Mortified over 40th wwyd?

[dappledeverglade]

NC for this.

I have a friendship group (8 of us originally) dropped to 6 lately with a few others moving away. We have been good friends for 10 yrs plus, kids were all in primary school together. The dc have gone their separate ways at secondary level, but the friendship has remained as strong as ever. We see each other regularly, and I considered them good friends.

My dhs business isn’t doing very well, and my hours have been reduced, and as a result we’ve had to really rein in our expenses.

My friends have done some great things for their 40ths and I’m the last. I booked a a morning craft class and we will make and take away the finished product, followed by a lunch in a restaurant that is one of the nicest in the area. I had planned to decorate it really nicely. Dh will cover the cost as part of my present. We will also go on holiday with dc in the summer, to a place that has historical significance and is part of my ancestry.

I sent a message to the group with the details last week, and friend A lets call her Joan said sounds great but this is your 40th let’s organise something better, and suggested a girls weekend away. Friend B agreed. Friend C chips in it is a 40th after alll. And so on. They have all now organised the place, the dates and are now looking at flight times.

I don’t want to go. I really can’t afford to go. The wknd isn’t even something I would like to do. It’s really mortifying that they think my idea is so bad it needs to be replaced by a new plan.

I don’t even know what to say and wish I could just cancel now. I am crying now, aware I haven’t replied for ages. I want to call it off. My dh feels awful and embarrassed. Wwyd?

How do you know that's their thinking and perspective? Never fails to amaze me when people make up shit to fit their own narrative

Believe it or not it's better to have no friends than shit friends. Shit friends are soul destroying.

Nope, still struggling to see where the good intention was in them arbitrarily deciding that OP's plan for what she wanted to do for HER 40th birthday wasn't up to scratch and a weekend doing what they wanted was far better.

Being and having friends doesn't mean you should capitulate in gratitude when they've upset you because god forbid they won't want to be friends any longer. That's warped.

And no one is egging OP on. She's a grown woman who knows exactly how to read her friends' dismissive reaction to her birthday plans.

From their perspective they just thought her suggestion was modest and they wanted to do something really special.

Are you B or Joan? How do you know they thought that?

What you describe is the sad fact that a lot of lonely people whether they’re ND or NT can be quite vulnerable to being mistreated, so they don’t always pick up on disrespect.

I’m ND and was always very slow at making friends in school each time we moved house and went to a new one. I too remember feeling desperate for friends and probably went along with anything anyone suggested in the playground, just because I was so excited to have a ‘friend’ or to be included.

Thankfully I started to make my own friends and drop that mindset as I went through my teen years so by the time I reached adulthood I was fairly choosy about who I socialised with and who entered my inner circle. But even then due to being ND and some childhood issues, it’s taken a while for me to realise I’ve been treated poorly in some instances and I still battle with the tendency to people please at times. It’s definitely a problem if someone is so eager for friends that they can’t see it when they’re being disrespected.

The issue isn’t that it’s bad to organise something for a friends birthday, that can be very thoughtful in some situations.

For instance I once helped organise a surprise birthday for my friends 30th and someone once surprised me with a huge cake at my 26th birthday party.

However in this scenario where OP already was happy with their plans and her friends are effectively trying to cancel those plans and replace them with their own ideas to suit themselves, it’s absolutely a bad thing.

Right? Especially when OP says they knew perfectly well she wouldn't enjoy what they were planning:

"IF I had more money maybe we would have gone to London for the day perhaps to a more expensive place, but actually I am low key. That’s how I am.
The weekend involves something they know I wouldn’t enjoy. Think more hen do type of place.
It does feel like Joan has replaced my birthday plans with the ones she would like to do."

It sounds like they just expected her to be a 'good sport' and go along with it so they could have a hen-do type party weekend.

You need to get a backbone and say 'it's my birthday and this is what I want to do, come or don't.'
But my friendship group are notoriously blunt, I couldn't stand the pussyfooting around topics like this.

“Not the odd one out”. By age 40 surely this sort of teen girl groupthink should be over. Sounds like a bunch of mean girls to me desperately clinging onto their youth!

It was a brilliant night 🤣

I got to the post where you gave this comment @dappledeverglade "I had a message this morning, sent late last night from friend B to say the group had tried to arrange something nice for me, and Joan especially had worked hard to make it special, and they were all ‘disappointed’ that I didn’t seem to like the idea. Subtlety suggesting I should be more receptive, and open to the weekend away. Just as some pp had said."

Unless they were willing to cover all of your costs - so flights, accommodation, drinks, meals - then what they were planning was really for them and your birthday really was the afterthought and not the reason for this weekend away.

