It's my best friends birthday today. For context we are both mid 20s, single with no kids and staying with our parents over the holidays. She always keeps her birthdays very low-key and normally we go for a meal or drinks. This year when I asked her what she was doing, she said just family things but it transpired that another friend had asked her to do something with their two families and she would probably be doing this - totally fine but I would have loved to come along/celebrate with her - I sometimes feel like she tries to fit me in around pre existing commitments and just feel quite rubbish about it. She then kept apologising that we weren't doing anything for her birthday/New Years (we have a long standing tradition of doing things on both days) and I just said it was fine and up to her what she wanted to do - which it is!
But to me the solution is simple... if she really wanted me there she could have just invited me - I get on well with mutual friend and their families and she knows this! Just don't understand why she has to keep going on about how she feels so bad we won't see each other to me when it could easily be resolved if she did in fact feel that bad about it?!