When your partner isn’t part of your friend group….

[Mrloner]

My husband and I just moved from London to his home town up north. I do have my own friends as I play a sport that’s very social.

His friend groups goes back years together and most seem to have met their partner at school or uni, so the partners are long standing parts of the friend group. I am comparatively very new and haven’t met everyone yet (we had overseas tiny wedding).

My husband does include me in lots and lots of the groups plans, but occasionally something comes up where just the friend group is invited.

I was a bit sad at the weekend when he went to what I assumed was guys’ dinner, for a friend’s birthday (at said friend’s house) and then saw photos which had partners in it. Similarly I’ve had the same with mixed groups of men and women, but I’ve not been invited. Again rare but it happens.

DH did explain that at the weekend dinner gathering there was limited seating and only close friends were invited.

I’m not annoyed at the event itself (I was a bit sad) but wondered what was reasonable in such situations? I don’t expect to be taken everywhere with him but I am curious to know what people think it reasonable in such circumstances. I can’t imagine being out with a mixed group and not inviting DH along, or asking the host if I could.

The other side of it also being that DH is absolutely entitled to want and have space with his friends without me, but often that friend group does include people’s partners and/or other female friends. Again this has so rarely come up but I expect it will.

I’ve had this. Moved to where partner is from. The friendship groups were already well established and whilst everyone was perfectly polite I was never invited into the ‘inner circle’!!

I have had to make my own friends and still have friends from where I lived before. It’s not great but it is what it is.

You're not unreasonable for wanting to be included, and it sounds like you are - "lots and lots" of the time, according to you.

On this occasion the invite wasn't to "friends + partners". The partners who were at what sounds like an intimate birthday dinner with limited space weren't there as plus-ones, they were there as friends. I don't see that it makes any difference that some of them were women.

To answer your question, DP and I had separate friendship groups when we first met - in both cases the kind of blurry, overlapping ones where there wasn't really an "original" core per se, and many people became part of it through being partners with someone else. Most of the time we'd both be invited to the big social events - clubs, parties, gigs etc. But at the start if there was a smaller event then naturally I wouldn't expect to be included.

Over the years that changes (if you roll with the dynamics and don't take offence at these things) and at some point you realise you're a proper part of the friendship group, not just X's partner. I went on a very old friend's stag do (mixed-gender) this year and was startled, in a nice way, to see that DP was also invited! (Not all partners were invited to this but he's obviously gone from "gannett's partner" to "our friend" in their minds.)

I have a mixed friend group and I don't invite DH to everything. He's fine and it's nice when he's there and he likes everyone and they like him but we also just like our own space and have different interests.

You definitely should have been invited that is poor form imo. You aren’t a random person and they should be more welcoming to you. To be honest I’m not sure my husband would have attended in that set of circumstances. It was an event at a house for goodness sake for a birthday. I find it weird and odd that a close friends wife wasn’t invited. It sounds a bit stiff and formal and weirdly cliquey just not what I’m used to. And no I don’t expect to be joined at the hip to my husband but this just sounds weirdly childish and petty. I find as you all grow older life changes and things evolve. A great friend of ours (best man at our wedding twenty years ago) has met a new partner and she is lovely and I’m delighted for him and there is a big birthday coming up soon which is just a few drinks and food in the birthday persons house and it wouldn’t for one second enter my head that the new partner wouldn’t be invited.

My partner and I are similar.

He has a large and wide friendship group spanning decades. He's known many of them since school and he's in his 60s now! I've only been with him for 4 years.

Over the years, partners have been added along the way or people in the friendship group have married so they've always been part of the friendship group.

I go to some of the group things with him but not all of them. Likewise, my partner is involved with some things I do with my friends but not all of them.

Tbh, I find they like to reminisce a lot - partly because they don't all get together that often nowadays so once they've shared what's going on now, a lot of their conversation is around reliving their more exciting pasts when they had more to talk about than replacing double glazing, promotions at work and how the kids are getting on at university, or talking about people I don't know.

When it descends into that, it's just boring, tbh. I wasn't there for the holiday they all went on together in 1987; I can't contribute to conversations about Jimbo's deterioriating health and what a shame it is because he's such a lovely guy (because I've never met him); I don't get why it's so funny that Tracey finally got married and I don't get all the cryptic references or knowing looks around what Bob's lad is up to nowadays...

No one wants to take time to explain the history to me and I don't really care 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm also not keen on being joined at the hip. I think it's healthy for us to spend time apart socially. It doesn't bother me that it's a mixed sex group or that some partners (male or female) are included and I'm not because some of them have been around for long enough to have become true friends and know exactly who Jimbo, Tracey and Bob's lad are even if they didn't go on the holiday in 1987...

If I was being routinely deliberately excluded then I'd be bothered. If I were invited but partner chose to not include me, I'd be bothered. But being included in everything? No. I don't want that.

So, in your shoes, I wouldn't expect to be included in a birthday meal like you describe and I probably wouldn't have wanted to go anyway.