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.

crusty Quite. You have no heart, you

My mother thinks a ready meal is cooking

Isn’t it?

It involves turning the oven on. Remembering to pierce or take off the film lid and not burning it.

Our local farm shop does different dinner party dishes in their freezer cabinets.

You can even buy the right size oven dish to put it into when frozen so when it is cooked it can be served at the table to look like it is home cooked.

Just stop doing it. I genuinely don't understand the problem here. If I get invited somewhere that I don't want to go, I just say no.

I am also surprised your DH has gone along with it for so long considering he hates it too. If my DH kept volunteering us for shit like this I'd just say "look I've had enough of this, if you want to carry on then crack on but I'll be out or upstairs watching telly in bed eating my Chinese takeaway"

min I tried this, I did, a few years ago, and I love her to bits but an hour in she asked when everyone else would be arriving???!!!

It was really really very embarrassing for all of us when she realised it was just us.

I am going to be liberated. From now on! Starting with this weekend.

You go girl !
Besides everybody knows you serve the first course with a very expensive wine then much cheaper from then on when people are too tipsy to notice.

I don't understand. Why are you hosting and going to dinner parties with people you don't enjoy the company of? Isn't life too short?

Don’t play OP.
Pot of chilli, M&S pudding,if they don’t like it they can lump it!

Though personally, I would move! You appear to be stuck in the 1970’s!

I really expected to see more posts that would be sining the joys of doing this, genuinely expecting a pasting as to why I am so lacking in social skills, but having read the posts that seem aghast at the idea, I am now thinking I could possibly just not bother ever again!

Then I can sit eating chinese in my pants, and be in bed by 10, and not come down to a car crash kitchen the following morning. Seriously that sounds like bliss.

singing!

If you borderline like their company then get a catered meal / Cook and ready dessert. Or fish and chips followed by ices, as a PP said. If you don't... find a hobby/different group of friends.

I LOVE dinner parties, wish more of my friends were into them. I order a shedload of stuff from Ottolenghi and my only culinary contribution is a bit of fruit and whipped cream to go on top of a ready made meringue base for a pavlova. Everyone leaves drunk and happy.

cho I love my friends, this is why I am doing this! I don't love spending time with their boring husbands really I don't. We can't speak about the same chattery stuff, they seem more formal and polite with their dhs, they are being polite to other people's husbands rather than saying what a ratbag he is. It is just so different.

I really expected to see more posts that would be sining the joys of doing this, genuinely expecting a pasting as to why I am so lacking in social skills,

Are you new to Mumsnet? Or did you get it mixed up with the messageboard of your local WI?

essential we need to swap lives. I will give you a month of this, and then you will be demanding your life back again

Their not your friends. Friends don’t nose through your pantry.

Just stop doing it.

not I need to be seventy five plus with replacement joints to join our WI. Not quite there yet, but definitely would pass if this morning's reflection was anything to go by!

Oh dear OP. This is the sort of glimpse into other people's lives I come to Mumsnet for. Thank you for sharing, however painful this is for you

I thought dinner parties were a very 70s thing - in line with all the other homemade, budget-consious stuff that decade - making the most of enforced candle power and avoiding the cost of restaurants. Not that they're actually cheap to host, even before you add in the time cost.

Anyway, what I think you need to do is engineer a 'husbands club' of some sort - get them to meet up at the pub on a Friday, instigate port-tasting nights, or whisky, or beer, or whatever they might like. if you can get something like that to stick, then they get their social opportunity, you get your excuse for girls' night.

You could go down the casual supper route and it might be more fun but you'll still end up cleaning etc.

I do agree with pp that your husband needs to pull his weight when you are hosting. He can clean, drive, shop etc. All this taking half a day to decant wine and convey his displeasure, while you run yourself ragged is practised, deliberate and shit. You hate cleaning, he hates cleaning, we all hate cleaning. Why does his dislike trump yours? Why do you pander to his displeasure, while he exploits yours? You're in this together. Either both do it, or both decide not to do it - and both have the courage to own that decision. Stop covering for him.

