I feel your pain. I’ve been there for sure, and I simetimes I get pretty sad/sensitive around my birthday because I’ve had many plans fall through. Reading this thread, I never realized before that this was such a common ADHD experience.

What’s helped me a little bit is to plan smaller, but more frequent, things with just a few friends. It still doesn’t really fill the longing for a great big party for me, but I’ve had better luck with people committing to show up when they know they’ll only be one of 2-5. For example, how would you feel about having a few separate simple dinners with friends in the week of your birthday? As well, I’ve started insisting on potluck style if I ever do plan a larger thing. So much less headache around planning and quantities.

As for what to say to your friends… I get the awkwardness. I’d probably say something like “a bit smaller than expected, sadly”, try to keep the tone neutral and quickly change the subject. I wouldn’t want to lie, but there’s also no use getting into all of it with someone who didn’t show up. That would just bring up a lot of resentment and end up ugly for me.

All the best for your belated birthday, and I hope the next one is better for you.

There can be a lot of ways this has nothing at all to do with you.

Begin anecdote: I just got back from two years out of the country and am back to visit family and earn more money for my next trip. I’m hugely depressed. I drained about $80k in savings that took me 15 years to build, have no job, no car, and am sleeping on a concrete floor in a family member’s basement. I’m grown with three adult children.

My older cousin has three kids in their late twenties and early thirties. Two daughters live together and have game night every Tuesday. They adore me and invite me weekly. I’ve not had the stamina to endure a long activity like that, and I also am waiting for both sisters to be available, as one had been working nights, but has next Tuesday off.

When I canceled this past Tuesday, the working sister told me the following day that her father and sister are angry with both of us – convinced I favor working sister more than the two of them. They assume (as is their dramatic nature) that anything that affects them was intentionally done with malice.

I had a doctor’s appointment the day of game night that ran until 3pm, and game night was 70 miles away at 5pm.

These two are sure that I’m slighting them, when in reality, I was home rocking on a cold floor trying to find the motivation to face the public so I could eat dinner. I never did eat. I woke to the revelation from working sister, and now, visiting game night seems 50 times more awkward and uncomfortable to me.

If they hadn’t taken it personally that I’m a mess, I’d be scheduled for game night in two days. As it is, I’m almost 98% guaranteed to skip it to avoid that drama. My canceling had nothing to do with them. My depression and self-loathing are of my own making, and when people feel the need to pressure me or shame me, it never helps in any way.

End anecdote.

If you took it personally that people didn’t show to your party, I get it. I’m sorry. But it likely was not you, and isn’t indicative of the care these people have for you. Its their own thing. My advice is to laugh it off as a plan gone wrong and put it behind you. There are real things that affect us. We don’t need to invent them.

“Remember that time I decided to celebrate my birthday for the first time in decades? I thought 50 would show, but it was 5? Guess that didn’t go as planned!” Its funny, if you let it be.

Take the win: you stayed on-task and for a big shin-dig planned. You have 50 friends.

Maybe you can keep gatherings small and simple for a while, and let the large gatherings happen more organically?

I hope your week is a good one and you can smile about this soon. Happy birthday.

Anecdotally:

There’s an epidemic of post-pandemic burn out and depression. It’s not just the pandemic, it’s the endless layoffs, the world is in a state of political unrest, the list goes on.

It’s hard to decline and invite with that “excuse”, so many people accept.

Attending a happy, social event where they will have to mask their emotions feels like an impossible mountain to climb.

It’s a painful experience to be on the receiving end of this equation and I’m sorry it’s happening to you. I’m hoping this is just a reminder that it’s likely not personal, even though it very much feels that way.

I don’t have an actual answer to the question but this made me think of a recent realization and attitude that sounds emo and nihilistic but is kind of the opposite and pretty helpful: I try never to do anything unless I can do it not caring in the slightest whether it completely falls apart.

Sorry you went through that. Hope you can find a mental gyroscope for the aftermath.

It happens, even with popular kids. A friend from daycare invited many people for her 5th, but due to bad timing with vacation, nobody showed up. Nobody. Her 6th was fine, as about 8 out of 14 came.

My son invited 5 for his 5th, but due to some misfortune with sickness etc., only two siblings came. It turned out to be one of his best birthdays ever.

Best to ask for a commitment, a clear yes or no. But in your case, 5 is a good number for a party! 1 or 0 would have been kind of awkward.

I can’t even tell you how many times I tried to put together a big event and had two or three people there.

For my 21st birthday, I didn’t even do the planning, my best friend had invited all our favorite people that we worked with and went to school with. He made plans for someone to drive us around and a list of the local bars that he wanted me to visit. In the end, it was me, that friend, and my girlfriend. We sat in a dive bar for about two hours until my girlfriend took us home because she wasn’t feeling great and didn’t drink.

