The need to be liked

My daughter (7) has always had a need to be liked. She is a very sweet kid with a lot of friends, but she very much wants to be popular and liked (odd because while my husband and I do have great friendships we are introverts). Sometimes this winds up in her being hurt. There was a girl she has been friends with since junior kindergarten. This friend has been to all her birthday parties and they hang out regularly at school. Back in October this girl had her first party and didn’t invite my daughter claiming that there wasn’t enough space on the paper to write her name. I talked to her about how we won’t be invited to every party and she can chose to continue being friends with her but to understand that she was unkind to her and she should remember how the incident made her feel.

December rolls around and it’s time for my daughter’s birthday. As I said, she has many friends so we have pretty big parties. I reminded her that she should consider how she felt when she was left out of that party when deciding who to invite. She said the friend apologized and said she wouldn’t do it again. I told her it’s fine if that’s what she wants and she ended up inviting her.

Well here we are in May and this girl is having another party and once again said she doesn’t have space to invite my daughter but always makes it a point to say she’s inviting my daughters best friend. My issue isn’t that she’s not inviting her (although, wtf? You suck) but that my daughter has this need to be liked by this girl. I actually don’t love the friendship because I see this girl behaves older than she is and have mean girl tendencies (not just with my girl but others as well) and I just want her to have the self respect to walk away. We have done affirmations since she could understand, she is very confident, I just wish she didn’t have this pick me attitude when people are treating her poorly. Any advice??