AIBU to be confused and hurt over no invite

[YouShouldBeDancingYeah]

I have been friends with a group of women since my teens. We generally stay in touch via social media / WhatsApp and meet a few times a year locally.
We are all approaching (or are over!) a big birthday this year. I opened FB this morning to find a post from one of the group thanking “all her friends for the best birthday party ever” and loads of photos of them all in her garden celebrating. Obvs I didn’t get the memo…or an invite!
Ive spoken to a few of them over the last few weeks and obviously not one of them mentioned it. Even stranger, I’m due to meet birthday girl for lunch this week and prior to today she’s been behaving completely normally.

The adult in me really just wants to forget it and focus on people in my life who actually want me there. But the inner 13 year old in my head is raging and crying over this and this apparent rejection! And I’m going over and over in my head about what I could have possibly done to be snubbed like that.

So WWYD?

1. Forget, block and move on
2. Meet birthday girl for lunch as planned and say nothing?
3. Meet birthday girl and find out how your invite got so lost in the post…

Thank you!

3

But do some digging if there's anyone you can ask...

So hurtful but hopefully a mistake.

Do any of her friends not like you?

The other thing is when you're invited somewhere like a bday you all chat about what you're wearing/what time you'll arrive and other little derails. I'm just so shocked it wasn't mentioned to OP especially given they have been friends since being teens

Ah! sorry- I thought you meant just leave it and say nothing and carry on with lunch as normal. I like the response of a cold cut off but I think I'd really want to know why as it just seems such odd behaviour

But surely, OPs friend posted it on facebook so why not just send a quick text saying "I wish you'd been there, I'm so sorry you werent invited- it wasnt arranged by me". She cant have been that bothered by her absence.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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

@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.

**

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

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

3

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.

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