5 years in & neither partner nor his oldest BF have ever organised for me to meet BF’s family ….

[KidsDoBetter]

This is a funny one. And I do KNOW that the fault lies largely with my OH.

So, my DP & I - v late 40s are together nearly 5 years. He’s got a small friendship group of 3 friends from his home town - who don’t live near us - that we’ve stayed with / they’ve stayed with us. One couple largely because the wife and I organised it. .. but all good.

My DP is my his own admission just really crap at organising social stuff with both friends and his family. I’m ok with that.

He does however have his truly “best” friend - since they were 5, he was his best man etc etc. I have only met this guy twice - essentially in “passing”. We got on well, all seemed fine.

For the last 18months, we have lived less than an hour from the friend and his family (they have younger kids). Essentially we moved to their part of the country. I am SO hurt that we as a couple have never once been invited to their home. I have never met his wife or his kids.

Clearly they could come here. But when I mentioned OP organising that he says oh it’s harder for them to go places with young kids. He sees the friend pretty often - at the friends behest. He invites my partner over to do a hobby that he and his kid enjoy. Last time he went in March I did express how utterly bizarre and quite hurtful it was that after 4.5yrs I had yet to be invited to meet X and his family. He agreed and said X has mentioned us coming over for dinner etc he’d get a date in the diary.

Yet here we are another few months down the line and I’m sat here like a lemon on a bank holiday whilst he’s out in the countryside with this friend.

I know this is an OH issue but my friends would be mortified to be in the same position. We’ve been invited to the country houses of them - a very wide group that has extended every warmth and hospitality to him. Pisses me right off I must say. Just rude. By them both.

Are they in a relationship?

lol. Don’t be daft. They have a 10 year old kid along with them

As you say the fault lies with your boyfriend who, for whatever reason, isn't all that interested in mixing the groups.

However, where you are at fault is for deciding that this makes the other couple rude.

Fair.

I think it’s fair to say it makes my boyfriend and his friend rude. Not his wife. This is not on her.

Maybe your husband's friends wife is best friends with the ex wife and doesn't want to meet you. I'm not English and I find it a little odd that you seem to expect friendships to be 'joint', I have friends my husband (together 25 years, from different parts of the country, living where he's from) never met, he has a huge circle of friends through his hobby and I've met a fraction of them and even less spouses of same, his friends since toddlers lives nearby and I know him but his wife I'd hardly recognise if I met her without him.

I don't think I'd even notice this, but me and DH do most of our socialising separately anyway. Maybe the friend and his wife are the same. Or maybe the friend doesn't like you or thinks you and his wife wouldn't get on.

I don't think it is rude. Introducing your wife to your friends wife isn't mandatory. People don't owe their time or friendship to their husbands friends wife.

Defo no connection between my partners ex and his friends wife - at all.

Don’t expect a joint friendship at all. I’ve got lots and lots of friends. I’d just have expected to have had dinner or met up for lunch once with my partners oldest friend and his family, after we moved into their area. Not looking to be best friends with them.

Definitely not mandatory. But in my friendship group it would be the done thing. Just different I guess.

Does your boyfriend get on with his mate’s wife?

If it’s all hobby get togethers for the two men plus one dc, it’s entirely possible she regards your bf as either a) ‘oh good dh is off with Hobby Dave doing their nerdy/sweaty/boring hobby & taking dc along…nice peaceful weekend for me!’ or b) ‘sodding Hobby Dave monopolising dh & leaving me with the weekend childcare/when I’d have quite liked dh & me to have a mini break, grrrrr’.

Maybe she has barely met your bf over all these years, OR actively dislikes him?

So she would have no reason to even have his newish gf on her radar, much less be desperate to have dinner with you!

Some longstanding friendships are like that. Neither party involves the partners. Which is fine until one newish partner starts wanting to hang out as a foursome - which just isn’t how the dynamic has ever worked.

@CorvusPurpureus - yes he does get on with her (I mean as much as I know - she’s very fond of him and has a pet name for him). Prior to us moving closer to them my bf would go and stay with them and I had no inkling that she resented that. Or the fact the stay was a lot around the hobby. I should say they haven’t always done this hobby. They are very much childhood friends and the interest in the hobby is a more recent thing.

