When your partner isn’t part of your friend group….

My partner and I are similar.

He has a large and wide friendship group spanning decades. He's known many of them since school and he's in his 60s now! I've only been with him for 4 years.

Over the years, partners have been added along the way or people in the friendship group have married so they've always been part of the friendship group.

I go to some of the group things with him but not all of them. Likewise, my partner is involved with some things I do with my friends but not all of them.

Tbh, I find they like to reminisce a lot - partly because they don't all get together that often nowadays so once they've shared what's going on now, a lot of their conversation is around reliving their more exciting pasts when they had more to talk about than replacing double glazing, promotions at work and how the kids are getting on at university, or talking about people I don't know.

When it descends into that, it's just boring, tbh. I wasn't there for the holiday they all went on together in 1987; I can't contribute to conversations about Jimbo's deterioriating health and what a shame it is because he's such a lovely guy (because I've never met him); I don't get why it's so funny that Tracey finally got married and I don't get all the cryptic references or knowing looks around what Bob's lad is up to nowadays...

No one wants to take time to explain the history to me and I don't really care 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm also not keen on being joined at the hip. I think it's healthy for us to spend time apart socially. It doesn't bother me that it's a mixed sex group or that some partners (male or female) are included and I'm not because some of them have been around for long enough to have become true friends and know exactly who Jimbo, Tracey and Bob's lad are even if they didn't go on the holiday in 1987...

If I was being routinely deliberately excluded then I'd be bothered. If I were invited but partner chose to not include me, I'd be bothered. But being included in everything? No. I don't want that.

So, in your shoes, I wouldn't expect to be included in a birthday meal like you describe and I probably wouldn't have wanted to go anyway.

You definitely should have been invited that is poor form imo. You aren’t a random person and they should be more welcoming to you. To be honest I’m not sure my husband would have attended in that set of circumstances. It was an event at a house for goodness sake for a birthday. I find it weird and odd that a close friends wife wasn’t invited. It sounds a bit stiff and formal and weirdly cliquey just not what I’m used to. And no I don’t expect to be joined at the hip to my husband but this just sounds weirdly childish and petty. I find as you all grow older life changes and things evolve. A great friend of ours (best man at our wedding twenty years ago) has met a new partner and she is lovely and I’m delighted for him and there is a big birthday coming up soon which is just a few drinks and food in the birthday persons house and it wouldn’t for one second enter my head that the new partner wouldn’t be invited.

I have a mixed friend group and I don't invite DH to everything. He's fine and it's nice when he's there and he likes everyone and they like him but we also just like our own space and have different interests.

You're not unreasonable for wanting to be included, and it sounds like you are - "lots and lots" of the time, according to you.

On this occasion the invite wasn't to "friends + partners". The partners who were at what sounds like an intimate birthday dinner with limited space weren't there as plus-ones, they were there as friends. I don't see that it makes any difference that some of them were women.

To answer your question, DP and I had separate friendship groups when we first met - in both cases the kind of blurry, overlapping ones where there wasn't really an "original" core per se, and many people became part of it through being partners with someone else. Most of the time we'd both be invited to the big social events - clubs, parties, gigs etc. But at the start if there was a smaller event then naturally I wouldn't expect to be included.

Over the years that changes (if you roll with the dynamics and don't take offence at these things) and at some point you realise you're a proper part of the friendship group, not just X's partner. I went on a very old friend's stag do (mixed-gender) this year and was startled, in a nice way, to see that DP was also invited! (Not all partners were invited to this but he's obviously gone from "gannett's partner" to "our friend" in their minds.)

I’ve had this. Moved to where partner is from. The friendship groups were already well established and whilst everyone was perfectly polite I was never invited into the ‘inner circle’!!

I have had to make my own friends and still have friends from where I lived before. It’s not great but it is what it is.

At a certain point in life it’s hard to meet new friends so you’re often reliant on it being through your partner. Combined with the fact he knows these people and has taken you to live where he grew up I think it’s incumbent on him to involve you. I would feel upset to be left out of a mixed gathering and it’s immature of them to do so, not recognising that peoples lives evolve and new people are there

but occasionally something comes up where just the friend group is invited.

Bullshit. If partners are invited, whether ‘longstanding’ friends or not, then all partners should be welcome. Partners are social units. I’d be disappointed in your DH for excluding you.

