They’re part of every friend group: that one buddy who is always late, drops out, or is otherwise generally quite unreliable. Perhaps they’ve got an intense life and work schedule, crazy family responsibilities – or maybe they are just plain lazy. There are many reasons, many of which are not the person’s fault, but it can get a little annoying for the others involved, regardless.

By contrast, most friend groups have the hyper-responsible planner, the one who arranges all the meet-ups, coordinates between hosts and guests, ties up all the loose ends so that everyone else can simply enjoy themselves. Really, it’s good that groups have all different kinds of people working symbiotically to keep the friends together.

But when one falls apart, the friend ecosystem can fall apart too. That’s what’s happening for the friends in this story, since one member who was usually very reliable has recently started being anything but. And even though they don’t know why, these friends are getting so sick of it that they’re considering excluding her altogether.

Read on to find out why.

WIBTA for wanting to stop accomodating a friend who keeps cancelling plans at the last minute?

We’re a friend group of three women, all in our mid-thirties and we’ve known each other since high school.

No kids and we all work full-time.

We’ve always taken turns hosting our meetings with the host cooking for everyone when we meet at someone’s home.

Sometimes our partners come too, sometimes they don’t.

But recently, things have become a little more complicated.

In the past year or two, however, one friend – let’s call her Mary – has started to regularly cancel plans at the last minute (usually just a few hours before we were supposed to meet).

Not every now and then, but at least every second meeting, even the ones she proposed, ends with her telling us she won’t come a few hours before, usually saying she isn’t feeling well or her partner isn’t feeling well, or she has another short-notice appointment.

She also stopped offering to host, which we understood at first, because she went through a breakup and moved and we didn’t want to stress her.

Today, Mary and her partner cancelled another meeting that would have taken place at my apartment, three hours before.

And this is beginning to grate on this host.

We had already moved it by a week (both me and my other friend had to reschedule things for that) because she told us a day before that she had to go to another friends’ birthday that day.

I have obviously already bought food and drinks, spent time cooking and baking (while accommodating Mary’s dietary restrictions), preparing etc. and am now sitting on food and drinks for four people with only me and the other friend actually coming. And as I said – this has happened plenty of times before.

To be honest, I’m annoyed. People get sick and have to cancel sometimes, it happens, but this just looks like her being flaky to me.

Would I be wrong to I propose that we order takeout and everyone pays for their own stuff from now on? And if I stop actually planning for Mary to show up? Our other friend is also annoyed but thinks Mary might really be sick every time (I doubt that) and that it would be cruel to tell her off or to stop preparing for her to actually show up.

WIBTA?

Obviously things do get more complicated as you get older – because though these women don’t have kids, they do have entire lives to live, which come with many other responsibilities.

But when someone keeps cancelling at the last minute –  not just once, but many times – it can start to get on your nerves.

More than that though, with no other evidence, you can start to feel like you’re simply not that person’s priority, and that doesn’t feel good at all.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who abandoned their own D&D campaign when their friends stopped paying attention.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person encouraged them to carry on without Mary.

However, others expressed concern for the recent changes in Mary’s behaviour.

Meanwhile, this Redditor worried if things were okay for Mary at home.

It must be absolutely infuriating to plan for Mary to attend an event, only for her to frequently cancel at the last moment. Because it’s not like she’s cancelling days in advance – in the most recent incident, dinner was basically prepared before she pulled out, and that shows a real disrespect for the host and the others attending. It’s no wonder that they want to change their approach due to Mary’s sudden flakiness.

But it’s the very fact that this change is so sudden that is concerning. Because usually, people don’t suddenly just become flaky for no reason at all. It seems to be more the case that something in Mary’s life has changed. This could be something as innocent as extra stress at work, but there could be a more serious context that Mary’s friends are not yet privy to.

Perhaps she’s going through an illness that she does not yet want to talk about. Maybe her partner is abusive and she doesn’t know how to get out of the relationship. Maybe she’s struggling with infertility and doesn’t feel like opening up to her childfree friends. Perhaps she’s suffering from a serious mental health condition that is leading her to drop out at the last minute.

Or it could be none of those things, maybe she’s just become flaky and doesn’t respect the time and effort her friends are going to – but they can’t know this for sure right now. It would be wrong to cut her out without making sure she’s okay first.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who stirred up family drama by finally choosing her own mom over her in-laws.