Dear Eric >> I have a close friend of more than 40 years who lives in a very large and expensive city. Whenever I travel there, I will often ask if my wife and I can stay with her.

She is acquainted with a number of our friends who live in this city but never sees them unless I come to town, nor do they reach out to her if I’m not there. However, when we are there and she joins us, she tends to commandeer the conversation, talking primarily about herself and her relatives, which is off-putting to me and to our friends. It makes it so that I don’t really want to invite her along on most of these visits.

I do genuinely enjoy her friendship and her company but more when it’s just us. I do try to reciprocate her generosity by taking her out to dinner or cooking for her, as well as spending time together during the visit.

I’ve asked other friends if I should feel obligated to invite her when seeing people that she also knows somewhat. They seem to think I should not feel obligated.

I have a lot of guilty feelings about not asking her to come but I also would like to see my friends without her if I want to, guilt-free. I don’t know how to address this issue as it’s awkward to say to her that she can be self-absorbed in her conversation.

Any ideas? I know I can pay for a place to stay but it’s nice to be able to save money by staying with her.

— Grateful Guest

Dear Guest >> I suspect there’s a way to solve this without having an uncomfortable talk about her conversational skills. Now, was this an on-going issue with a group that gathered regularly, I’d suggest kindly bringing it up. But it’s simpler to just ask her if she minds if you have solo friend time on your next visit. There are some friends who hope and expect to spend every minute with their visiting guests, but it sounds like she’s a different type and might be totally fine with wishing you a fun evening and catching up with you afterward.

It’s best not to make every friend visit off-limits to her. From your letter it seems that you’re making the rounds with different configurations of friends, so perhaps choose one or two that you’d like to see without your host friend. Talk to her in advance to see if she has any strong feelings about it. Hopefully, she’ll understand that not every outing needs to be a group outing.

Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com