Day out friends..they left to go to diff restaurant on their own

[TFICoffeetime]

Met up with close friends yesterday. We live opposite sides country. We picked scenic village, countryside & meal at a nice country inn.
We were 40 mins late (it's 2.5 hrs for us) 1 hour drive for us & got caught in traffic then stopped once to let DD go to the toilet & stretched dogs legs so she'd wee. All communicated with friends. We arrived, had lovely stroll, river swim and meal at nice country inn with great views. They had booked the meal...we thought lovely place. But when we got there they said they had to leave at 5.30 to go to another restaurant (just them and child). They are starters and went. They said they hadn't realised this place was a fave restaurant & was close to their home. (So why go today). So we were left. It felt v awkward & like punishment for being late maybe. It had been lovely day and ended on weird vibes.
We finished our meal on own then went to another beautiful inn for pudding. After this I feel perplexed. AIBU to think their actions rude & far ruder than been late. We weren't intentionally late & just how it goes with traffic & teenagers.
I don't understand why we couldn't enjoy the meal together as planned. They booked it on the day (it felt like because we were late). We avoided confrontation but left sour note. Our children were perplexed. Just odd & awkward. This friend doesn't like confrontation even if it's "we were a bit sad you changed to go elsewhere" so she wouldn't discuss if I did. But I'm left feeling am I wrong. I just can't see myself having issues if they had longer to drive and was late & I would not change plans on a meal that was meant to be spent together. Xxx

I’m probably going to sound rude but is there any reason why you omit connecting words in your posts, it makes it more difficult to decipher the trail of events.

From what I can gather though they sound very strange, did it all end very awkwardly?

No worries.

So looking at it from that perspective, can you think of anything that might have inadvertently caused any of them some offence at the start of the restaurant part? Did the atmosphere suddenly sour? Did it even appear that the couple could have had a whispered disagreement that caused the day to end suddenly?

More importantly, are you going to ask your friend? If she’s godmother to one of your DC I’m presuming you are close, so if you don’t want to fester or end up losing a good friend over this, I think you really need to - regardless of her dislike of confrontation. That’s the price she will have to pay for such bizarre behaviour.

@Truetoself you know logical & rational thinking has no place here! Not when some posters are bored so need to berate the OP.

Op says they were late by 40 mins. The traffic delay caused only half of that.

The implication is that even though op knows her daughter has issues travelling, and the dog might need a second pee, that she hadn't actually added any time on for these things or possible delays.

I said upthread you need to ask your friend why they behaved like that but be prepared for them to be brutally honest. Asking on here will not give you any answers. Also I don’t want to be rude but your written communication is vague and irritating, maybe that’s impacting your relationship.

How confusingI. I’ve given up on this thread before I’ve even started.

I guess because they thought it would be ruder to say they were leaving to meet someone else than just leaving to go somewhere they preferred?

I wonder if it was the reality of being accompanied to dinner by a dog that's been swimming in the river all afternoon... if they don't have their own dog, they're not actually going to enjoy that experience. Regardless, it was spectacularly rude of your friends, and I wouldn't be happy to meet up with them again, without having a proper chat to clear the air.

The lateness is a red herring but could have contributed to an overall feeling of irritation.

Either OPs family said or did something at the restaurant or it was really weird behaviour to just make new plans.

Sorry OP but I expect its the former because its a bloody upheaval for them to just leave and go to a different restaurant halfway through. And if the new restaurant is so sought after, it would be fully booked on a Sauturday.

I expect they were, rather ineptly, cutting the visit short, either due to a specific incident or a cumulative of irritation.

The restaurant debate at the table sounds like they had a pre-agreed trigger word, like how someone on a date arranges an emergency call to get out of it. Only there was perhaps disagreement between the couple when the trigger word was used, hence the weird conversation between them at the table.

It does sound like an odd thing to do, have they responded to the last text you sent

Next time you meet, meet half way ( or closer to your home) if that’s possible, I would be wary of going out of my way for them again

So just popped onto Mn and when I read a post the usual thing to do is to read all the OPs posts to get a general understanding of how the post and information unfolds. In this case it seems very erratic and scatterbrained …

Sorry OP. It’s hard to make sense of your day and how it panned out and maybe it’s all just a big misunderstanding on your part or the day was just too much for your friends and they called it short.

