AITA for being hurt that my friend didn’t want me to join her and her friends at a club we’d been planning to go to for over a year?

I met a woman while we were both pregnant. We became extremely close—we bonded over being expats, pregnancy, birth, early motherhood, even watched each other’s dogs while giving birth.

For over a year and a half, we talked about going to a famous local club together. With toddlers, it was hard to coordinate. Eventually, she and her husband got to go while her in-laws watched their kid. She later told us about how amazing it was, how they met another couple, and how they wished we’d been there.

Later, her university friends came to visit. I didn’t see her during that time—understandably, she was spending time with them. Toward the end of their visit, my husband and I met her husband at the park with our kids, and he said they were going back to the club that weekend, and how great it’d be if we could join. My husband offered to watch our kid so I could go, and I was thrilled.

I texted my friend to say I could come. She immediately called and said, “I don’t really want to split my time between you and my close friends. I want to focus on them.”

I was stunned. This was a club—a loud, social environment where the more the merrier. Not a dinner party. I wasn’t asking to third-wheel a private girls’ night. I said “Okay, that’s fine” and we hung up, but I felt rejected and hurt. Later, I texted to say so. I said it came across as a little “mean girls”—like I wasn’t allowed to sit at the table, metaphorically. I told her I was genuinely excited and surprised she didn’t want me there. I also said I would never make a friend feel like an outsider in that kind of situation, especially over something we’d talked about doing together for so long.

She said it was her friends’ last night, they wanted time alone and she didn’t want to have to divide her attention for me. I tried to explain that I wasn’t asking for anything like that—I just genuinely thought it’d be fun. I told her maybe we had different views on friendship: if close friends were visiting me, I’d love for them to meet someone important from my life.

She got upset and said she felt like she couldn’t tell me things without fearing I’d expect to be invited. I told her I understood, but also that this was just one particular case that hurt because of all the build-up, and how she responded made me feel excluded.

But after that, she distanced herself. Cold messages, no effort to meet. Months later, when we finally got together, she brought it all up again—saying she still felt that pressure. I told her I’d message her after, but didn’t—mostly because if she was still holding onto it months later, I didn’t think there was anything else I could say to fix it.

So, AITA for being hurt and telling her how I felt?