That’s probably not even the worst one. I’ve had so many nights just sitting and waiting for everyone to arrive only to entertain the same two people that I hang out with every day.

I don’t have any great tips for you, because I don’t try to do things like that anymore, but I understand how you feel, and it just really sucks. Sorry it fell apart like that. Take a day to focus on you and I hope you feel better.

If you’re planning on sinking much money, time, and effort into an event it’s best to do formal invitations with RRSPs.

It’s really hard to organize something for a lot of people to participate in and requires a lot of communication and reminders.

I think you discovered who your true close friends are and now you can scale back and not let the rest of them (the bailers) in on your cool life. Something I’ve had to deal with but is better in the long run.

Happy belated birthday! That sucks - I know. I’ve been struggling this weekend with that perpetual loneliness. I have friends in this city, live with several in fact, but all too often when the weekend comes around everyone has made plans without me and I’m sitting at home on a Saturday night watching shows. It’s easy to interpret it as a judgement on myself, that I’m somehow not sufficient ( which I did for years before my diagnosis). It’s still not easy, and if I had an answer for you on how to deal with it I’d be a much happier person.

I try to let it just wash past me, accept that we have different patterns which often leaves these large gaps. With a couple of major exceptions, I’ve learned the only people I can rely on socially are other ND folk - and we’re infamously flaky to start with!

I can’t really offer advice, but know that you’re not alone, it’s not just you.

I never organized any parties in my entire life because I know for a fact this would happen to me.

As for advice? Well, don’t organize any more parties. People like us are just the npc’s in “real”(neurotypical) people’s lives. I tried to fight this notion for years but it’s honestly much less painful to just accept it and move on.

Do we “deserve” this? Fuck no, but infants dying from hunger don’t deserve that either and they still end up stone cold dead. Radical acceptance > futilely fighting against an enemy we can never defeat.

A lot of commenters here are saying a lot of similar things. I’ll offer my own insights.

As people get older, you have less time. Between maintaining a relationship, doing chores, work, etc, there are so many hours to do things.

As a result, a lot of FOMO happens. It’s not about you. It’s them. They may plan to come to your birthday. They may even want to. But suddenly, something else comes along that they want to do instead.

I don’t plan big events anymore. I’m in my 40s and just dgaf whether people make time for me or not. I’ll ask one or two friends if they’d like to go out to dinner for my birthday or some event.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that quality trumps quantity. Don’t look at it as right or wrong; good or bad. Think about it as what met your expectations, and what didn’t. Take what didn’t meet your expectations, and learn from it. Don’t burn your bridges with those who couldn’t make it; they may have forgotten, or something came up. They deserve the benefit of the doubt. Finally, focus on the positives: you had five people show up for you! That’s awesome!

Happy belated birthday!

My wife also has really bad rejection anxiety, and she’s sensitive about her birthday. She’s had some bad birthdays in the past, and when she tries to turn them around they never live up to expectations.

Part of the nature of the disorder is that you’re going to focus on the people who didn’t show up. If I might suggest, it would be good to reflect on the people who did show up. They have your back and love you enough to celebrate your birthday with you.

I’ve done some rounds in therapy, and what I’ve found really works for me is to give people the benefit of the doubt and try my best to assume no malice was intended.

Your birthday is clearly important to you, so right now it really hurts. It might even feel like betrayal. If we feel very poorly about ourselves then we start to view other people poorly.

When going through therapy I had to learn a list of Cognitive Biases. These are ways in which our brain lies to us, so if any of them sound familiar you can work on deconstructing them.

I’m going to try to speculate some reasons why people might not have shown up. If it makes you feel anxious, please bear in mind that I’m only trying to help.

For what it’s worth, I’m not really a birthday person. My own birthday isn’t important to me, so sometimes I forget that they’re important to other people. It greatly helps if someone says “Hey, this is important to me.”

You mention inviting 30-50 people. That’s a lot of people. Personally, I wouldn’t be comfortable in a crowd that size, it would make me anxious. I’d also be tempted to think that if that many other people were coming then you wouldn’t miss my absence.

You also mention inviting people up to two months before the event. Did you make sure to remind people closer to the date?

If it was me, I’d probably let people know a month and a week away from the date. Too far in the future and people think they don’t have to put it in their calendar right away. Too close to the date and it might be too late to change other plans. Reminders throughout to cement that this is happening.

Another thing to bear in mind is that if you have ADHD, it stands to reason that friends and family you resonate with are also neurospicy. I’m sure you can probably relate to forgetting an important date or appointment.

I hope your next birthday is everything you hope it’ll be.