I tried hosting a surprise party for my boyfriend but all of his friends declined the invite
My (26f) bf’s (25m) birthday is on friday. A couple of months ago he said that the best birthday he ever had was when he was 12 and he had a Laser Tag birthday. I was so excited to recreate it, and my idea was to throw a party for him, and as a suprise we would all go to the Arcade to play.
I was a little unsure of who to invite to the party though, so I had to ask him. The thing is, he has this pretty big «friend» group of guys, most of them childhood friends. He is closer to about 7 of them, but after he moved away for a couple of years to study, it’s like they’ve forgotten him a little and he rarely get invited to things.
He generally feels pretty ambivalent about them; they don’t really share his interest, they don’t invite him to things, and their main interest is drinking. At the same time, he’s known them since he was little, and they do sometimes turn up, like when they helped him with our reno a couple of weeks ago.
I could see that he was getting sad about talking about it, so I just ended the conversation and told him not to worry. I decided to host the party as a surprise for him, and I ended up inviting a mix of friends and family. My bf has become really close with my main friend group, mainly because of shared interests, so naturally I invited them.
I eventually decided to also invite his childhood friends, because I thought of the times that they had actually been there for him, and decided that they would probably enjoy playing Laser tag. I created an event on fb, and after 2 weeks, everybody but these 7 friends had accepted or declined the invitation. I reminded them to reply, so that I would know how many to book for the arcade. One after one, they all declined. I had hopes for the last two ones that still hadn’t replied when I went to bed (the two of them that I like the most), but I woke up now and all of them declined.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that none of them could come. It makes me really sad. I ended up removing them completely from the event. I feel like I shouldn’t have invited them at all, that way I wouldn’t have to see my bf get rejected like that. At least I’m glad that he was never part of the event so that he had to feel the rejection himself. However, I do feel like I maybe have to tell him, because he said he was thinking about inviting them over the day after his birthday for a couple of beers. Idk, it hurts to see the most awesome person ever be treated like this by his «friends». I’ve seen similar things happen as long as we’ve been together, but this really confirms it