To think you should invite your partner if this happens?

Neither of us would be sitting around at home waiting for an invitation to socialise! Neither of us could care less if we were/weren’t invited. In fact, we’d both be mildly annoyed our quiet night in was being disturbed. I really find the whole premise weird. Would you NEED your bf to be by your side if your friends have theirs? Why go to such effort?

Why? If you weren’t invited in the first instance, why would you want to go?
Why wouldn’t you have made your own plans for the evening (even if those plans were to watch TV or read a book)?

i would say: i CBA with this, i'm off. Unless anyone wants to come for a cocktail/karaoke/hot pot.

Then I'd probably go home.

I don'T go out that much, although usually with DH because we have a lot of the same interests, and when i do, if i have specifically arranged with my women friends for there not to be men, that's what i have been wanting.

You said you'd go somewhere else? So you'd get others to go with you and split the group?

oh god same, especially since we are all (the group i socialise with mostly) deep into menopause, and all used to work together so we talk about stuff that bores him deeply

If a bloke is there, we aren'T going to talk about our lack of sex drive and the best ways to combat vaginal dryness, are we?

I can only see this being a problem if the person at home is very jealous and likely to kick up a pathetic stink when they find out someone else’s wife turned up!

Yep. That's what it sounds like to me too.

So it sounds like you don't like Steve and Jeff enough to go to the pub with them, but you like Michelle and Nina better... yet are not in touch with them independently to see if they're going to the pub?

And why would Barry's random female friends who I don't know have any impact on whether I want to see him?

I feel like there's a weird assumption underpinning all of this that women can't talk to men in pubs (but on the other hand will automatically get on with any other women who happen to be at the table).

what is wrong with some pp.

I go out with a group of men* every other week. We drink beer and wear stupid scarves and shout ourselves hoarse. Then, more often than not we go home depressed about the result.

If i want a ladies night - which is a whole different dynamic - with my women friends, and that is what we have arranged because we want to (for eg, the next one will be to see the new Downton Abbey film and go for sushi, there are 6 of us and 5 out of the 6 partners we have - one of whom is also a woman - don't like sushi)

Why jump to religious tosh when it is clear from my post that is said "if it is a ladies night, that is what i want"

ETA *there are 8 of us. actually 2 of us are women. 4 of us are married, 2 to other people in the group, 2 to people who loathe football.

Depends on the couple. My bloke would rather grate his face off than socialise with my mates

I would feel it polite to invite my husband, not sure he would bother coming and I doubt he would have an issue with it but I would invite him for sure. I have been on mixed nights out from work but that is purely colleagues so he wouldnt particularly want/expect to come. Same if it was the other way around. If he told me it was lads only then I found out it was a mixed group I wouldnt be happy

An entirely theoretical conversation I was having with my partner

I think it's so hard to believe it's theoretical because it's so finely specific it wouldn't normally enter anyone's mind unless it had happened.

nope i am not on board with having a lovely ladies night out and then some bloke is there. I don't care if he's the lovliest Nigel in the world. I want a women's night now and again (and so do my friends so this doesn't arise with us)

When i was younger with different friends this happened once, and we told the woman involved to either send him home or push off with him. Turned out, that he was a controlling arsehole and eventually we worked it out (sorry it took us so long) and eventually after many years she binned him off.

Not saying that all men who would come along to a thing like this are controlling arseholes, but i have read the relationships board long enough to know that it is quite common.

And i didn't say i'd sit by myself, i think?

Why would you want to get ready to go out and join people that are already out and didn’t invite you when you have the house to yourself?

This. By the time either me or dh had got out, met friends and discovered the change in dynamic we'd both be doing something else either at home or elsewhere. It'd take me a while to get ready anyway so not that worth it.

Id be pissed off if my friend brought her male partner to a girls gettogether. It wouldn't make me invite my partner.
If my partner went out with the guys and one of them brought his female partner, id expect that he might tell me and invite me but it would depend if I knew and liked her as to whether I'd want to go.

Even if there is, so what? Why can't people just answer the bloody question??

@Whatifyoucalltaylorup I think it depends on so many variables. The older you get (or at least I get) the sex of the participants in the group seems to matter.

so long as the people in the relationship ding upset each other. It really doesn't matter what 'should' happen!

I've got to the age where a night in is cherished, so I wouldn't give a fuck, if every other wife/partner/girlfriend/random woman was there! I'd happily be at home! I'd be upset if he knew that beforehand & just didn't want me to go.

I wouldn't think to tell dh, let alone invite him. He wouldn't want to come.

Ditto the other way round.

If literally everyone else's partners in the group turned up and all of you know each other exceptionally well then yes, I'd contact my partner (as it would indicate it was my muck up in communication) and see if they wanted to come.

Anything less than that extreme then no, I absolutely wouldn't. I can't put my finger on why but the suggestion that this is a courteous thing that must be done sounds really suffocating. I'd run a mile if this was expected of me in a relationship!

Generally curious, is that a religious thing where you can’t socialise if a man is present?

Depends.

At some things, I wouldn’t think “better let DH know” I’d think “why is her husband here??”

But on the other hand, DH has a group of 3 close male friends that he’s known since school, and I’m going out with their wives/girlfriends in a couple of weeks. Maybe if a couple of the men turned up on that evening, I’d let DH know. This wouldn’t happen though - the reason it’s just the women going on this occasion is because the men are looking after children. It’s easier to do that than try and arrange babysitters so all the couples can go.

This. I like doing things with my friends without my husband. We don't need to do everything together.
I remember going for a drink with work colleagues so done brought their partner which I thought was a bit odd as it changed the dynamic but it didn't really bother me and I didn't think of messaging my husband to invite him. I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted to come anyway!

Gender-segregated socialising as the default is so bizarre. I'm not friends with anyone who'd expect a night out to be "just the girls" or "just the boys" in the first place. And after a decade DP is friends with most of my friends, and I'm friends with most of his friends, in our own right.

When either of us go out, the other is usually welcome. We might not choose to go, but it would be much odder for our attendance to hinge on another partner's attendance.

No it wasn’t the plan and they don’t need to be joined at the hip.