# I want to host more parties, but I’m worried nobody will come

It’s Saturday night and the entire back half of the tapas restaurant is packed for my friend Ivy’s birthday dinner.

Ivy is queenly at the centre of the table, bouquets and little gift bags crowding her elbows. Multiple lines of conversation flow above the small plates, and drinks and desserts keep coming, because no one wants to call it a night. It’s an unequivocal success.

Then Ivy confesses that she’s been racked with anxiety – from the moment she circulated the invites, right up until she walked into the restaurant. “What if nobody had come?”

I am bemused. Ivy is beloved, as tonight’s turnout shows, and she’d asked us out for a nice dinner – not on an overseas trip, to an open mic night, or anything else that might have tested budgets or enthusiasm. Why wouldn’t we have come?

“I’m worried that my friends don’t like me as much as I like them,” she later tells me. “Like, why would these people come and celebrate _me_?”

Ivy isn’t my only friend who feels this trepidation around birthdays. Some put off making plans until the last minute, as a self-protective strategy. “I’ll organise it with a week to go, because I’m fine with the idea that people won’t come because they already had plans,” says Robert. (Some names have been changed for privacy.)

Others go the other route: anxiously over-inviting. Rhiannon sometimes asks two or three times the number of people the venue can accommodate – “an insurance policy,” though she admits “it has backfired.”

Throwing a party can be nerve-racking. The prospect of low turnout or off vibes is mortifying – as though a referendum has been held on your character, and found you sorely wanting.

Nonattendance may not even be personal: people get sick, have family or work emergencies, or are anxious themselves. But with the , where people renege on social plans, can be hard to take.

“People who say they will be there and don’t come sucks so much,” says Jewel. “I’m anxious to call people up on it because I don’t want to push them away, but it hurts.”

Some hosts try to proactively prevent flaking. “Especially after age 30, you need to be intense about RSVPs,” says Marie. Others just seek to mitigate its impact. In the lead-up to her birthday party, Kate texted guests to say she was hyped to see them, and requested that last minute drop-outs not message on the day – “the most stressful thing you can do to a person having a party”.

Such are the perils of hosting. “I hosted a New Year’s party where, like, three people came,” says Helen. That was some 10 years ago: “I haven’t hosted a big party since.”

Then, Ivy confesses, “I’m worried that my friends don’t like me as much as I like them.” “Like, what if they didn’t come?” she asks, adding, “I’m like a flake,” as she continues.

I’m such a flake myself that I’ve started to assume that everyone will do the same to me, says Amy.

## The biggest risk there is, when it comes to social interaction, is not taking any risk at all, says Marisa G Franco, a psychologist and author, in a book called "Platonic: How Understanding Your Attachment Style Can Help You Make and Keep Friends."

Buying into all the reasons not to party only serves to stoke isolation. Plus, “that fear might not be warranted,” says Franco.

“Our predictions, when it comes to social interaction, are so often skewed towards the negative. That’s why I tell people: stop predicting and start experiencing.”

## What is social health? The little-known idea that could make all the difference

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## The last party I threw was my housewarming last summer. In the lead-up, I agonised over who to invite, how to encourage a good time, and whether vodka jelly shots would be welcomed or ridiculed – and frequently rued having made the commitment.

Some invitees did flake. But many more didn’t, and some even travelled great distances to be there. The memories of seeing so many people I love together under the same roof – my roof! – have warmed my home through the winter.

It is always easier to do nothing than it is to do something. But if we’re going to reverse the social recession, we’re going to need hosts, guests and dates in the diary.

If you’re uncomfortable celebrating yourself, it might help to reframe a party as a community service, giving the people in your life a chance to gather – or at least a change from the same old Saturday night.

Equally, anxious guests can be reassured that just showing up is a gift.

Ivy had spent weeks fretting about her birthday – what to do, who to invite, whether they’d come. But it paid off as soon as she got to the restaurant: “I was like, ‘Oh, this is lovely. Why was I ever worried?’”

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