Why Do Friends Exclude You?

Why do friends exclude you?

Maybe you haven’t had this happen to you. But when it does, oh boy does it hurt. Being uninvited to a friend’s hangout or event. Seeing them post photos of them together on social media, having a great time. Doing all these fun things with everyone…except for you.

Being excluded from your friends can really hurt. It can cause you to doubt yourself and wonder why they didn’t invite you. It can cause you to be sad because you wonder if there’s something wrong with you. It can make you feel resentful towards your friends for not inviting you or telling you the truth.

So how should you feel when your friends exclude you? What are the steps you can and should take for when it happens? That’s what we will be discussing today.

In this post, I’ll go over why friends exclude you and what you should do about it. Being excluded can feel really hurtful, but it’s crucial to know what to do next and how to go about it. I’ll show you how.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Determine if it’s by accident or if it’s deliberate.

The first thing you should do is to determine if your friends excluding you was intentional or not. Because you MAY be overreacting to a situation that your friends didn’t intentionally do.

For example, maybe you’ve been so busy with your own personal stuff. Your friends would assume that you’re too busy to hangout with them, so they don’t invite you to that one casual get-together. But they’ll for sure invite you to a big event like a birthday party or a weekend getaway.

In the case above, I wouldn’t be too worried. Your friends either probably forgot to invite you. Or they felt that you weren’t interested in hanging out for a small event. I myself have experienced this; my friends know that I’m busy, so they don’t always invite me to everything they do. But I don’t get offended at all by it because they respect my time.

So if only happened once or maybe twice, then I wouldn’t be so concerned. However…

How do you know when friends are deliberately excluding you?

Let’s go over when your friends are deliberately excluding you. There are a few ways to know for sure that you are being excluded, including:

• Not being invited to many different hangouts and get-togethers. If you see that your friends are always hanging out but not with you, then something is definitely amiss.
• They’re not responding to you. If you ask your friends to invite you and you always remind them about it, but they don’t respond, then something is wrong.
• They seem like they’re repulsed by you. We’ll go more into this in the next section. But if they seem like they don’t want to associate with you, then that’s a telltale sign that they want to exclude you.

When these things happen, you are probably being excluded by your friends. It sucks when you’re not invited with your friends, but let’s go over why they’re doing so.

There can be many reasons why you’re being excluded by friends.

Let’s go over some of the main reasons why your friends are excluding you from their circle:

• Negative, repulsive behaviors. I’m sorry to say, but if you are doing stuff to annoy your friends, then they’re probably not going want to hangout with you. Click here to read my article about all the stuff you can do to push away friends. Some of the most common behaviors: being selfish, not listening, always talking about yourself, having bad ethics/morals and being anti-social. Don’t worry though; you can always unlearn negative behaviors to change yourself and the way people perceive you.
• You have changed or your friends have changed. I talk about this in my article about why friends drift apart (click here to read that). But in short, if you’re changing or your friends have changed, then they may want to exclude you. For example, if you want to stop drinking and partying but your friends want to continue, of course they will stop inviting you to the bars or nightclubs together.
• You give off the impression of not wanting to be invited. I certainly have experienced this on both sides. If you always decline to hangout with your friends, eventually they’ll just stop inviting you. They will feel like you’re not interested, so why would they waste their time? If a friend always said no to an invite, I would just stop asking. So if you’re always declining to hangout, don’t be surprised to see if your friends stop inviting you and excluding you.

These are the main reasons why friends stop hanging out or inviting you. But if you feel like none of these reasons are it…

You can always ask and find out.

If you don’t know what’s causing your friends to exclude you, just ask them directly. They are your friends after all, so they should be okay with you being direct and honest with them.

You can say something along the lines of,

“Hey, I noticed that you guys don’t invite me to stuff anymore. Is there something wrong? If I did something to hurt you, I am sorry and didn’t mean to do that. You are a valuable friend to me and I want to clear any things up.”

If your friends still value you, they’ll probably tell you the truth with what the issues are. From there, you can resolve them. But if they’re not being upfront and honest with you, then…

It might be time to move on.

I’ve said this a few times on my blog; you can’t control what your friends do. If your friends want to exclude you and you tried to resolve the issue without any success, then it might be time to move on.

Again, it hurts to be excluded from friends. And if they won’t change their ways, why keep continuing to be hurt by them? If it was something out of your control, I would recommend meeting new friends that treat you better and want to INCLUDE you in the friendship, not exclude you.

Conclusion

I hope you found this post helpful and informative. I can tell you from experience, being excluded by friends feels hurtful. The best thing to do is quickly fix the issue and either get things resolved or move on from them.

If you have any questions or feedback, leave them in the comments below!