To not invite everyone in a friendship group?

[Mammamia321]

Group of five friends from school, all now in forties. Three still live in old town, two moved away. We meet up a couple of times a year to see a show, go for dinner etc, always organised by the same two people. The two organisers are the kind of friends who message each each other several times of day, have similar interests etc. They are both big Swifties and got tickets to the Eras tour, without asking the others in group. They have never heard the others mention Taylor Swift, but also the others NEVER organise anything, and it was much easier to get two tickets than more. Is it ok for two people in a friendship group to plan something for just them? I can’t decide if it’s unkind or not?! Should you invite everyone every time?

Of course it's fine.

It’s fine.

Yes it's fine!

Yes it is fine.

Yes absolutely - and I say this as a person who is very aware of not leaving anyone out (having been on the receiving end as a child).
From your description, the two have a closer friendship outside the group in addition to being fans

Yes it's fine. Of course it is.

Of course it is absolutely fine!

What wouldn’t be fine is four out of five making plans. Two is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about at all.

Ok thank you. I keep on having pangs of unease about it and the last thing I’d want it to hurt the others. We didn’t tell them about it (to be honest it didn’t come up rather than avoid it) and suddenly they’ll have seen a picture on social media and I feel mean. But then I also think that if they want to do fun stuff they need to invite us and organise it?!

Well you could only buy a max of 4 tickets so you couldn’t have all gone anyway. Better for 2 to go than one person be left out.

Yes, absolutely fine. I try to be inclusive but for events like you’re describing - where tickets are in great demand for an artist I really want to see - I don’t hang around; I would buy what I needed and let other people know in case they were interested.

Just by way of example, I hesitated for literally about 20 minutes buying tickets for one gig, for which I had a ticket alert set up, just to check which immediate family members wanted to come (we were all physically in the house at the same time) and when I got back on line to buy the tickets, the early bird specials had already gone. You can’t hang around on things like that.

You did nothing wrong!

YANBU. They could have organised it for all, you are not their social secretary.

I bet they would have made it your responsibility to organise transport as well.

Absolutely fine.
IMO, it would be different if 1 person was left out.
However, as a friendship group of also 5, I have done something with just 1 other of them, and others in the friendship group have got shitty about it, so do be prepared and, if this is the case, try not to rise to it or feel guilty. Grown women and all that!!
Enjoy 🥰

Of course it's fine.

Yes it's fine. I have a similar situation with my long term friendship group and we will often splinter off to do things separately. It would be absolute carnage if everyone had to be invited to everything. Just getting a date that everyone is free once or twice a year is difficult enough!

I did similar and got tickets just because I’d spoken to one of our group at a different event we went to that others couldn’t make & we’d agreed to take our daughters… 2 people in our friendship group went mad. I think it’s pathetic, we are not their social secretary, I didn’t even know they liked Taylor & my argument was if you like her so much how come you didn’t register? We wouldn’t have been able to sit together due to the 4 ticket limit even if we had managed to get the same date. I think it comes down to jealousy pure and simple - it’s definitely changed the group dynamic for me as I had no idea they could be so selfish!

It's fine. Trying to get responses from 5 people for something time limited is going to be difficult.

And if it's always you two organising stuff, then that gets a bit tedious after a while.

If anything is said by the others, then just say you weren't aware they were TS fans and two tickets became available at short notice.

If they were fans they could have registered themselves. And there is no guarantee that they would have asked any of the group anyway, they may have gone with family. You are not all joined at the hip.

Of course it is. I have a group of 6 school friends. There are 2 sets of 2 that are particularly close ( I'm not one of them!) Who holiday together, their kids see them as aunties etc). We all meet up every 3 months but also do other things in smaller groups.
5 tickets for Swift sounds onerous.

Of course it’s OK. Why wouldn’t it be?!

@KreedKafer because they may feel left out.

from what you describe I think it’s absolutely fine,

but this is always why I don’t post things on social media about my social outings - only stuff solo or about kids or family travel. The number of times my heart has sunk seeing portions of friend groups doing things without me (and also the other way - I’ve been tagged as part of a small group and then I find out someone else’s feelings have been hurt not being invited). And this is part of a large social group of women in their 40s and 50s! Hurt feelings aplenty, and all from bloody SM,

I agree @Twinklefloss and I’m not sure I would have posted something but my friend did and I know the others saw it.