I made DP's friend cry.

[Hugerag]

I have been with DP for 3 years, and he has a large social group who he has been friends with for decades. In the 3 years I have been with DP, I have always made an effort with his friends and their partners, and really hoped that as time went on my friendship with them would improve and I'd become more integrated into their group as opposed to being on the periphery.

Two weeks ago, It was my birthday party, and to avoid outing myself, it was quite a big birthday (think 40th). The birthday party was very girly and was only for the women in my life. I set up a group chat on WhatsApp to tell everyone the details of the party, including the venue, catering, drinks orders, games etc I had planned. I invited all of my DP's friends partners, despite not knowing them all that well. I invited them because I wanted to make an effort to be a part of their group and because of DP, who also wants me to become a larger part of his friendship circle. Gradually, over the weeks leading up the party, all of DP's friends partners dropped out... even though by that point they knew that I had spent time, effort and money in catering and drinks orders preparing for them to come. I started to get quite upset, but the final straw was when it was down to the final invitee, who only a few days before my birthday, told me that she had unexpectedly been given tickets to a concert on the same weekend as my party, so she was going to go to that instead. She sent me a text message apologising. It later turned out that she went to the concert with another one of the women in the friendship circle who had also been invited but had dropped out earlier.

Yesterday, DP and I went to a BBQ with the friendship circle. The woman who had dropped out at the last minute because she had been given concert tickets came up to me and apologised to me in person. I told her that I accepted her apology and we'd all move on, however, I was disappointed and upset that none of the women in the group had made the effort to come, I'd spent a lot of time and money which she was aware of having been on the WhatsApp group, and I found it quite rude that she'd dropped out at the last minute because she'd got a better offer. She seemed quite taken aback and the conversation ended there.

Today, DP received a text message from his friend, explaining that I'd really upset his partner and made her cry! DP is now annoyed with me and thinks I am creating unnecessary tension and drama. I am sticking to my opinion that it is me that should be upset with all of them and that I am the person who has been wronged. I'm forever being polite and kind and not speaking up for myself, this is one of the only times in my life that I have actually been assertive!

AIBU?

That's the problem when you never stand up for or assert yourself. When you do eventually do it, there's drama.

You should do it a bit more often. Weeds out those who may take the piss.

Id probably give them all a swerve tbh. It's not going to get any friendlier now

How is an invite rude? If you don’t want to attend just say you can’t at the time, don’t let someone think you’re coming, spend time money and effort then cancel last minute. That’s what’s rude. Inviting someone you socialise with fairly often for years to an event is in no way rude.

She’s sees them roughly 2 x a month for 3 years so she’s met them about 72 times

hardly ppl she ‘barely knows’

I don’t know why the narrative that the OP is trying to strong arm her way into a group of ppl after about 5 mins keeps being pushed

I'm quite curious about what sort of party it was. It sounds quite "organised fun" and perhaps a little full-on what with planned games, individual favours, individual catering orders done ahead of time and so on. Is it their style of event? And they'd be attending without their partners, who are actually the main connection to the OP's DP.

Also, how big was the party, and how many of OP's own friends were invited/attended? If it seemed like a ton of guests were already going, these women may have felt it'd be OK to drop out.

I have to admit, if one of DP's friend's partners who I hadn't hung out with much without him and his friend invited me to a "girly" extravaganza with organised games, I wouldn't go. Not up my street.

The details of so much planning ahead are still a bit hazy to me but obviously it's rude to bail if you've put in meal orders etc that will leave your host out of pocket - but it's also rude to give someone apologising to you both barrels about it all.

Well done for having decent boundaries, OP. They were bloody rude and inconsiderate, and deserved to be called out. The 'she made me cry' bit is pure passive aggression and emotional manipulation. I wouldn't want to be in that woman's company again.

so you say "yes" then cancel a few days before?
or you say "thank you for the invitation, i won't be attending, have fun, though?"

again someone with this patronising twaddle.
OP has friends
OP's idiot of a DP wants her to be more friendly with these women (because he's an idiot)
As a favour she issued a summons invitation to a party
they all said yes then dropped out, some very close to the date
OP had her party with her friends

The issue here is the DP.

Exactly this. The first mention of games and I’d be out.

