tberube
Brilliant_Rock
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2007
- Messages
- 1,999
This is a bit of a drama - but I''ll try not to let it get too dramatic and convoluted.
I met a friend in high school, Q, and over the last twelve years or so we have fostered the kind of friendship you do as you go through different colleges, get jobs in different cities in the same state. I would say she was a bit more loyal to the friendship than me through most of the years - she called me more often as I dislike speaking on the phone, she was always single so spent more time with friends than I, the one who almost always had a boyfriend.
Just a tad bit of background: I have always known that Q is the type of person who doesn''t have much of a filter between her brain and her mouth, has a bit of a childish streak, was spoiled a bit from her parents and is now quite a high-maintenance person, qualities that have possibly kept her from forming meaningful relationships with men, and with many friends. She''s also quite competitive - i.e. would steal men from me at the bar, etc. We would have periods of not speaking - more like little breaks - then she''d call me up and we''d hang out again. It was alright...I tried to understand her the best I could and I''m a fairly patient person. And do keep in mind that I am leaving out several other angering shortcomings in order to preserve a bit of fairness for her side.
A few years after college, and a few boyfriends later, I began getting pretty serious with FI - living together, talk of marriage, real estate. A couple years later, Q met a man and immediately began to foster conversations with him about marriage, etc. I figured she must have felt left behind, but it was really none of my business. A summer later Q''s boyfriend confided in me (while drunk at a bar with friends) that they regularly get into enormous fights about not being engaged yet and she would say horrible things to hurt him and he wasn''t sure whether he wanted to marry someone who possessed such anger. I tried to stay neutral because, again, this was none of my business, but I told him that in my opinion one should not marry another unless he was sure about it. I''d never want to see a friend of mine go through divorce.
Needless to say, two months later they were engaged. Q called me up on the phone and, well...more or less rubbed it in that she got engaged before me. I was rather horrified and didn''t know how to react, so I ended up excusing myself and cutting off the conversation abruptly.
Three months later, FI proposed to me and we began planning our wedding. We found a lovely venue, set a date for 2008 and began to tell everyone all about it. When I told Q she let me know that her fiance wanted to wait until 2009 to get married. She didn''t sound happy about the wait, but her fiance had just cleaned out his entire life savings for her ring, so I didn''t really blame him. And she desires a huge wedding right in Boston, and that takes a lot of saving.
A month after that, Q attended a wedding at the venue we are having our wedding. I told her I was interested to hear all about it. The next day she tells me that the place looked ugly, the food was terrible, and that the wait staff was poorly trained and rude.
I was shocked and deeply hurt that she would have the lack of tact it would take to openly bash a friend''s own wedding venue. But I kept it under wraps at first, remembering she has no filter. I also think she was a bit incensed that I''d decided not to have a weddng party, thus excluding her from the honor of bridesmaid (the day I told her this she immediately announced that I was not to be in her wedding party, and listed the other girls she would choose instead).
Well, a couple of weeks passed and that conversation bore into my brain. I lost some sleep and couldn''t concentrate at work. I decided to let her know how I feel unfairly competed with, and how much her venue comment hurt me. I wrote her an email, knowing that I am terrible at expressing intense feelings verbally. I was kind, soft, but I tried not to sugar coat the fact that I was hurt. It didn''t go over well, and so I was bombarded with hurtful accusations, namecalling and finally an acceptance of my "cutting off" of our friendship. Which I never actually intended. I cannot say I was surprised, Q has never taken this kind of honesty well.
It''s been a few months since the incident and I no longer have her phone number (due to a phone accident), and she no longer answers my emails. I have offered to take her for dinner and talk things over like adults, to which she declined. Her fiance has told me she is still very angry at me, but that he wishes she''d come around. All I keep thinking about is the fact that in a couple of months I am going to have to make pretty final decisions on who will receive one of the very limited number of wedding invitations I have to send out.
At first in my anger I was sure that Q and her fiance were not going to receive an invite...after all, she nixxed our friendship so quickly after a simply honest email - but now I wonder - after twelve years of friendship, can it really be over? If I don''t invite her to my wedding, will we both regret it later if our friendship is repaired? Or if I do invite her to the wedding, will she decline - an outcome that will undoubtedly bruise my ego? Or will she come to the wedding just to compare it to hers or for a free dinner?
