What to Do If Your Friend Didn’t Invite You to Her Birthday Party?

If a friend dear to you didn’t invite you to her birthday party, you have every reason to ask how and why that happened. 

But, before you do, you may want to think through how to do that to avoid putting yourself in an awkward position. 

It is normal to feel rejected when a friend does not invite you to her birthday party.

This can also motivate you to question your friendship with her and check if you perceived your relationship correctly. 

Maybe she is not such a good friend to you after all. Thinking she forgot to invite you does not justify her action either. 

You don’t simply forget people you care about. 

Friendships are not any easier to maintain than marriages. They require a lot of work to last, but it is essential you know where you stand with someone. 

Before you start pitying yourself or hating your friend, you need to understand that many different reasons might have led your friend not to invite you to her birthday party. 

3 Reasons Why Your Friend Didn’t Invite You to Her Birthday Party

Before you start pitying yourself or hating your friend, you need to understand that many different reasons might have led your friend not to invite you to her birthday party. 

1. She didn’t want to be in your shadow

Even the most beautiful friendships often hide a dose of competitive spirit. 

This is especially common with people who grew up together. And it’s only natural that we feel the need to compare ourselves to our peers. 

However, suppose you were always the center of attention, always more popular, and more successful than your friend. In that case, she needs a lot of maturity not to give in to the feeling of inferiority in your presence. 

Some people like to be in the background, and it suits them perfectly that someone always wants to be in charge. 

But some people do not feel that they have a choice but suffer in silence and do not show that they are really bothered by the fact that they are never at the center of attention and do not know how to stand up for themselves. 

A birthday is an occasion when we expect to be the center of attention, and if your friend has always been in your shadow, she may have no other way to win society’s attention than to leave you out. 

It certainly doesn’t mean that what she did is ok, but arguing about it will only worsen the situation. 

Watch an episode from the first season of Gossip Girl together when Blair and Serena are about to have a fight over Serena always getting all the attention. 

It’s easy to deal with the feeling that you’re always second, but it’s not a solution to reject friendships because of it.

2. She is passive-aggressive

Think carefully if the two of you have recently quarreled about something. Does your friend normally keep quiet and distance herself from you when you hurt her instead of telling you directly? 

Thanks to the circumstances in which they have grown up, some people have learned that it is shameful to show vulnerability. 

If your friend is like that, she is ashamed to show you how much you hurt her; she experiences showing vulnerability as humiliation. 

The only way such people know how to deal with the feeling of being hurt is to immediately take revenge. 

If you’re the only one in the company she didn’t invite to her birthday, it’s possible that she’s celebrating something you did to her.

It’s quite possible that what you did was nothing really terrible but that she misinterpreted it, but since she didn’t tell you anything about it, you have no idea what actually happened.

3. You are not in her closest circle

Sometimes, the fact that we feel close to someone doesn’t mean that the emotion is reciprocated. Some people are naturally very kind and warm, so we easily experience them as friends. 

This may be because they are too kind and do not know how to set boundaries, so these actions surprise us. 

Such people are simply unable to be authentic but feel compelled to be good to everyone, even though it often exhausts them. 

Pay attention to how your friend generally behaves towards everyone around her. 

If you notice that she is very kind to everyone, it is possible that you were never really friends, but that she behaves like that towards everyone. She may as well be a two-faced person. 

Certainly, in this case, you have nothing to feel sorry about. A friend to everyone is a friend to none.

How to Handle That Your Friend Didn’t Invite You to Her Birthday

Regardless of why your friend didn’t invite you to the birthday party, acting like a bigger person is always a good strategy. 

This is an especially good decision if you are not particularly close. 

But, maybe considering your shared history, you want to do something? Here are tips on how to best position yourself in such a situation.

Be the Bigger Person

If a person has annoyed you and hurt you with some of their actions, the first question you should ask yourself is how important and close that person is to you.

If it’s distant and irrelevant – why are you even upset about that person?

Just move further away and deny her the chance to do something like that again.

If she’s close and important, why don’t you instantly tell her what bothers you?

“Hey, it really hurt me when you…”

That way, you will solve the problem the easiest way, and sometimes you will get an angle from which you could not see the situation, a completely logical explanation, a sincere apology, or you will realize that the person is just like that. 

And then, you will be able to reevaluate whether that person deserves that very important and privileged position of being close to your soul. 

Certainly, anyone who is too exclusive, rigid in his demands towards people, who demands perfection and sinlessness, and who has not learned to forgive the people he loves will end up all alone, which is totally legit. 

But in my opinion, the price is too high. 

Well, of the ten people I love the most in this world, all of them have at least one cardinal flaw, and at least once, they seriously messed something up. 

But they are Mine, and what does it matter? Nobody is perfect. 

It is important that they are essentially Human.

Everyone has a hundred flaws too, but most people manage to find friends who have the heart to forgive them for their flaws and love them as a person. 

If you don’t know in which category that person is -then it’s up to you. 

And the answer to that should be sought in the depth of your soul and in your value system by which you measure people. 

Everyone should know what they would never be able to forgive. 

When you have answers to these questions, you can decide to be the bigger person and let other people be whoever they want to be. 

Express How You Feel, or Not 

The good thing about choosing to let someone know how you feel is that no matter how the other person reacts, it will be easier for you when you let it out. 

Another benefit is that no matter how uncomfortable it may be for you to show how you feel, based on your friend’s reaction, you will surely find out how much she cares about you. 

On the other hand, if it’s not a very close friend of yours, and the only reason it bothers you that she didn’t invite you is that she invited all your other mutual friends, maybe there’s no need to do anything. 

Maybe you have yet to become friends, and one party, more or less, will not dramatically change your life. In that case, you can simply act as if nothing happened because nothing special happened.

Final Thoughts 

Every relationship grows and develops or dies over time. There is no stagnation. 

Remember that anything is possible, no matter how things look to you right now. 

In certain periods of life, it may happen that you completely change your group of friends, or maybe your value system will change drastically, and that’s all fine. 

Allow yourself and others to grow. However, bear in mind that the one thing you owe to any person in the world is kindness and decency.