Always left out in the friendship group

[DeathOnTheNile]

I'm part of a longstanding group of 5 friends from university. One person in the group I'm not particularly close to, the other 3 I consider to be close friends. We often organise things for major life occasions like birthdays and weddings and over the years I've noticed more and more that I'm left out of things and am the last to know even though I always include them in anything I do and make a big fuss over their birthdays and occasions. There are many small examples, like them organising group gifts where I'm not given any input but am then asked to contribute funds once they've already decided, outings that I find out about afterwards, not being added to WhatsApp groups etc.

One of the group is now getting married soon (we're not in the UK) and I've just gotten a message saying 'We've organised a lunch as a last hurrah for the bride on Saturday, would you like to come?' In those words.

I'm torn now about what to do, because yet again it's them organising something and inviting me at the last minute, even though I would've been happy to help organise things and am helping the bride with her hen's party. I feel like such an afterthought and am pretty sure going along will just make me feel even worse.

Should I just opt out of this friendship group altogether? I'm sick of the high school feel of it all and trying so hard to keep up with people who clearly don't feel the same way about me

I had a similar situation. I backed off. I don’t like groups and I don’t do well in them. I’m still in regular contact with a better friendship with two of them. It’s better one on one.
I now have a handful of one on one friendships that I really enjoy and can catch up with. There are happy, nice groups of friends, I’m sure, but that just doesn’t work for me. I think a lot of people feel the same.

It took me until my 30s to realise I’m not a group style friend. I find it really unlikely that I’ll a) like everyone equally this wanting to spend time with them or b) they’ll all like me and not leave me out at some point. One on one, you can be sure you really do like each other, get along and want to spend time together! Instead of kind of tolerating each other because you like the others better if you know what I mean?

To explain it was a group of 4. The alpha and I don’t like each other. That’s why I was being left out and why when I did go, I felt on the outer. There was no big blow out. I just started inviting one of them to meet and left them to their times with the one I didn’t like because I didn’t like feeling like that anymore.

I think you are trying way too hard on this group and it’s not working. I think, for your own self esteem you need to take a step back and ‘have plans’. The bigger picture is you need to find a new friendship group which is natural . You might have been at Uni together but have you grown apart from them and feel unable to let go?

I've had the situation before OP. Sorry to hear you're going through it, it's not very nice.

With the group I'm referring to the friendship ended in the end - I honestly think you should either say something or not let it bother you.