How does the guest list for the events come about? Does the person organising specifically say you are not invited? If so that sounds a bit personal.

My hunch is though it is your DH who is limiting which events you can or cannot go to which may or may not be for innocent reasons. It does seem very unusual that some partners are invited but not others - who (if it is not your DH) is making that decision - are you only not invited to events organised by the same specific person?

so the partners are long standing parts of the friend group
That’s key really. If some of the longstanding members of the group are in relationships it doesn’t mean they aren’t all equally part of the friendship group. It’s a group of men and women.

You aren’t excluded, just not asked to tag along every time they get together. As soon as I read the word “dinner “ I thought it would be a space/ seating issue. That seems reasonable to me. Why squeeze in when you’ll be seeing them all soon anyway

If other partners are being invited it should be all partners regardless of length of time, only exception is if they're new and/or not serious, but you're his wife not just some woman he's seeing.

Completely glorious? With his incredibly immature-sending group of friends from school? 🫢

Personally I'd rather have a separate friend group. It's healthy to do things sepetwtky and have your own lives. I do find it odd to have something where jist some partners are invited, but then it sortof makes sense if some partners are the friends (although it seems overly complicated!)

So he's going out with other people who are taking their partners and deliberately leaving you at home.

How weird.

I just can’t imagine inviting a group of people and only some partners - it’s rude and really unwelcoming. How do you become part of the group if the cut off point was 2010!
normally I’m all for your own social groups, but if I had moved to my husbands home town, I would expect a little more consideration - my husband wouldn’t attend a party if he knew other wives were invited but I wasn’t because I hadn’t gone to school with them! My husbands group of school friends actually are similar in that I was the last wife to join ( so far) but I’ve become a core member by going to those kind of events - isn’t that how it works?

I think it's really weird and poor form not to invite your friend's long term partner/spouse.

But this particular event wasn’t just a group of couples doing a social activity together. It was somebody’s birthday celebration dinner, which they were hosting in their own house for their close friends. It’s a more intimate occasion, which will no doubt have cost them a lot of money and effort to put on, and which suddenly becomes a lot more money and effort if rather than just their 8 good friends, it becomes 12 people to include some partners they don’t know very well. It would have been fairly embarrassing for your DH to try to get you an invitation when he wasn’t the one buying the food and wine, cooking the meal, and dealing with the stress of an extra chair and space at the table.

Had they all just gone down the pub and bought their own drinks, it may have been a bit different.

Were you the only partner not invited? As in all couples apart from your DH? If so, I'd probably be a bit hurt by that. Have you tried forming closer friendships with any of the wives/partners or do you only socialise with them with your DH?

I’m in one of these groups. New partners always welcome to all social occasions if they want to come. Very rare we do anything that’s all men or women, if we do then obvs partners don’t come to that, but that’s the only exception.

I’d suggest you start hosting things or planning things with that group.

A party/BBQ/games night/pub crawl etc that you and your DH plan can’t exclude you.

Once you’ve bonded with whoever the other key members of the group are you’ll be included on your own behalf not just as a partner.

DH and I both have longstanding mixed gender friendship groups. And, yes, some of the members of said groups became known to us because they dated ‘original’ members. Be that as it may, they’re core friends, now.

We invite each other to some stuff, and some is just us + our friends. I love my husband, but I don’t want to socialise with him all the time.

However, in your case, you’ve just moved to a new area and are probably still finding your bearings a bit. It’s understandable that you’d be more socially dependent on him than might normally be the case. Hopefully that resolves itself naturally as you make more friends (which you’ve already started doing).

And they invite you to lots of things, so you might eventually be part of said group. Or not. Which is fine, imo.

I've been with my dh since college our friendship groups are one and the same now however when a new partner comes into someone's lives they automatically get invited when its a both male and female group, like you say how are you supposed to.integrate if they don't let you or invite you!

The guys may do things together, the girls may do things together,there may be a mash up, but I genuinely think you should have been invited to that and id be asking your dh how are you supposed to get to know these people when your left out?

A dinner to celebrate the darts team winning a trophy - then it's fine to invite only team members, male and female.

A dinner to celebrate the birthday of a friendship group member - I think it's not OK to exclude the wife of a member, especially if other partners are there. This group of friends sounds like it's grown over the years and now includes partners.

A group of friends can expand; it's different from the darts team where you are either a team member or not.

I can understand you being a bit disgruntled.