Dinner Party hell

[dinnerpartyhell]

Please tell me what I am doing wrong.

It is customary where we live for friends to have lots of dinner parties, these range from silver service formal dinners all the way through to a relaxed buffet style supper.

I absolutely detest them, I hate hosting them with the two days of cleaning, cooking and preparing. The nerves that it will all go wrong (I am no Nigella) the endless inane conversations with people I barely know or care about. I try to talk to more interesting people, but after a few hours I have had enough even with the most sparkling character.

I don't even like going to other people's houses where it is the same in reverse. I like seeing my closer friends, but this all adds a layer stress/formality that is not normally present when we see each other day to day.

Please tell me why you enjoy them? (if you do) and what I can do to enjoy them more. I would have no friends if I opted out, as everyone has them. I wish I could enjoy them more, but I really don't. I dread them now, and it has got worse as time has gone on, not better. Everyone seems to go out every single weekend, and we are knackered from working long hours and caring for dc. How do you have energy to do this? After another weekend, I am exhausted today and really ready to throw in the towel and move to a desert island.

hazel Yes this is the plan. Once a year, not even twice. Even I could manage that maybe with a slug of vino. I love christmas, and doing things then, but it is always when the dc are ill on a loop, and it snows etc and is generally even more pressure because it is 'christmas'.

ohtheroses You are making me really sad now. Why can't I be like you? Just chuck it all in with a few herbs and hey presto it comes out looking just delicious (not a charred inedible blackened carcass)

My dh hates them more than I do. With a passion. He takes a full day limbering up to it in a foul mood. Decanting wine, making noises about his life passing him by.

If you just want to be left alone at the weekend to relax why would it be a problem if you dropped out and became a social pariah? Sounds like the perfect solution to me.

Your nosy friends aren't friends.

If it's any conciliation, my husband's childhood involved being left in the car in his PJs while his parents went to these silver service dinner parties, after which they drove home drunk.

If all he does is pour out some wine and complain then you need to give him a massive kick up the arse. At the very least he takes 50% responsibility for all the practicalities if he insists on perpetuating this nonsense despite hating it.

It's just simple ingedients that require no skill and no timing except for the roasties and lamb.

Twice a year, one bbq and one christmas theme. Then I can just be very busy all the other weekends.

Now you've got the beginnings of a solution! Except maybe not a Christmas theme unless you really like the double challenge of organising a family Christmas as well as a large gathering 🙂

One of my friends is very socially confident and could throw together a dinner party at a moment's notice but has scaled back considerably for similar reasons. Family commitments (carefully unspecified) take up much of her time but she holds a summer garden party (all food prepared in advance) and instead of a Christmas theme, she hosts a get-together on 6 January to mark the end of the Christmas period. It's quite clever really. By 6 January, everyone is so sick of eating too much and drinking too much that they are glad of a chance of a very informal get-together with drinks and snacks. No one drinks too much and many are doing Dry January anyway. Plus everyone has Christmas and New Year to talk about so you don't get the usual tedious topics of conversation that would have your eyes rolling in no time.

It's become an annual event for everyone to look forward to, precisely because it's such an antidote to all the Christmas hype.

Is that something that might work for you?

not Dh makes the dc jacket potato with mash and cauliflower and thinks that is a balanced decent dinner. The cauliflower is barely cooked. The jackets are rock hard as he serves them after twenty minutes in the oven, the children are starving and can't even force it down, despite being polite about it. I can not let him loose, no way. He can cook a good breakfast, thats it. I can't serve that! Well maybe I can, that would shake things up!

Link up with opted out friend and start your own friendship group which is more informal?

Anybody who snooped around my house or wanted a tour would never set foot inside again

Yes this, especially if they also get pissed and rude and vomit in the towels.

Honestly why are you interested in remaining in touch with these people? Life is too short to spend it in a parody of the 1970s

You hate them. Your husband hates them. One of your friends has run for the hills.
I reckon everyone hates them and you're all trapped in this Dante's inferno of finger bowls and petits fours.

No sympathy from me, you're an adult who's choosing to do this.

I hate entertaining, so I stopped. Life didn't end, it just became nicer.

Jeez, I can't believe this stuff goes on. There is a whole different parallel universe in the UK where people have silver service dinner parties and/or catered meals in their own homes?

Just book a meal out, ffs. Or give up on these people completely. They sound awful.

Is this a zombie thread from the 1980s?

FFS. Can he read? If he can read he can follow a recipe. Presumably he follows instructions as part of his job? If he is crap at cooking then he needs to practise. Do NOT let him opt out by being shit. You are a fucking doormat.

singing Yes that does sound like a solution to me. Unspecified disappearing act sounds especially good.

My friends are fine, most of them anyway, it is the husbands. When it is the couples thing it turns the evening into something else. I like all girls nights me. I would choose that any day, but the minute I try and suggest it, at least one friend will pipe up how lovely it is for all the dhs to get together. The dhs don't care and would rather be at home in their old slippers stretched out on the sofa, I am sure. We do have some very sociable friends it has to be said, I need more hermit friends, those that like to stay in and be at home.

Speechless at people nosying through the house.

We have a regular extended family event once a year and I admit our house is filthy. We try with the basics (vacuuming, kitchen, bathroom) but there's an element of grubbiness that never goes away. I have a vague plan to have the house deep cleaned annually, but we need to get on top of some decluttering first.

One year a guest made a comment about whether a cobweb was the same one that was there from last year. I handed him a broom with a smile and told him to knock himself out.

If you like these people and enjoy the events, I would sod what anyone thought, do simple food and take a 'take us as you find us' approach to cleaning. Also make sure DH does 50% of the work including planning and thinking.

Otherwise, I'd just not bother at all and find some new friends/things to do.

Sounds ridiculous. Like someone said above this pseudo craze ended in the 80s surely. I was quite young then and ours always ended in food fights anyway.

If you definition of friends is people you don’t like coming over for diner you don’t want to make, I can see why this is a dilemma. Otherwise sounds too Jilly Cooper for anyone to cope with. Even Jolly Cooper mocked this nonsense.

One year two couples asked for a tour of the house including bedrooms. It was a no, until I found them upstairs anyway 'checking on the children' so yes, maybe down scaling would be good.

Unbelievable. I’m totally judging these people. They seem all about the social performance of ostentatious dinner parties but lack basic manners. That would have been the last time they set foot in my house. You sound very susceptible to social pressure, OP. Break free. It’s liberating.

not he can definitely read, the last time I checked anyway, but something happens between the gathering of ingredients and the cooking of said recipe. And it tastes like utter shit. I don't know why. Perhaps if I had married Gordon Ramsay my life would be so much easier by now.

I need more hermit friends, those that like to stay in and be at home.

What would be the point of having friends that you never see? How are they any different from someone you don’t know at all?

Or are you envisaging the type of “friend” who is on the end of the phone for you to unburden yourself to from the comfort of your sofa, but who you never actually make the effort to see?

Gordon Ramsay? Dear God, no!

He is cooking badly in purpose and you have fallen for it.

Why is your dh decanting wine? It is completely unnecessary for all but grwat vintages which will have been cellared and kept at specific temperatures. Do you have a wine cellar? We do - we dont decant.

"The dog always waits until I have people around before releasing different bodily functions ten minutes before they arrive"

Shut the dog in the Boot Room twenty minutes before guests due to arrive.

Why do you have only one dog?

Have you ever had a job OP?