Also, generally speaking, before someone in a group goes ahead and makes the effort to organise a weekend away, they generally check with the person that the weekend is being organised for to ensure it's something that they want to do. They didn't do that here for you.

I hope you have a lovely time in Scotland!

Person E actually sounds like a friend, and probably someone who understands you. I'd be tempted to take her up on her offer.

Joan and her cronies are not your real friends and seem to want to make it all about them.

Regarding those who have left the group chat and are now less in evidence around you all, I'd almost be willing to bet that it was for issues similar to what you are now experiencing.

Enjoy your weekend away with your family, and your meal out with E. Don't give Joan et al another thought. Perhaps you and E could do the pottery craft thing. Your DH and your parents could take up the other spaces and all could enjoy it together.

I don’t and neither does anyone on here. I’m simply giving an alternative perspective to counterbalance the insecure, paranoid, misanthropic interpretation. Why not give OP’s friends the benefit of the doubt that they’re nice people, otherwise why would she have stuck with them so long, who like OP and thought they were doing something to make her feel special, but unaware of a her financial issues and that what they would enjoy she might not.

This quote from OP does not sound like a bunch of people contriving to make her feel small and worthless:

I sent a message to the group with the details last week, and friend A lets call her Joan said sounds great but this is your 40th let’s organise something better, and suggested a girls weekend away. Friend B agreed. Friend C chips in it is a 40th after alll. And so on. They have all now organised the place, the dates and are now looking at flight times.

From this it sounds like they’re trying to make her birthday more special than OP’s modest plans.

OP the Scottish trip sounds wonderful, and as well as making you happy it will be nice for your family. I'd keep friend E (I think it was E?), but it doesn't sound like the others are much loss really. Nice to have friends, but quality matters more than quantity.

Read all of OP's posts. They did know.

From this it sounds like they’re trying to make her birthday more special than OP’s modest plans.

But it's not what she wanted.

Friend E sounds lovely - definitely do something with them.

Also reach out to the two friends that left the 'group' and see if they might be interested in doing something later on (doesn't have to be for your birthday) but if they know that Joan isn't involved, then they may be receptive to doing it.

It does come across as Joan has appointed herself Queen B and everyone else has to do her bidding for her. I'd love to know what might happen if someone told her to fuck off!

I have, you need to read them. They didn’t know then, they do now.

How convenient you miss the bit where OP writes she thinks they have a separate group chat and suspects that they've all been nattering about how her idea is crap (to them - sounded a lovely time to me).

You also fail to realise that many people slowly end up in these less than favourable positions within their friendship groups. Low self esteem, young and naive, it's such a slow transition they've not even realised it. It's all over MN where women have epiphanies relating to their crappy friends.

You're incredibly naive if you think there are no people on this earth that would be sneaky enough to make everything about themselves or hold enough power in a friendship group to manipulate their wrong doing as an act of love for a person they've wronged (and lets not forget employing another friend as their mouthpiece so they dont have to do thwir dirty work for them). It's clear as day what has happened here, and with the wisdom of many MNers, the OP has finally had her own epiphany.

You can try and dress it up as much as you like, but more fool you if you give these types of people the benefit of the doubt.

Which they didn’t know at the time.

Did we read the same thread? In the one I read, OP said:

"I was honest about dh business, said things were very slow. They do know. Albeit not going into masses of detail about finances but enough to say I was worried that the slow down would continue for us."

Who are they to decide her plan is too modest though? It's HER plan, for what she wanted to do on HER birthday. Instead, they've decided that how she wants to celebrate her milestone birthday isn't good enough for them to bother attending. That's just awful and I'm amazed you can't see it. Maybe if they'd said "of course we'll attend your craft event/dinner but how about a girls' weekend too?" then you could say it's been done with good intention but that's clearly not on their agenda.

They did know. It's in her OP.👇

I booked a a morning craft class and we will make and take away the finished product, followed by a lunch in a restaurant that is one of the nicest in the area.

I sent a message to the group with the details last week, and friend A lets call her Joan said sounds great but this is your 40th let’s organise something better, and suggested a girls weekend away.

@Mirabai I wouldn’t necessarily say suggesting a weekend away is more “special” than what OP has suggested. Surely it’s about spending quality time with her friends doing an activity she likes for her milestone birthday?

So the craft and lunch in their home town could be just as special and meaningful, if not more, as the proposed wild weekend abroad.

The friends plans are more expensive but not necessarily more “special”.

They rejected OP's choice of birthday celebration and instead tried to replace it with an expensive weekend away clubbing when they knew that not only does OP hate clubbing but she and her husband were already in financially straitened circumstances.

I am in awe of the mental gymnastics that can spin that into the alternative perspective of a plan to make OP " feel special"

What is the craft thing it sounds lovely if it's in London please send me a link!