Embarrassment. Some people just aren’t very good at being transparent. My DH is a big Liverpool fan ( football fan). It is well known amongst our friends that he will turn down invites if they clash with games. But he will warn them that he is likely to leave early to catch a match on TV if we accept an invite early evening or in the afternoon. But since he is very open about it no one takes offence.

Far better than my MIL who once turned down an invite to DS’s last carol concert at primary school because she didn’t like driving at night. Normally we would have given her a lift but I was in hospital recovering from an op and DH & DS were travelling straight to church after visiting me so didn’t have time to pick her up.
Later found out it was because she was attending her other grandsons carol concert. I really don’t know why she had to make up an excuse. Some people inadvertently offend while trying not to.

Maybe it wasn’t about you and your family at all - if they were disagreeing over their own bill and it all seemed hasty, perhaps they had an argument or there is something else going on?
I think inititally i would feel put out and a bit disappointed, but maybe text your friend to check if she’s ok? It might be something entirely unrelated - is her husband an arse and got weird about lateness or restaurant choice??

"fave" restaurant? What are you? 12?

You were ridiculously late and they were peeved so decided to pay you back.

The usual saying of "if you aren't planning to be early, you're planning to be late" should apply here.

We regularly make a 45 min journey, for which we leave an hour early, then add extra for parking time, time and day, walking to venue etc.

For a 2.5 hour drive with a dog and travel sick teen, I'd either leave the teen and dog at home, stay the night before, or leave something like 4 hours for getting there, so I could plan in a good stop with a walk for the child and dog at a decent place and contingency stop/traffic delay time. If we arrived after 2.5 hours, bonus time for a coffee.

You were ridiculously late and they were peeved so decided to pay you back.

It's really weird to get people back like this though...

@SaladAndChipsForTea your medal is in the post but the lateness imo shouldn't have impacted the meal hours later.

I suspect they were paying you back for your lack of consideration. Nothing new or unexpected happened on your journey so you could have planned to be on time by setting out at an earlier time and you live in a country where punctuality is valued

I agree, it serves no purpose unless you explain your behaviour.

I suspect they were paying you back for your lack of consideration

But this isn't normal.

My friend was 20 mins late to visit me yesterday, I didn't even bat an eyelid.

And are you? I have a 12yr old who isn’t as rude as you. You’ve contributed absolutely nothing to the thread with this comment, so why bother?

I think they'd double booked themselves.

You won't get any sensible answers here though OP because in MN world you must plan to arrive everywhere three hours early to make sure there's time for delays, catastrophic weather events, civil war etc.

As is yours for backhanded calling me smug.

You could weigh in on my other post for why I think the meal was cut short if you like? Go the full hog of giving me your view.

I am interested in what you say here as this sounds like my MIL. She's always been this way but decided to move closer to us 2 years ago and its been absolutely horrible. Wish they'd never come. MiL gets the dates, times and arrangements for everything wrong, causes complete confusion whenever she arranges anything but then falls out with us (mainly me) if in all the confusion we've not done things right.

She's also very passive aggressive, manipulative and controlling which does not help. She will give me a different date or time for something than she's given others then slag me and husband off to the rest of the family if we are late.

We now only communicate plans via message and double check with others before we arrive but its mentally exhausting and causes an atmosphere at 90% of gatherings. FiL seems exhausted by it but also gets drawn into the lies and often ends up taking her side.

Interestingly when SIL or FIL make the arrangements its much easier, less atmosphere and we are included in the planning process rather than being the afterthought.

But I would say her behaviour is much like this OPs friend in that if we dare to be slightly late (even if we keep her fully informed) she would do things like change the meet up location 5 mins before we arrive or leave halfway through a meal to make a point. We've even met for a meal where we were 30 mins late due to a motorway closure and when we got to the pub she refused to eat anything! She then won't discuss it at all choosing instead to just freeze us out and ignore us for the next few weeks. I think its all about punishment and control to bring us back in line. Problem is we are in our 40s now, she's moved to where we live. We have plenty of other friends and family nearby and are happy to just ignore her back.