Dear Etiquetteer:
My husband and I frequently will go out with small groups of other couples for dinner at restaurants or to peoples‘ homes for social evenings. Through the years, one couple has become less and less engaging — dour, negative, critical, and tardy — during these social events. I find the situation unbearable and can’t continue like this. I want to stop including them in our social circle. I do not want to give up the other couples. I’ve considered a variety of ways to achieve the outcome I seek:
Exclude me and my husband from group invitations, which pretty much excludes us from all of these friends.
Speak directly to the offending couple, but to what end?
Conspire with the closest of the other couples.
Unfortunately, my least favorite solution and probable course of action is to leave this group altogether. We have never seen any of the other couples without the full group. It will be noticeable if we begin putting together a new group or a smaller group. I hope that I do not come off as a snob with this request for assistance, but what advice can you offer?
Dear Bearing:
The Time of the Coronavirus is sharpening everyone’s nerves, and Etiquetteer wants to you to know that you aren’t alone in having difficulty with loved ones right now. Sometimes it feels like we are all seeing everyone we know in a new light, and not liking what we see*. Our society is having unprecedented challenges right now. Be patient. You can get through this!
Your desired outcome is a social life free from negativity, for yourselves and the people in your circle. Expulsion seems to be your focus, either of yourselves or this Cranky Couple. That should be near the bottom of the list, not the top. Your social circle has been established for a long enough time that “voting someone off the island” isn’t the preferred possibility.
No problem is solved without communication; that’s uncomfortable sometimes. But Etiquetteer is going to suggest a slightly different spin. Lashing out with an exasperated “My God, do you have to be so negative all the time?!” won’t help. But soliciting positive thoughts can bring table talk back to a happier tone. For instance, if you’re discussing a movie and Negative Nels is gassing on about how horrible it was, ask for one good thing he saw in the film, or a performance by that actor in another film that he liked better. If he’s complaining about the food, ask about a Most Memorable Meal. Getting your negative friends to find happy thoughts could lighten the general conversation. You can be quite open about it. “Nels darling, tell us something good today!”
The other, more serious conversation that might need to happen shouldn’t be in a social setting. There could be something going on in their lives bringing this Cranky Couple to a bad place where they just can’t see the bright side. How comfortable are you asking “I’ve noticed that your reactions to things have been really dark for a while. Are things OK with you?” You and your husband may have reached the point where you just don’t want to have that talk. That’s when you bring it up with another couple in your circle. Etiquetteer doesn’t think of this as “conspiring” as much as expressing concern. Cranky Couple may need help.
Another thought: create an additional social circle with a completely different set. You know the old saying “New friends are silver, but old friends are gold?” Perhaps you need a little more silver jingling in your pockets right now. Your concern about being observed by your existing circle is noted, but mercy goodness, they’re friends, not spouses!
The corollary to this is another old saying: “Nothing gold can stay.” The Algonquin Round Table was a thing until it wasn’t. One day one of the members who had been out of New York for several months breezed into the Algonquin . . . and there was a family of tourists at the round table. The Round Tablers needed a change and just stopped going to lunch as a group**. Jean Cocteau and his circle gradually started a Saturday night dinner (cocktails at someone’s home, dinner in or out, then some sort of amusement on the town, and then return to someone’s home for poetry and music). But they were abandoned after a few years, Cocteau said, because they had become “too institutionalized.”*** If that moment has come for your current circle, it’s Perfectly Proper to shed a tear, but also to find a joyous replacement.
Etiquetteer hopes very much that you will be able to restore some social equilibrium to your current circle, however, and that your Cranky Couple’s crankiness can be diverted to Happier Thoughts. As Louis Mazzini toasted in Kind Hearts and Coronets, “Best wishes for a successful outcome!”
*It’s so irreverent of That Mr. Dimmick Who Thinks He Knows So Much, but it’s impossible not to think of Mildred Pierce telling off her daughter Veda. “Veda, I think I’m really seeing you for the first time in my life, and you’re cheap and horrible!”
**Etiquetteer is frantic at being unable to locate the reference to this story this morning.
***From Francis Steegmuller’s Cocteau: A Biography