But you know, whatever. They clearly have no interest in meeting me. I just find it a bit upsetting and clearly I shouldn’t.

I feel for you OP.

I would be weirded out by it too.

It's like being snubbed by his best mate and his wife.

Some just don't want anymore people in their lives. Perhaps this couple are just so. That cold Englishness... you know.

Yeah if if it was just a random mate. What odds. But the fact it’s his oldest friend and we now live so close to them. It’s odd as hell in the normal world.

There are loads of more random mum friends and people from work DPs not met. But my core group of 20 or so he’s met them all. Most of them many times. Doesn’t mean we all socialise all together. Not at all.

Do you have young children? Hosting couple friends is a right pain when you have young children. Dh and I have very good friends who we both know and genuinely like. We see them about every 3 years. We’ve been together and known them for nearly 20 years. I don’t want to deep clean the house or spend a small fortune on food and drink or cook for them or have to wrangle the kids. It’s a pain. We only see them about every 3 years because I do make the effort. If left to them (their dc are younger and they are more tightly wound than us) we’d literally never see them.

But if you want to meet this friend and his wife, invite them. You do the work and absorb the cost. If you want to be closer to them, you have to make the effort.

DH has a friend like this, they see each other maybe once a year or so, and I suppose I've met him maybe half a dozen times. This friend of his simply doesn't acknowledge my existence. He sends a Christmas card every year from him and his wife addressed to just DH, and we've been married nearly 30 years!

I dated someone for 2 years and never met any of his family or friends. I think that was becasuse I was convenient and not because he truly loved me.
We broke up. But this is one of the reasons why we broke up. He hid me.
I am quite lovely too. The sort of person you could bring home to your Mum.

It seems odd that you would be hurt by this, it’s nothing against you. Perhaps DH’s friend’s wife doesn’t like to entertain?
I wouldn’t give this a second thought but why not say you want to meet the wife before the wedding so can the four of you meet for dinner at a nice pub/restaurant, which will be less work for everyone…

This may well be a cultural thing. I have had plenty of friends over the years in the various countries we've lived who didn't meet my husband. Neither of us have a problem with maintaining independent friendships. Sometimes they naturally cross over and sometimes they don't.

I'm also interested that you see it as normal for families to go and stay with each other. Plenty of English people would recall in horror from that thought!

You really need to invite them over to start the balling rolling

maybe she thinks you aren’t bothered about meeting her

get her number and call/text her about meeting up

you don't live "so close" to them. You've described it as "within an hour" which I have interpreted to mean "nearly an hour's journey". Close in non-rural parts of the UK would be 10 or 15 minutes away - and if you were that close and had never seen them I would agree it was highly odd. I appreciate that in other countries this is no distance at all, so maybe that is the issue. The other copule will not have considered that you live "close" to them if it's an hour's journey away.

I don’t get why you are so bothered

by our husbands friend not yours

dont you have your own friends to hang out with

I think it's fairly obvious they have no interest in socialising with you.

If you read the thread - you’ll see yes I do. I have a wide and welcoming group of friends many of whom I’ve known for over 30 years.

That may be part of the issue. My friendship group operates quite differently from this man (and my partner!) clearly. They would consider it inconceivable not to have met their very close friends partner after 5 years - whether you lived 2.5hrs away (as previously) or about 50 mins away as we have done for the last year.

I would expect the vast vast majority of their meet ups to continue as before - my partner his friend and child doing their hobby. But I’d have expected over the last year to have at least popped in to say hello for a cup of tea or lunch.

The example of staying over was just by way of contrast to the hospitality that has been extended by my friendship group to both of us over the last number of years. Not that I’d expect (or indeed particularly want that).

Their kids are young secondary age - I don’t have young kids any longer but obviously did at one stage (4 as it goes). Nothing of that age would stop me having people round for lunch.

I think it comes down to the friend wanting to keep the status quo and thinking the hobby trips would end if they had us both for lunch or something.

I just need to let this one go I guess 🤣🤣. I think it’s more a point of principle than anything.

Yup think that’s true.