Friend invited her friends to my birthday meal

[Donotfitin]

For context I haven’t celebrated my birthday in many years (and have never celebrated my birthday with these friends). Anyway, so one of my friends messages me today and says her friends are visiting and if they can come. I said it was fine, but I’m not necessarily happy about it. So AIBU for thinking she shouldn’t have asked? (She was very aware I haven’t celebrated my birthday in 10+ years).

Go with an open mind and an open heart OP
you could be very pleasantly surprised x

It is when you know the people
not a bunch of Random’s. Otherwise I wouldn’t have waited more than 10 years to celebrate my birthday again

I don’t think she’d care… she celebrated her own birthday without her husband and had a great time. And goes out without him etc….

Are you the person who posted before about not being sure what to do for your birthday and which friends to invite? It was an issue then and if you are the same person sounds like it still is. I think the advice then was to do things with individual people.

It doesn't sound like you even want this friend there (you haven't even booked her a space) so I think you don't value her so just message her and say not to come and cut the friendship off.

Yes that’s me! And no I did t book her a seat because she was super non committal from the day I asked, and even when I asked she still would t give me a straight yes (that was Monday).

the owner of the restaurant told we have the biggest table and would seat more people if needed but at least needed to book for 6 people, so problem solved from that angle.

i actually originally cancelled. But then one of them
asked me very nicely about my plans, so i ended up organising this. (I did tell the 4th friend that we’d have to do something separately as this was now a massive change of plans).

So from what I recall, you wanted enough people to make it a party as you hadn't been able to before, you were reluctant to do various activities it had to be the restaurant you wanted and also despite knowing this wouldn't be what others would like you didn't want to do anything individually with friends (it had to be a party with everyone, despite them not being friends).
This just adds to it all being hard work and I am not sure what you wanted to achieve. You haven't really invited this friend and have left it in the air regarding her husband. She might know you wanted a proper birthday celebration hence wondering if it was ok to add extras. If I was her I would actually choose to do not attend your party and focus on her other friendships as you aren't really a close friend and are quite difficult.

Wow! So she really wants to come to your birthday and doesn’t want to let you down, but she can’t obviously abandon her friends who are staying with her, so rather than cancel on you, she asked if she could bring them. You have invited all couples, haven’t said to her ‘your husband is welcome, but it’s up to you’, so she would have shown up being the only single despite being married. I feel like there is only one bad friend here!!

Okay, but it seems like she didn't know this for whatever reason, so the onus was on you to give her an honest answer and make it clear to her that you "hate prople".

At this point, you might as well try to look at this positively. You're having a birthday party...the more people will come, the less small the party will feel. Who knows, these people might be lovely - most likely, they are. I don't think you're helping yourself by telling yourself that you "hate people". That's a quite negative and presumptuous attitude to have towards people you've never even met. Maybe YOU aren't such a delight in other people's eyes either...

Another infuriating thread

say no if you dont want them there

and why cant her friend come!

why are you so up tight?

Maybe im
not a delight (in fact I’m sure I probably come across as the opposite at times) which is why I don’t put myself in those positions in the first place !

Ha, yes! And “she should know that when we don’t invite her husband, it means he’s always invited, but we don’t want him there”. Communication clear as mud.

we’re actually fairly close…. She even said I know you don’t like people in general but we’ve been friends for years so that must mean something!

You could make some lovely new friends from this opportunity, give it a go!

The whole point of this is that I can be myself
(because I’m with people I know and like for years) otherwise I’ll have to pretend to be more “likeable” which kind of defeats its purpose

I'm not autistic (AFAIK) but I wouldn't see my intimate birthday meal as an opportunity to make new friends and for me personally, it would lessen my enjoyment having strangers there.

@Donotfitin I haven't read your other thread but clearly you have found it difficult organising this. If you're interested in practical advice, I think you need to message/call your friend to the effect:

"You caught me a bit off guard the other day when you asked if your friends could come to the meal. I know I said yes, but I'd really much prefer to keep to to people I know. I know this means you might not be able to come now, but I'd still love to celebrate with you so how about we do something together separately when we're both available?"

Up to you if you want to address the complex husband issue, but you could also add:

"As a sidenote, I know we didn't discuss DH coming. Obviously if you wanted to bring him along he's welcome, but I was conscious after what happened last time it might not be the best idea. I'll leave it up to you to let me know if you're coming or not, but if it's too tricky with your friends arriving early then let me know what other dates you have available."

Yes that’s what I plan to do (more or less). I’m also seeing her on Saturday as she’s organising a BBQ, so was planning to tell her we could celebrate then.

I would personally keep it a bit more open and suggest celebrating "another time" rather than potentially hijacking the BBQ she is organising to celebrate your birthday but I clearly know zilch about your friends BBQ (what the occasion is, who's going) or what you mean by "celebrate." If you just mean seeing each other around your birthday as opposed to the event being specifically focused on your birthday, maybe that works, but you'll know better than any of us here.

Yeah I meant it as just having a drink close to my birthday.

I suppose you’re lucky that you don’t have ‘actual’ problems to worry about.

This tired old chestnut. You have literally no idea what is going on on OP's life outside of this very specific Mumsnet thread.

FWIW I'm autistic, and this sounde like a Theory of Mind issue to me.

OP, going forwards, can you practise saying No when you mean No?

I really hope you get to enjoy your birthday.

It’s really hard, in my culture we never say no, we make excuses….. all I’m trying to say is that I also have my cultural baggage to fight

Am I misunderstanding “we make excuses” or did you not do that either though?

I haven’t made any excuse… but in this case for example I would have said “there are no tables left”.

He's not welcome though - OP's own husband has said she doesn't want him there. Why would you lie to the friend?