Confronting someone who bails with excuses

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Hi:
I have a casual friend who lives in my area that I have often invited to several gatherings at my home. He does not drive due to finances and visual impairment and have to rely in the bus, cabs and Uber to get places. He has some to my house before.

Anyway just about every time invite him over he says yes and that he will come and often never shows up and gives a story with a lot of details.

Example:
This past Christmas I invited him to my home to eat Chinese food and watch Star Wars. He said he was going to go to another event first and then use Uber to come over. I never heard from him so I called and he told me that he could not get his Uber App to work and that no one at the his other event knew how to help him. He also said that he had already been late to other event due to his bus driver going past his stop.

Another time I invited him over for Thanksgiving and again he said that he was coming. Well I never heard back. I ran into him on the bus and he gave me a line that "I was going to call you because I planned on coming but my iphone was acting up. For some reason it could not dial out."

It would be one thing if he did it once but he seems to do this every time and while I get that he isn't interested, I don't tolerate lying either. How do I approach him?

The way I see it, you have three choices:

1) Say nothing about his behavior, and keep inviting him while knowing full well that he is likely to back out with a lame excuse.

2) Address his behavior, and expect him to make a lame excuse as to why he behaves the way he behaves.

3) Stop inviting him, thus avoiding his inevitably lame excuse.

I think I will do two and three because he needs to know how I felt about that.

Excellent plan!

Good luck with it!

Why is this guy so unreliable?

I would jump at the chance of eating Chinese food and watching Star Wars with a lady!

What should I say without being too hostile?

I would just calmly ask him why he's missed several of your invitations in the past and if he comes up with another lame excuse explain to him that you will not be inviting him over anymore as you believe he will simply not show up again. Make sure you tell him that you just wanted to spend some time with him as friends when you do this so he clearly understands your intentions.

When he rattled off the last list of excuses I politely told him "I wanted to make sure you were not alone for Christmas."

I like this suggestion better. It's the most reasonable and socially acceptable response and ultimately the most likely to work out well.

Maybe he has social anxiety and gets too nervous to show up.

I'd ask him point blank what's really going on. He isn't acting like a friend, so what is there to lose?

I would just ask him straight up why he commits but never comes over and always has excuses. I can relate in a way as I used to be bad about that, I would be invited somewhere and say yes knowing that I really didn't want to go as I didn't want to hurt the person's feelings and then would always have to come up with an excuse as to why I couldn't show up. The thing was I never had anything else going on, I simply did not want to leave the comfort and safety of my home. It is something I've been working on and made strides in, the past six months I've gotten out a lot more and even started dating again, I still prefer to be at home by myself but it is nowhere near the point it was at this time last year.

Why does he need to know?

Your answer may help you decide what to say.

My guess is he doesn't need to know but either you want him to know, you hope he may behave differently in the future, you don't understand the ambiguous message or you feel it would help him to know and I think the clearer you are about why you want him to know, the easier it is to say something in accord with your goal.

Because he may not even be aware that I am the one who is paying for food along with takning time to prepare and cook the food. He also lives in the area which is a few miles away. It's not like he doesn't have transportation options and he can catch Uber here anytime he needs too.