Is it that time again? Man, how the time flies!
That’s probably because you’re not an asshole. 
I don’t think this question is relevant enough to the thread that it wouldn’t be considered too much of a hijack.
Let’s say a friend gives you a gift, like a piece of jewelry or a watch. A mutual friend sees it on you and pays you a compliment and asks where you got it from.
Is it rude to say it was a gift from Friend? Or should you say it was a gift from a friend and hope they don’t ask for more details?
[QUOTE=Bozuit;17383769…the idea of deliberately hiding your own invitation and your friend’s potentially-mildly-offensive lack of invitation seems unfair, too. …I wouldn’t appreciate finding out a week later that it happened and it was a “secret”, either.[/QUOTE]
Which would add insult to injury. I’m not pleased to be left out of things, but I’d be hurt if they thought I wasn’t adult enough to handle the disappointment, and contemptuous if they they were keeping it secret.
I expect polite people to not have coversations that exclude someone when that person is present. When you are required to have that conversation, for example when everyone but me in the office is invited, and it is the main topic of conversation, I expect to be adult enough to cope with the situation.
I concur with monstro. My sister tells me about things she does all the time with other people who I know. Since I don’t expect to be invited, it doesn’t bother me at all. Heck, I enjoy hearing about her day.
Slightly broadening the topic:
IMO generally it’s poor conversational form to talk about anything that excludes any participant without making a token effort to include them.
So, e.g., you are talking to two people. Then you find you have something in common with Person 1. I think it is (a little) impolite to go into depth about that subject with Person 1 until Person 2 just sort of shrugs and walks away.
I at least will throw in a “Have you ever scuba dived, Person 2?” or whatever, then I’ve done the politeness thing and can continue nattering with Person 1.
So in the hypothetical, yes I consider it a little impolite to talk about the party, and more so if Person B was in the conversation from the start, and now suddenly finds him/herself frozen out.
It’s still rude, not because the B would be hurt that he was excluded from the wedding, but because it’s rude to have *any *conversation with someone that the third person can’t participate in.
And, because believe it or not, the details of weddings they didn’t go to or don’t anticipate being invited to don’t thrill most people down to their toes. Most of us would rather talk about the weather.
Take the Oscar example above - if I have a friend who managed to get to go to the Oscars, I’d be all over wanting to know about it. Dish, please. Who did you run to in the bathroom? How hard was it to pee in that gown? (I recently read an article about Jennifer Lawrence’s friend who got to go to the Oscars with her - it was fascinating - normal person at the Oscars). But a wedding? Unless the mother in the groom slept with one of the groomsmen or a fistfight broke out between the father of the bride and the groom’s father, or the grooms ex-girlfriend of six months ago walks in during the toast eight months pregnant (the last two were the same wedding that I didn’t go to, but the story was good enough that I’d hear it again) - I don’t want to hear about it.
It may be a fine line, but I don’t see it as keeping secrets, it’s just not polite to talk about such things because it might cause hurt feelings. And because like others have said, you want to talk about things that all the conversation participants can talk about. If my friends are talking about their student loans, I don’t talk about how I don’t have any student loans, because I don’t want to rub it in their faces. But it’s also not a secret or something I’d lie about. If I went to a party that someone else wasn’t invited to that they might have been disappointed they weren’t invited to I won’t bring it up because I don’t want to rub it in their face. But it’s not a huge secret and I won’t lie about it if it somehow comes up in conversation.
I don’t see that as rude. There might be specific circumstances where it would be rude, or the way you say it could be rude, but I don’t see the reason to dodge the truth there.
My ex-coworkers did it all the time. I hated it. Granted, sometimes it was for events that I wouldn’t have been interested in going or attending, and sometimes it was events that seemed more personal than what I was with them. But sometimes it was not that way, and sometimes they continued talking about all the weekend plans that I was not included right in front of me.
And then I’d get a review telling me I should socialize with my coworkers more.
This happened to me. Best friends since middle school. Got married one Saturday and it was all over her facebook page the next day. I didn’t know a thing about it and asked her what was up privately. She said, "It was a last minute thing; we weren’t even sure we would be getting married that day… didn’t even have my dress yet… yadda yadda yadda.
But it had obviously been scheduled well enough in advance that plenty of our other mutual friends showed up and one of them had time to prepare and sing a song, another to speak from the Bible, etc… It wasn’t like she’d called her friends the night before and said, “It’s on!” I simply wasn’t even informed at all that a wedding was about to happen and to hold the date.
Then another mutual friend (also since middle school) chimed in (she’d been informed of my private message of course) and said, “well you didn’t invite any of us to your wedding.” It was my second wedding and I got married in a courtroom. I invited NO ONE except my immediate family. I didn’t pick one or two friends and screw the rest over.
I will never forgive her for that. In fact, I don’t think we’re even friends anymore, based on my lack of seeing any of her facebook posts, ever.
It’s also happened with coworkers, but it was long ago. Everyone got to go out on their birthdays for free and bring whomever co-workers they wanted. A bunch gathered right where I could see them; I KNEW why they were gathering, birthday co-worker looked right at me, then away, then they left. Then, the guy’s manager called from his car (they were all in his car) and asked if I wanted to come. It was clear that he’d asked where I was and they all went “derp.” But they were already in the car on the way at the time.
Then there was the time when I was a kid and two other friends and I planned to go to an amusement park together. I got up, got ready, and waited… and waited. Then Dad finally tells me (an hour later) he saw the one girl walking down the street to the other girl’s house. They’d ditched me.
Man I have a lot of these.
It’s usually impolite, but there can be exceptions. If the event is a “girls’ night out”, for instance, then guys in the circle of friends shouldn’t expect to be invited, and shouldn’t be offended by the “girls” talking about it. If it’s an activity that one member of the group is known not to enjoy, likewise: People can reasonably assume they wouldn’t come, and so not invite them.
I agree on the first, but I think you can never go wrong by inviting someone even if they are likely to turn you down. You may think they don’t like sushi, when really they don’t like sushi bars and they would have actually loved to have joined you at Benihana.
Yea, this is something I agree, and what I didn’t really like when I was blanket non-invited. I do not like to drink as much as them, but plenty of bars offer grubs and tapas and appetizers and non-alcoholic drinks. I used to go out with another set of friends and half the time I wasn’t even drinking alcohol.
Similar, I hate and dislike hiking just to hike, but I like water outings. So I would’ve turned down invitations to hike a mountain or a park, but I wouldn’t have turned down the invitation to try paddlesurf or kayaking.