Or, just be honest with your friends. Tell them your DH doesn't like hosting dinner parties and you're not interested in spending time with their husbands. If their husbands are truly motivated toward sociability they can arrange something themselves. You'd like to spend time with your friends.

We have a similar set up (also in South West!) BUT I actually love all the people, so am happy with it. I've got v.good at organising a dinner party so that it looks impressive but I'm not sweating it in the kitchen all night. Always make pudding the day before, simple starter made day before (pate/soup etc) then main course is something that just needs to sit in the oven. A couple of strong cocktails to start and no-one notices too much anyway! I do think your friends sound rather rude - snooping around the house is not on at all - I might have to kill anyone who looked in my larder (I really don't have OCD!!) I tend never to have more than 8 people at a time otherwise it gets chaotic, but you may have more space than me! If you can afford it, I'd say you should hire a chef. Then you just need to sort out the dull conversationalists...

fluffy my dh force feeds them wine from the second they arrive, so by the time they have staggered around looking for the dogs whining in the boot room, and noticed the sickly looking rug, they have stumbled on more than just the pantry usually. It is not their fault, dh sees it as his sole duty in life to give them the mother of all hangovers, and every conceivable reason to think that coming back to us would require extensive liver detoxing in advance.

Such an outdated idea that one’s friends’ husbands are boring or they are different without them. I am guessing that you are all of a certain age (55us) and social class. I tend to like my friends’ husbands because I like my friends and they like their husbands, and most of my friends are extremely happy and natural with their partners there, in fact with a lot of them I’d say seeing the couple together is nice as they bring out the best in each other. I like talking to the husbands about their jobs, politics etc and they talk to me about mine. But that’s because in our circles the women all have jobs too, mostly of equal stature to those of the men. So we’re just people getting together, not “the husbands” and “the wives”. Do you also retire to the drawing room to listen to someone play the piano while the men have cigars and play cards?

Find friends who are genuinely on your wave length. Do this by stopping inviting people for dinner parties. You hate them so don't host them and dont go to them . Life is too short. Right now there are people who are receiving the news that they have a life limiting illness. Imagine that being you and think about how you would want to spend your precious time. That's how you should, we all should live. Our lives and time are precious and we are not supposed to waste them doing stuff that brings us no joy. Drop out and tune in. Take time to work out what pleases you and do more of that. It sounds as if you might be anti social and that is not a crime, lots of us are. I like spending time with one or two close friends having a real catch up, out in a cafe or restaurant. No stress.

Our friends are couples where we like both equally. The ones where we don't stopped being couple friends decades ago. DH will see his friend half and I will see mine. Four couples fall into our "friends" category two were at our wedding; one were neighbours, one friends made when ds was in reception. They are the inner sanctum. The outer sanctum might be invited to a party once a year.

It's not the dinner parties that are the problem, it's the "friends" you associate.

Dinner parties are huge where I am (very small island community), although they vary from 'I feel like cooking, so come over and I'll lay it all on' to seeing Mary down the grocery store and being told 'pot luck tonight at Dolly's' to 'we're meeting down the bay at 7" (everyone brings their own and the boys bung it on the BBQ). Everyone does BYO their dogs everywhere, so no one particular culprit for bodily functions though.

OP, can I recommend a Raclette grill? It's my go to when I don't feel like cooking (the Islanders think it's a great novelty so they are happy with it when they come to mine). There's only a bit of cutting up for preparation, put it all on the table, pour wine, and everyone cooks their own.

There is something very odd and surreal about this thread. So people really live like this in 2019?! It's not complicated if you don't like doing dinner parties, don't do them and make new friends who like doing the things you like doing. This sounds very much like a different generation, my grandparents did this kind of thing.
Nowadays we make it easy, nibbles and wine in the garden. Or an easy supper in the kitchen.
Why make life harder than it already is, if you don't like it, stop being it!!!

Who do you want for Tory leader OP

Are you being serious? The only way you can see your friends is through the faff of a dinner party? You'd rather have your teeth pulled than deal with socialising with them?
Sounds like you need a different friendship circle.