Dear Prudence,
I have a couple of friends who live in a different state, and I invited them to visit for a girls’ weekend. I was really excited for a low-key weekend of friendship and fun; several previous visits with the three of us have been really nice. One of the friends has been having a relationship with a guy, John, who has just gone through a difficult divorce. She texted me yesterday to ask if it’s OK if she brings John along. I never want to exclude anyone, but I was really looking forward to an easy, quiet weekend.
These are two of my best friends, so if they visit and my house isn’t perfect it’s no big deal. Adding another person to the mix, especially a guy, really changes things. John’s very nice, but my husband has social anxiety and he’s never met him, so for my husband, it feels fairly stressful to have a new person he doesn’t know staying in the house. John is also on the opposite side of the political spectrum from all of us, and our last guest got drunk and started to fight over politics over dinner. It was ugly. If my other friend had brought her husband, and this was a couples weekend, I would have no problem with it. If she wants to bring John in the future, that’s also fine. I was really looking forward to having my friends visit for a low-key weekend since I haven’t seen them in a long time, but I feel guilty.
—Four’s a Crowd