The Rules of the RSVP, part 2

My second-greatest fear in life is to send out an invite to some event, only to have everybody say no.

This almost happened recently when I tried to organize a group lunch for 13 people. Normally I try to first make sure there’s a quorum of people who can make it, but I decided to boldly send out the invite without asking anybody. In the end 1 person said yes, 2 people said maybe, and everybody else said no.

You would think that organizing countless game nights and volleyball meetups would make me immune to people saying no, but you would be wrong. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that it still affects me sometimes, but I want to stress a few things:

1. You are not responsible for how I respond to your RSVP, so please, keep on saying no if that’s the real answer. (And adhere to the Rules of the RSVP as outlined previously.)
2. I’d rather you say no than maybe.
3. To clarify, I’m only referring to “no” responses on group invitations…I’m more or less immune to individual “no” responses since it’s not public.

Having said that, the truth is I was more than a little annoyed at the responses to this particular group lunch invitation. I guess I was hoping for people to show more appreciation for organizing this lunch, because it mostly likely wouldn’t happen if I didn’t make the effort to do it. I realized this after one of the invitees wrote me an e-mail to thank me for organizing, and also explain why they couldn’t make it…it was a lot easier to swallow than just a straight “no.”

Am I suggesting that you should do that for every single invitation you can’t make? Definitely not. Does it make you a better human being, though? Yeah, probably. 😂😂😂

This is also why my modus operandi is to extend invitations by messaging people individually, versus sending out a group invite. That way people can say no without everybody else knowing about it, and even if they say no it’s a good opportunity to ask what they’re up to instead, and see how they’re doing.

I was explaining this to a friend, and joked that my rejection issues probably stemmed from being Asian. That’ll probably be the topic of my next blog post as I’ve been reflecting more on the topic of rejection this year, and scheduling this group lunch was yet another reminder of the topic.

(Ironically, I recently declined an invitation extended to me by a friend who’s really good at getting our specific friend group together for random events and holidays. I felt badly because I of all people know how much work they put in to organize these get togethers, especially when there’s food prep involved. Of course I tried to follow my own rules by expressing my appreciation for their effort and my regret for not being able to attend the last few events.)

Caption: Explaining to a friend why I stopped using group invitations for volleyball. Will be exploring the topic of rejection in my next blog post.