With friendships, many people feel “the more, the merrier”.

But when a new face joined a longstanding friend group, one woman felt more intimidated than excited.

When she attempted to exclude her from a group trip, her attempt at boundary-keeping turned the friendship into a free-for-all.

Read on for the full story.

AITA for not letting my friend’s “new addition” join our annual friend trip tradition?

So I (24F) have this friend group from college that I still hang with.

Lately, there have been some new additions to the group who she isn’t a fan of.

We’ve all been tight for years, except for this one girl, Mia, who joined our circle last year when she started dating my friend’s brother.

They have a long-standing tradition that’s fast approaching.

Last month, we planned our annual weekend trip — a tradition we’ve had since sophomore year.

It’s always been just the OG six of us, and we split costs evenly.

Well, Mia assumed she was invited and kept talking about how excited she was.

But she didn’t want Mia to join.

I finally pulled her aside and told her this was kinda our thing, and while we love hanging with her normally, this specific trip was just for the original group.

She got super upset and said I was excluding her and being cliquey.

I tried explaining that it wasn’t personal, but she went and told everyone I was being mean.

Now the group is split.

Now half the group is saying I should’ve just let her come, while the other half agrees with me but doesn’t want to say it publicly.

Turns out, she doesn’t like Mia for multiple reasons.

Here’s the thing — it’s not just about tradition.

Mia is ALWAYS on her phone posting everything to social media.

Our trip is the one time we can all just be present without everything becoming content.

Plus, she has different financial expectations (she wanted us to upgrade to fancier accommodations), and tbh the group dynamic changes when she’s around.

At the end of the day, she just wanted things to stay as they’ve always been.

I don’t hate her, I just wanted ONE weekend with just my original friends.

But now the group is threatening to splinter for good.

Now everyone’s fighting, Mia’s bf (my friend’s brother) is mad at me, and I’m being painted as this exclusionary jerk.

I get that it sucks to feel left out, but am I really wrong for wanting to preserve our original friend group tradition?

AITA?

She saw it as honoring the past, but the rest of the group saw it as just being mean.

What did Reddit have to say?

This commenter thinks maybe she really was being exclusionary.

She’s not the AH for how she felt; she’s the AH for how she handled her communication.

Her reasoning behind the decision isn’t super sound either.

If she valued this friend group so much, she should have depended more on their opinions too.

In trying to preserve the trip’s original spark, she ended up only burning bridges.

People and friend groups change over time — and that’s a good thing.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.