My friend and I love DnD. We play it as often as we can, which is once a week, barring emergencies or whatever. Recently, we've been wanting new blood, so since he's the more social of us he's been pulling some of his work friends in. First one guy, then a married couple. They're pretty nice people, they show up on time and without being belligerent. So it goes alright for a while, DnD is going on as normal.

Now I should mention, one half of the married couple is more or less only in it because the other half is- and he can only come once every other week because of his job. So the wife asks that we play every other week.

Naturally, the two of us who started have a problem with this- once every other week is not really enough momentum for us. Now I know that some people would kill to have dnd once every other week, but for me this is like my only real life interaction with people out of my family IRL. But, well, we decide to let it slide and we're stuck with dnd only every other week. And I gotta say, that kills my enthusiasm for the game. For the next month and a half or so, I'm not really feeling it anymore. My favorite activity has just lost most of its draw. I even start to feel like I'm willing to let my character just die and then accept that I'm not allowed to come back, which is a major deal for me.

Well anyway, during this period, we even get the occasional cancellations from the married couple, which is even more grating to my sensibilities. My friend and I, used to playing from 6PM-1AM every week are now stuck playing from 2 PM to 6 PM less than every other week. Much of the time, the married couple can't wait to leave before the end of the session. So finally, my friend the other night intuited that she doesn't actually want to play, and finally tells her that she doesn't have to come back. She confirms his suspicion and says "Are you sure" etc, and basically that part of the group is released from their obligation to be here.

Now, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that essentially she kept playing out of politeness so as not to say "I don't want to be here", but the end result, good intentions or no, is that everybody was miserable because of it. Maybe it would have been better if she just told us she didn't like it and wanted to stop. Does anybody else have any situations that resemble this or have any thoughts on topics like this? Is there some perspective I've not considered in all of this? Are we being selfish, magnanimous or arbitrary?