To be honest, this is a shitty thing to do to someone who is supposed to be your friend so I think I’d be stepping away from this friendship group. There’s just no excuse for something like this to happen.

3

I would need to know why! I couldn't just leave it. What did she say?

But it hurt a lot at the time don't get me wrong! I thought we would be friends for life.

@whatchagonnado take your point but essentially people do what they want to do... and invite who they want to invite. If people don't want to stay in a friendship that is up to them.

Sometimes it doesn't have to be about searching for the truth sometimes it is healthier to let go and give people that freedom. Surely if it was a mistake one of the group would have got in touch with the op as one of them would have cared about her feelings. In my case I would have felt awkward insisting on taking someone out for a birthday lunch when they were celebrating a big birthday with lots of friends without me! Also I looked back and realised we hadn't seen each other for some months so had drifted anyway. Why run after something, was the conclusion I came to.

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@saraclara
@KrisAkabusi

Unless this has happened to you, you have no idea how you'd respond. For me it felt like I was completely blindsided. It felt like I hadn't asked for it to happen, I resented that it had happened and I'd been put in the most awkward situation of trying to put things right and not really knowing how to. It's not as easy as having a quick chat on the phone, or over a coffee. It's really difficult. It changes everything you have previously known about that person

Sometimes the situation is so clear cut that there's nothing to be gained (for some people) by asking the question. It doesn't need more understanding than that. People are different and their tolerance level for allowing 'friends' to make excuses, tell more lies, try to get out of the awkwardness, is just too crass.

I don't know what OP's friend could say to make this ok but obviously that's up to OP. If it were me, I'd not meet this friend for lunch but I would tell her why and say that I didn't want to continue the friendship.

I think that some posters accusing the OP of sulking/not finding out what happened when she should are focused on their own noseyness and love of drama.

My problem would be that no one in this close group of friends mentioned anything before or since, and that the Facebook post went out in that format.

Exactly, it doesn’t make sense. Why would no one have said anything.

My problem would be that no one in this close group of friends mentioned anything before or since, and that the Facebook post went out in that format. If there had been a mix up and on the night it was spotted surely you put something in the post along the lines of "hoping to celebrate soon with friends who missed this one"?

If the friend turns up to the lunch and doesn't immediately mention it, I wouldn't want to continue the friendship. Do you often meet up one to one? I'd be half inclined to invite one of the other members of your group to join you and watch both their reactions when you talk about the party.

Excellent post. I'm amazed at the number of people who are prepared to think the worst of their friends, without making any effort to find out what actually happened.

Over on another thread today, someone who the OP knows she hurt, has not replied to OP's message. No-one thinks the friend is being dignified in her silence. They think she's sulking.

Your dignified silence is someone else's sulking. Cutting contact presumes you are 100% certain that it was done deliberately and that no explanation is possible. Whereas here posters have put forward scenarios that could have happened where no malice was intended. But your dignified silence in such a situation means you never find out what happened, cut off friends for no reason and leaves them thinking you've gone weird out of the blue. At least have a conversation to find out if you're right before ghosting previously best friends FFS!

Being excluded is definitely my Achilles heel. It's so hard to deal with when it happens

It’s completely normal to feel this way. From an ancestral perspective, those who were ostracised from their tribe/group wouldn’t survive alone so it activates very primal parts of the lizard/survival brain. They’ve done studies suggesting this is why being left out hurts so much.

I’m so sorry this has happened to you OP. I
imagine many of us have been in similar situations and it really hurts.

I would have to do option 3, but I’d message someone else in the group before meeting Birthday Girl because there’s no way I could continue this friendship if you were deliberately left out.

OTOH, I hope there’s a reasonable explanation.

This has happened to me in a social group I was involved in. I did 1. I thought 'indifference is your friend' in this situation.

It still hurts 2 years on, the friendship has never recovered and never will now and in hindsight I wish I'd done 3. We might have mended it

But then again, we might not as the hurt ran pretty deep.

The truth is that I had to take this person out my life to move on. I was made to feel like the problem was with me for being hurt and not being in control of feelings. I couldn't recover from it. Being excluded is definitely my Achilles heel. It's so hard to deal with when it happens.

@silverfullmoon @Unicorn2022
You're quite right to point that out. Didn't think of that aspect. No I absolutely didn't put anything on SM. And when I saw the people who weren't invited I said something along the lines that it was a shame and must have a genuine oversight on the part of the organiser (although I was confident it wasn't) and that I'd missed them.
So I handled it as kindly as I could although I was cross I'd been put in that position tbh. And no, that isn't OP's experience unfortunately as you point out.

Even if it was a mistake surely your friend or one of the others would have been in touch to find out why you werent there.

Id not be treating her to lunch id want to know why i wasnt invited.

I can only think that this is an honest oversight by someone other than your friend.

No reason to be anything but warm and usually friendly.

This happened to me once, a colleague's sister organised her surprise bridal shower and another colleague was invited but I wasn't, and I was very hurt because we were a team of 3 and very close.

The colleague who was invited felt too awkward to bring it up with the sister as she didn't know her very well.

Turned out that the sister was working from the guest list, where I appeared as Mrs MarriedSurname but in the bride's address book I appeared only by my first name, and the sister had no idea who I was.

Bride was really embarrassed and sorry that I wasn't invited, but it was all just an unfortunate mistake.