Dear Prudence,
My husband and I are “get together for dinner every couple of months” friends with another couple, the “Johnsons.” Initially, we enjoyed these dinners, but over the past few years, we’ve come to dread them. Although we share similar political viewpoints, we have little else in common—they live a wealth-adjacent lifestyle that we don’t relate to, are big foodies, have no children or pets, etc.
That in itself isn’t a huge issue, but they tend to be self-centered, and we never get beyond surface-level topics, so it’s just them telling stories about their niece’s extravagant wedding, their latest visit to the bicycle fitting consultant, all the specialty grocery shops they went to, etc. They rarely ask about our lives, and we don’t talk about deeper interpersonal topics, so it makes for a long, dull evening that we drink our way through, which leaves us drained the next day.
This came to a head recently, when Mr. Johnson reached out and droned on for 10 minutes before my husband got a chance to tell him that I was recuperating from an unexpected hospitalization. That really crystallized (for me especially) that I just don’t want to do these get-togethers anymore. Neither my husband nor I enjoys them. There is no real friendship, and we get little out of socializing for its own sake. The problem is, they are always the ones who reach out, and continue to follow up if we initially brush them off, so eventually we run out of excuses and have to say yes to “get it over with.” We can’t think of a good way to put them off permanently, since they’re not bad people and haven’t done anything egregious. Any advice? (And before you ask, they do actively socialize with others, so it’s not like they rely on us exclusively for companionship.)