Hi all, I've wanted to ask advice on here for a while now and tonight it has come to a bit of a situation that I don't quite know how to deal with.
Sorry if it gets long. I will keep it as simple as possible. I know I'm opening myself up for some harsh criticism but please be kind - I don't make friends very easily and navigating friendships can be a challenge for me.
I am one of a group of what was to begin with 6 friends, all mums (ages between 30-40) and originally connected through school. We used to frequently (several times a week) get together, with or without kids,. It could be just a few of us on some occasions, more on others. The school our children all attended when we met was very small, and we would go out at xmas and invite all the other mums - some would come and some wouldn't but it was always fun and happy and surprisingly little conflict.
About 18 months ago a new mum, Jenny moved into the area. At first she socialised with lots of different groups of mums and after a bit of drama we had a bit of an issue. My best friend Claire, suffers quite badly from anxiety and had been friendly with another mum, called Jane from outside our immediate friendship circle. Jenny was also friends with Jane. Not really relevant why but Jane caused a lot of trouble between Jenny and Claire which ended up with Jenny treating Claire and her children really poorly. Claire's reaction was to completely distance herself from Jenny.
Then, after falling out with Jane herself, Jenny started to socialise with one or two of the members of our friendship circle. She works part time and offers a service that a couple of our friends use so she became very close to these friends in particular.
As time went on I noticed that meet ups were happening less and less often, or were being arranged at very short notice, which meant that Claire, due to her bad anxiety, couldn't attend. She started to take this personally and felt that she was being excluded from the friendship circle in favour of Jenny. It has now been 9 months since the whole group socialised, with the exception of the xmas night out, which was quite frankly, uncomfortable and awkward. Jenny and the mums she's particularly friended, completely ignored the rest of the table and it was like there were two separate groups out at the same time. They only made an effort to speak to the people at our end if we were at the bar at the same time. After this Claire made the decision that the friendship group, when Jenny was out with us, was making her anxiety much worse (to the point that she had to restart her medication, which she had not needed for several months). Claire decided that she would no longer socialise with Jenny and would only go out with smaller groups of us from the bigger circle.
Which brings us to tonight. I have been given some (quite a lot) vouchers for spa weekend that a relative was given for xmas and won't use that have to be used by the end of February, I invited Claire (obviously) and two of the other in the group who I have know for years and years (we were the original three mums that met first). We were finalising plans when Laura, one of these sent me a PM asking me if she could add Jenny and the other mums from the group to come with us as she'd told them about it and they were all keen, to go and were hurt that I hadn't asked them in the first place.
Laura has lots of different friendship groups that she never mixes, but tends to take over and control and events that are going on. She is the closest one of us to Jenny. It is Laura that has regularly arranged meet ups that include Jenny but exclude Claire, and lately, me by extension because of my friendship with Claire.
Claire has said to agree and she will make an excuse and not come. I don't want to go without her - I'd rather not have invited anyone else but I didn't realise it was ok for Laura and Jenny to have events and lunches etc without including the rest of us, but that I have to include everyone!
Its all so blooming childish - we are all grown women and yet its like being back at School. I understand why Claire feels the way she does but she doesn't want me to tell Laura the truth about why I don't want to include Jenny and the others so its me that everyone is going to be angry with!
I do hate the idea of leaving anyone out, and would NEVER had left just Jenny out but now I am being made to feel that I can never arrange to do anything with any of the mums from the original friendship circle without including EVERYONE!
I just don't know what to do. If I say no, I will basically be alienating myself from all my friends, but If I say yes my best friend with self-exclude herself, and be devastated that I didn't stick up for her.