Always the host? Why it's time to stop asking guests who never invite you back
With two households, or groups of six, able to meet up outdoors as of last weekend, the barbecues have already been fired up – and with restrictions set to allow people to enter each other’s homes next month, some people may be polishing up the silver in readiness.
There are also, however, likely to be those who are sitting back and waiting for the invitations to roll in.
A post on parenting discussion board Mumsnet has sparked debate around the fact that, while some people are always hosting, there are others who never return invitations.
“Today we realised that, although we have hosted the other couple many times for drinks/lunch/dinner/ parties… we have only been to their house once [in ten years]” wrote the poster, musing also on the fact that the other couple’s house was similarly sized and nicely decorated – so that shame in their surroundings was unlikely to be the issue.
“Whenever they suggest a catch-up, they either want to meet out somewhere or they say they are happy to come to us,” the poster continued.
Several responses were outraged. Rude, cheeky and lazy were just some of the epithets offered, while one poster pointed out that "if you aren’t comfortable returning a dinner invitation, then you shouldn’t accept them either. Especially multiple times."
This sense of imbalance characterises many social interactions. There’s the person who furiously scratches Mabel and Eric from their Christmas card list because they’ve not received season’s greetings from the couple for two years in a row now. There are the outraged mumblings from the PTA when the same parents volunteer to man the lucky dip at the summer fair year after year, while other parents, invariably, come along to just drink cider in the corner and skulk away before clear-up. There’s the colleague who never does the tea run - yet appears always to be gasping for a cuppa when you offer.
Annoying, right?
Many of these irritations (well, aside from the Christmas card one) will have fallen on to the backburner over the lockdowns - but be ready for them to be reignited as social circles start to open up again. As much as people may be itching to throw their doors open to friends again, will resentment start to rumble when they are throwing them open to Jude and Gaz – who may not even have a house, for all anyone has ever seen of it - for the fifth time in as many weeks? Is there a danger of becoming The Host with the Most… Indignation?
I love to host, personally, but mostly because my own space is my comfort zone and I sometimes struggle with things outside of that sphere, despite loving people and company (there’s probably a Myers Briggs for that). I also like not having to arrange babysitters or deliberate over questions of driving versus getting an Uber. Dietary issues mean that I’m also relieved of the embarrassment of having to remind hosts that there are certain things I can’t eat.
Yet I have heard the same friends who gripe about the hassles of clearing up and the expense of hosting be positively and unfairly derisive about the efforts of friends who have eventually returned an invitation. The same friends who mutter about ‘freeloaders’ being reluctant to accept reciprocal invitations on the basis that it’s too far or their friends have got that awful dog or Max wouldn’t know a decent wine if he’d had a transfusion with it.
It’s a minefield that we’ve been more or less free of for some time now, but my bet would be that it’s about to re-emerge in full force. With people having to be more selective than ever about who they host, they may be unlikely to let non-reciprocation slide. Those who prefer to be guest than host should, if the Mumsnet response is anything to go by, be prepared for a plate to be slammed down in front of them (tip: wear dark clothes in case of splashes)
They should, at the very least, be prepared to ‘knock with their elbow’ – to arrive bearing wine, dessert, chocolate and flowers.
There is, after all, no such thing as a free lunch.
