Sorry, this is going to be long. Here's the backstory:
We have a friend (a groomsman) that has lived in the next province over for the last couple of years. He accepted the role of groomsman nearly a year ago. Whenever he comes home to visit his family (they're here), he's pretty evasive. If he even tells anybody in our friend group that he's in town, he'll either not respond to us or say he's busy. He's cancelled plans a few times as well because he says he forgot and made other plans that he couldn't break.
He flew out for FI's bachelor party in July. He was here for two weeks, and the bachelor party was the only time anybody saw him. He was supposed to do the suit fitting while he was in town, but ended up being busy and didn't have time to do it before going back home. At this time, he was still planning to attend the wedding.
A few weeks later, we got a FB message from him saying that he was really sorry but he wouldn't be able to attend the wedding. He said it was for financial reasons, due to a trip to Europe to visit family. This trip had been booked since before the bachelor party, when he said he was still coming to the wedding. And he makes good money - more than we do (not combined, but more than our individual salaries). We offered to pay for everything (suit, hotel, flights) so that he could attend, but he said no. I'm guessing it's because he would have felt bad accepting that much money from friends. Obviously, we were both pretty disappointed. He said he felt terrible and would spend some time with us when he visited in October.
When we told the BM that this friend had dropped out, he was pretty pissed (he's friends with the guy as well). When I said it's the friend's money and we shouldn't question what he does with it, the BM said that was a BS excuse. He felt that by agreeing to be a groomsman, that the friend should be willing to bear the cost (especially since he would have known the travel costs for a long time). When the BM found out that the friend had declined our offer to pay for him to attend, he was even more pissed. As other friends have gradually found out, they've been pissed off too (we only told them after they mentioned looking forward to seeing the friend at the wedding). They react this way even though we don't express frustration with the friend.
FI is pretty much ready to drop this guy as a friend. He was already pissed that this guy never makes time for friends when he's in town. He's tired of always putting in the effort to get together, only to be blown off every time. I suspect the friend is depressed, and it's possible that there's something going on with his family, since it seems like he's choosing to spend all of his time with them when he's home. His dad's older, so it's possible there's a health problem and he wants to spend as much time with him as possible. Whatever it is, we're in the dark about it. Nobody has outright asked him if there's anything wrong, so that will probably have to happen at some point.
Which brings us to today. The friend messaged me and FI to ask if we're available to get together this Friday. I very likely won't be in town because of Thanksgiving (we'll be spending it with my family and they live far away) and I have to leave early anyway to take the flower girl and ring bearer shopping for their outfits. FI will still be here, as he'll be travelling on Saturday instead. It's taken a lot of convincing on my part to even get FI to agree to maybe get together with the friend. Even then, he wants the friend to take the lead on making plans.
I understand FI's frustration - hell, I'm frustrated too. But I don't want to lose this guy as a friend, especially since I suspect there's something else going on that we don't know about. It will be pretty hard to maintain the friendship if FI makes it obvious how pissed he is. How do I handle this? I know part of it involves asking the friend if there's anything going on, but I'm not sure how to broach that subject either.
TL;DR: Our friend pulled out of wedding party and FI is pissed off with him (for this and other reasons). I'm unsure of how to handle this, since I don't want to lose the guy as a friend.