Honestly the thing is it doesn't matter who's wrong and who's right. OP invited them, they bailed (imo rudely but that doesn't matter), OP felt slighted and still felt angry when the woman apologised and wasn't able to accept the apology with good grace. Actually that's fine and why should she? And why should she know the exact words that would be tactful and also assertive in the same sentence and in that exact moment? She was angry. I mean sure she could have said 'I felt like you were excluding me on purpose and it has felt so difficult to make friends with you all, but thanks for the apology it means a lot' or something better but who can honestly say they would think of something exactly right to say in that moment? Now this lady is upset. Fine. But she shouldn't be communicating via her partner or OP's partner by saying she cried like crying is the ultimate power move. To be fair to the lady she might not have intended to get back to the OP but nonetheless you can see how this has only strengthened the idea of these friends as a tight knit group who won't admit interlopers. i.e. dicks.

the impression i get is that OP is happy to go along with her DP and make closer friends with his friends' GFs?

there are many reasons why people do things their DP asks them to. For me? I'd tell him to get to fuck if he tried to insist that i spend time with people who clearly don't want me in their friendship group.

But my DH wouldn't tell me / ask me to do that. And he certainly wouldn't have relayed the "wah wah your wife made my GF cry" nonsense. He'd have told his friend that i was upset too, and best draw a line under it. But he wouldn't have bothered me with that.

The DP is the problem here, not OP and not the other women (apart from them being rude)

What excuse had the other woman who went to the concert given for dropping out? Dropping out for a better offer is definitely rude.

To be fair to the lady she might not have intended to get back to the OP but nonetheless you can see how this has only strengthened the idea of these friends as a tight knit group who won't admit interlopers. i.e. dicks.

People aren't dicks if they don't want to be friends with others. They don't owe anyone their time or attention and if they want to stick with their group then that's fine too. They can be cliquey as fuck if they want to. Who at 40 has the time for loads of mates anyway and going out with different sets of mates like you are still at university? I had a 10 year old and 7 year old at that age, a few good friends but family came first.

The other curious thing missing here is whether OP actually likes her DP's friends' partners as people. Are they similar sorts of people with similar interests, hobbies etc? When they meet does she feel like she'd like to get to know them better for who they are?

Like, of course it's nice and easy if we all got seamlessly integrated into convenient social circles but friendships don't actually work like that. I'll always be polite and friendly to my partner's friends' partners but you can't force an actual connection.

Something like an invite to a girly organised-fun extravaganza (with presumably all their own social circle there) would really bring home to me that we're just very different sorts of people.

And then there's the whole three-degrees-of-separation thing. If my primary connection to someone is my partner's friend, I'd be less keen to attend an event with neither my partner nor his friend.

They can do all that, sure. But then the OP can be blunt about how their actions made her feel too. 'Pulling rank' - which is what OP probably feels like has happened here given it looks like that from the outside - is a dick move. The OP is their friend's girlfriend and they need to accept her feelings are more important to him than theirs are, crying or no crying... or should be, anyway.

Well we'll have to disagree then won't we. To me that's what his looks like and is why it's so upsetting.

This is the weirdest thread! Usually in mumsnet people are excoriated for accepting an invitation and then dropping out. I never knew there was a “organized party games exception “ which means that you can dump the invitation proudly And publicly to loud mumsnet applause.

I think YANBU to be annoyed by the unreliability of these people, and to decide never to invite them again. However, I think it's a bit unfair to blow up only at one person, and that being the one person who at least apologized. I think you should either have sent a message to everyone, expressing your annoyance at their lack of consideration; or just left it and decided not to invite them to anything again. Also, this may be petty of me, but I don't like it when people say 'I accept your apology but...' and then show that they don't accept the apology. You are not obliged to accept an apology, but you should not say that you do when you don't.

It was a nice gesture on behalf of the OP. If they had nothing in common or didn't want to go or it wasn't their thing, they didn't have to accept the invitation. It's basic bad manners to drop out after accepting unless it's for a good reason (and getting a better offer is not a good reason). Inviting someone to a party is not some sort of social faux pas. It's perfectly normal. Yes, they are allowed to behave like a bag of dicks but I'm not sure why that places any obligation on the OP to behave as if they haven't. If OP's partner had stood up for her, they'd be less willing to behave badly towards her. The very least that it's reasonable for the OP to do is stand up for herself.

And at the end of the day, she has nice friends and doesn't need her spineless boyfriend's friends' approval, even though he does. She'd be better off without the lot of them.