“I Can’t Afford The Charity Holiday Party I Agreed to Go To”
My husband was recently laid off and I do not have the money for this type of thing! Now I want to bow out of the party, but my dilemma is two-fold: I know if I tell them I cannot afford to come, they’ll tell me to come anyway. How awkward! Next, I know that if I now respond with the standard, “I’m sorry but something came up,” they will know I’m fibbing – I really don’t want to tick-off anyone.
How do I now, after the fact, decline to go without embarrassing myself (I don’t want to advertise I can’t afford it or my husband is unemployed) or sending an excuse that is clearly an excuse! Help! – Am I a Grinch?
Well, so what if you send an excuse that’s clearly an excuse? What happens then? Why are you loathe to do this? Is it about offending the hosts, who are not your core group of friends? Is it about feeling embarrassed in front of them? Is it about appearing a way you’re uncomfortable appearing? All of these potential concerns are worth exploring and considering and then… moving the hell on.
You know why it’s time to move on from worrying about what people other people think of you – especially people who aren’t important to you? Because it simply doesn’t matter and the other people clearly are not thinking about your feelings and reactions. If they were, they wouldn’t have done a bait-and-switch on you, letting you believe they were inviting you to a holiday party when they were, in fact, inviting you to a charity event. Come on, that’s a pretty shady move, and any etiquette expert would agree. And, yet, YOU are the one agonizing over how to respond, as if you’re somehow responsible for this breech in manners.
Like a lot of us women, you were probably socialized to prioritize others’ needs over your own, and I want you to know that we’re done with that now. This is the era of prioritizing your own needs first, setting boundaries, doing what YOU want to do and NOT doing what you don’t want to and don’t have to do.
You don’t have to go to this party, it doesn’t sound like you really want to go to this party, and going would cause anxiety in some way – anxiety about spending money you don’t have or anxiety about the awkwardness of not financially contributing to a charity fundraiser. So, don’t do it! Any anxiety you might feel about being caught making an excuse is probably a lot less than the anxiety you’d feel if you went to the party, right? So, send your regrets, feel awkward or embarrassed for a few minutes, and then move on. I promise, once you start saying no to things you don’t want to and don’t have to do, it gets easier and easier and the relief and freedom you’ll feel is pretty immediate.
Try it out – just say: “Hey so-and-so, I realized there was a mix-up in my schedule and it turns out I’m not available to attend the holiday party after all. Please accept my regrets.”
Your future self who will be spending a cozy evening at home instead of an uptight event exchanging gifts she didn’t want to buy for gifts she would never choose for herself will thank you.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
It is NEVER OK to invite or offer something to someone without telling them they will have to pay, and exactly how much! I can’t believe people are still doing this socially, but I also see it happening professionally sometimes!
“i didn’t know when I was invited that this event was going to cost me $100. That doesn’t work for me so I will not be attending.” If they say come any way, simply respond, “I will not be doing that, but thank you for your thinking of me.” If they push, repeat “I will not be doing that,” then end the conversation. Then turn down any future invitations from these people since you now know they are not clear communicators and will likely put you in another similar situation.
Exactly! “I didn’t realize this will be a charity event when I accepted. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend”. They probably invited everyone they are acquainted with to up the donantions
Don’t feel obligated to lie, though. Wendy’s suggestion to blame it on a scheduling error is cowardly. I would say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was a charity event. I’ve already got my charitable donations allotted, but thank you for thinking of me.” This lets them know that you might be open to something else down the line, which you might want to attend if the financials are in a better position– or not!
But then the hosts can say “Oh, you don’t need to donate anything – just come anyway!” And the LW has already said that that would make her feel awkward (understandably). There’s not much argument for “I have a conflict and can’t make it.”
Wendy is exactly right. I find the assertion this approach is cowardly to be mildly offensive. We do not owe people a detailed explanation for our decisions. Whether the reason to decline is the need to undergo invasive surgery or just the desire to spend an evening not spending money is irrelevant, and manners will keep acquaintances from pressing further. What saying you can’t make it this time does is keep a door open for something else another time. These folks were not necessarily inviting her because they really want to spend time with her, they were doing it as a fundraising exercise to increase the dollars flowing to the charity. Those kinds of activities are part of fundraising strategies.
Saying you’re not available isn’t a lie when you’ve decided to make yourself unavailable. “I’m no longer available because I don’t wanna,” is perfectly valid!
But if she’s not contributing to other charities, its still a lie….
Everyone contributes to other charities. It could just be rounding up her change at Petco to support homeless animals one time. If that’s her allotment, so be it.
There’s nothing wrong with a white lie when you’re responding to someone who’s already broken the social contract by doing a bait-and-switch with the invite. They waited until the OP had accepted the invitation to tell her that it’s a charity event.
Invitations are just that, invitations. Not an order to attend an event. People can decline an invitation for any reason, including “I don’t wanna” and the hosts are not owed an explanation for that. It’s bad manners to demand why someone doesn’t want to attend your event, and you aren’t owed the truth if you do that.
Sure, there can be social consequences. If you never accept an invitation, or if you accept and then renege at the last minute, you may find that nobody’s willing to invite you anymore. But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to decline invitations.
Splitting hairs: Excellent solution!
WWS. I see nothing wrong with a polite decline saying you can’t make it and leave it at that.
100%. No explanation is needed and giving one would compromise the LW. “No” (or “I can’t) is a complete sentence.
The question is, is there a solution that will spare blushes on all parts? If yes, that’s the right one. And it’s Wendy’s solution. Insisting on honesty at all costs may not be cowardly, but neither is it very kind. Telling the hosts you can’t attend because you didn’t know it was (ahem) a gift grab is rude because it points out their shady etiquette. And not being available that one time doesn’t rule her out being invited again (for another gift grab in all probability).
I must say I disagree with this. People who do bait-and-switches with their invites deserve to be called out in public. If this happened to me, I’d count it as a bonus if they never wanted to invite me to another event. But people who are as shady as these usually have no shame so public callouts don’t affect them.
I feel very strongly about any breaches of the social contract, and I’m not worried about possibly damaging relationships to ensure I’m not taken advantage of. YMMV, of course.
I agree, they *deserve* to be called out. But as you say, public call-outs don’t affect people like this. And if you are the kind of person who speaks their mind come what may, I salute you. But I’ve been that mom who can’t make mom friends, etc., etc., and I put my mental wellbeing before the cause of telling it like it is—I would feel too exposed and worry that I was being further or otherwise ostracised as a result. The LW doesn’t sound like she’s in the best shape for confronting this nonsense either.
@HeartsMum, out of nesting so commenting here.
Thanks for resoponding. I’m a reformed people-pleaser who used to bend over backwards to accommodate other people, even to the detriment of my own mental health. I largely stopped doing that when I realized that no matter what I do, I won’t please everyone, so the best thing to do is to make decisions that I’m happy with. No, this doesn’t mean that I always only look after my own interests, and I’ll do things for other people when I can do so without compromising my own mental health or my values too much, I’m not a complete egotist.
I was bullied by exclusion in middle school, and I’m still very sensitive to being excluded in the sense that I invariably notice it when it happens. But I’m also introverted enough that I generally shrug it off. It’s very liberating when you stop worrying about whether people like you or not, although to get there you need to have enough friends and family who show you that they like you. I have enough people in my life who love or like me that the opinions of random strangers or even casual acquaintances who are looking to profit from me in some way don’t really matter to me.
But you and the LW need to look after your own mental health and act accordingly.