So what do you think? What would you do? Feel free to pipe up and call me a jerkoff, if you think so.
I can take it.
Thanks for reading...
I met a friend in high school, Q, and over the last twelve years or so we have fostered the kind of friendship you do as you go through different colleges, get jobs in different cities in the same state. I would say she was a bit more loyal to the friendship than me through most of the years - she called me more often as I dislike speaking on the phone, she was always single so spent more time with friends than I, the one who almost always had a boyfriend.
Just a tad bit of background: I have always known that Q is the type of person who doesn''t have much of a filter between her brain and her mouth, has a bit of a childish streak, was spoiled a bit from her parents and is now quite a high-maintenance person, qualities that have possibly kept her from forming meaningful relationships with men, and with many friends. She''s also quite competitive - i.e. would steal men from me at the bar, etc. We would have periods of not speaking - more like little breaks - then she''d call me up and we''d hang out again. It was alright...I tried to understand her the best I could and I''m a fairly patient person. And do keep in mind that I am leaving out several other angering shortcomings in order to preserve a bit of fairness for her side.
A few years after college, and a few boyfriends later, I began getting pretty serious with FI - living together, talk of marriage, real estate. A couple years later, Q met a man and immediately began to foster conversations with him about marriage, etc. I figured she must have felt left behind, but it was really none of my business. A summer later Q''s boyfriend confided in me (while drunk at a bar with friends) that they regularly get into enormous fights about not being engaged yet and she would say horrible things to hurt him and he wasn''t sure whether he wanted to marry someone who possessed such anger. I tried to stay neutral because, again, this was none of my business, but I told him that in my opinion one should not marry another unless he was sure about it. I''d never want to see a friend of mine go through divorce.
Needless to say, two months later they were engaged. Q called me up on the phone and, well...more or less rubbed it in that she got engaged before me. I was rather horrified and didn''t know how to react, so I ended up excusing myself and cutting off the conversation abruptly.
Three months later, FI proposed to me and we began planning our wedding. We found a lovely venue, set a date for 2008 and began to tell everyone all about it. When I told Q she let me know that her fiance wanted to wait until 2009 to get married. She didn''t sound happy about the wait, but her fiance had just cleaned out his entire life savings for her ring, so I didn''t really blame him. And she desires a huge wedding right in Boston, and that takes a lot of saving.
A month after that, Q attended a wedding at the venue we are having our wedding. I told her I was interested to hear all about it. The next day she tells me that the place looked ugly, the food was terrible, and that the wait staff was poorly trained and rude.
Well, a couple of weeks passed and that conversation bore into my brain. I lost some sleep and couldn''t concentrate at work. I decided to let her know how I feel unfairly competed with, and how much her venue comment hurt me. I wrote her an email, knowing that I am terrible at expressing intense feelings verbally. I was kind, soft, but I tried not to sugar coat the fact that I was hurt. It didn''t go over well, and so I was bombarded with hurtful accusations, namecalling and finally an acceptance of my "cutting off" of our friendship. Which I never actually intended. I cannot say I was surprised, Q has never taken this kind of honesty well.
It''s been a few months since the incident and I no longer have her phone number (due to a phone accident), and she no longer answers my emails. I have offered to take her for dinner and talk things over like adults, to which she declined. Her fiance has told me she is still very angry at me, but that he wishes she''d come around. All I keep thinking about is the fact that in a couple of months I am going to have to make pretty final decisions on who will receive one of the very limited number of wedding invitations I have to send out.
At first in my anger I was sure that Q and her fiance were not going to receive an invite...after all, she nixxed our friendship so quickly after a simply honest email - but now I wonder - after twelve years of friendship, can it really be over? If I don''t invite her to my wedding, will we both regret it later if our friendship is repaired? Or if I do invite her to the wedding, will she decline - an outcome that will undoubtedly bruise my ego? Or will she come to the wedding just to compare it to hers or for a free dinner?
So what do you think? What would you do? Feel free to pipe up and call me a jerkoff, if you think so.
Thanks for reading...
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