Friend invited himself to concert but we don’t want him to go

So me (f22) and my best friend (m20) are planning to go to a concert this summer with my mom. The three of us planned it together and are excited to go together.

It got mentioned in passing around another one of our friends, who likes the band, and he (m26) asked if tickets were still available. I told him yes they were as it’s a lawn concert and those don’t sell out as fast. He then immediately called off of work to go and me and my best friend just kinda looked at each other like uhhh..

We didn’t invite him because we wanted it to just be the three of us. He’s a bit older than us, and is my brothers best friend first, and our friend by default. We’re all close as a group but, to me at least, there’s a disconnect there between me and this guy.

He’s the kind of person that you can only handle in certain amounts. I’m going through an internal struggle and some self reflection about this because maybe I just don’t like him? Or is it normal to not always want certain friends around at every single outing? We get along fine, we all play board and video games together, go on shopping trips on our off days, go to the movies, zoo, etc. Our group is even going to a concert together later this summer so I don’t know why this one is so different, maybe because my brother won’t be there? At the end of the day, he’s not the kind of friend I hang out with 1 on 1 very often if at all. He also had a crush on me in the past so I don’t like being in 1 on 1 situations with him, he doesn’t do anything but it just makes me uncomfortable the way he looks at me and acts sometimes.

He mentioned recently that work gave him that day off so he can go to the concert. I am not sure how to bring up to him that we don’t want to go with him. How do I approach this without hurting his feelings and also placing my own boundaries?

Side note… morally I’m feeling pretty shitty about this. I feel like friends don’t treat their other friends like this and normally would be more than happy for a friend to tag along to a concert. I’m only 22… are some friendships just Like This?

TL;DR: Friend invited himself to a concert but we do not want him to go with us, how do we tell him so?

Submitted May 01, 2023 at 10:29PM by lileggboi https://ift.tt/9U5iS1D