<\/p>\n
DEAR MISS MANNERS: Carrie and Ashley are both good friends of ours. We enjoy their company and accept their social invitations when offered.<\/p>\n
\tA few years ago, they had a kerfuffle that put a strain on their relationship. My wife and I didn\u2019t want to play games or favorites, so we would invite them both to events. So far, every event where they\u2019ve been in the same room has resulted in some sort of unpleasantness — public enough to detract from the event itself — and usually ends with one of them storming off. <\/p>\n
\tIn private conversations, when we try to mitigate future occurrences, they both express regret for such incidents and resolve to do better, which we believe is genuine in that moment. But inevitably, something will happen again. Other friends at these events are aware of the issue and kind of shrug their shoulders when it happens, but we all are a bit sad about it.<\/p>\n
\tNow my wife\u2019s birthday is coming, and she wants to invite our friends to a fancy restaurant — including Carrie and Ashley, knowing there will be tension, and perhaps worse. No one would deliberately want to put their friends in unpleasant situations, but excluding one or the other also seems hurtful.<\/p>\n
\tAny recommendations for better handling this? Right now, we\u2019re planning to continue to invite them both to things — hoping for the best, but expecting some drama.<\/p>\n
GENTLE READER: How badly do you want your wife\u2019s birthday to be drama-free? Enough to attempt to play peacemaker? <\/p>\n
\tIf so, you and\/or your wife might invite the two to lunch together before the party and try to broker a treaty. But if that fails — and as all of your guests seem to be expecting a show anyway — at least the entertainment at your wife\u2019s party will be free.<\/p>\n
Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, <\/i>www.missmanners.com<\/i><\/a>; to her email, <\/i>dearmissmanners@gmail.com<\/i><\/a>; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.oregonlive.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DEAR MISS MANNERS: Carrie and Ashley are both good friends of ours. We enjoy their company and accept their social invitations when offered. A few years ago, they had a kerfuffle that put a strain on their relationship. My wife and I didn\u2019t want to play games or favorites, so we would invite them both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[408475,368616,361603,408476,408477,408478,408479,408480,408481,408482,74947,396849,408483,408484,349257,408485,408486,408487,408488,356574],"class_list":["post-2141045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-angry","tag-argument","tag-conversation","tag-disagree","tag-disagreement","tag-dispute","tag-female","tag-fight","tag-friend","tag-girl","tag-negative","tag-person","tag-problem","tag-quarrel","tag-scream","tag-two","tag-unhappy","tag-woman","tag-yell","tag-young"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2141045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2141046,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141045\/revisions\/2141046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2141045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2141045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2141045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}