Dear Ex-Friend: Screw You. (long)

The BBQ Pit
21

[QUOTE=Carlyjay]
But she DID get engaged. She got engaged FOUR DAYS LATER. She got married two months ago. It’s done, she’s married, nothing to “distance” yourself over anymore, right?

Wrong. She hasn’t contacted me since I originally tried to talk to her about it.
[/QUOTE]

Well then, I guess she just must not like you.

Seriously, how in the hell to women managed to get this worked up over friendships? She wasn’t a great friend, but she didn’t exactly fuck you over in some rediculous manner.

Getting your fiance drunk, sleeping with him, and posting photos on the internet. These would be actions worthy of a Pitting. Just not hanging out with you anymore for whatever reason? Big fucking deal.

Perhaps she just realized, stupid it may be, that hanging out with you didn’t make her feel good about herself. So she stopped. What’s the problem?

22

The betrayal of trusted friends can hurt like hell – especially when it seems to come out of nowhere.

Look at it this way. If she is telling you the truth and was in a snit because you were engaged, she doesn’t deserve your friendship. These are the times when worthwhile friends celebrate with you even if they are a little envious.

If she is not telling you the truth, you can’t depend on her. She isn’t who you thought she was.

Placing expectations on other people is risky business, yet we all have to do it somethimes.

My most enduring friendship (57 years) is with a gal who slips up and lets her jealousy show from time to time. It could be over something as simple as a new handbag or an invitation to lunch with a mutual friend. It annoys me to no end when she does that, but her overall loyalty and the fun times more than make up for it. Besides, it’s rumored that I’ve pissed her off a couple of times the last half century.

It sounds like you have not received anything of real value back from this person in a while. You mentioned that you hadn’t been spending much time together even before the engagement.

But I certainly understand your anger and your disappointment. (The sting of it does go away.)

Enjoy your engagement!

23

[QUOTE=threemae]
Well then, I guess she just must not like you.

Seriously, how in the hell to women managed to get this worked up over friendships? She wasn’t a great friend, but she didn’t exactly fuck you over in some rediculous manner.

Getting your fiance drunk, sleeping with him, and posting photos on the internet. These would be actions worthy of a Pitting. Just not hanging out with you anymore for whatever reason? Big fucking deal.

Perhaps she just realized, stupid it may be, that hanging out with you didn’t make her feel good about herself. So she stopped. What’s the problem?
[/QUOTE]

The problem is that many human beings have these things called emotions, one of which is known as grief. When a relationship that we value is taken away or shown to us to have been false, it hurts and we need to work it out by talking about it with friends.

24

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
The problem is that many human beings have these things called emotions, one of which is known as grief. When a relationship that we value is taken away or shown to us to have been false, it hurts and we need to work it out by talking about it with friends.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you. That is a very reasonable and helpful response to the unhelpful and uselessly snarky drivel that threemae wrote. I’m glad you responded before I could.

25

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
The problem is that many human beings have these things called emotions, one of which is known as grief. When a relationship that we value is taken away or shown to us to have been false, it hurts and we need to work it out by talking about it with friends.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed.

Part of that grief is a feeling of betrayal. It’s a kick in the gut to realize that someone you thought you knew well and could count on has betrayed your trust in them, in the good will and empathy toward you that they’d professed. Was it all a lie after all? Have you opened your heart to someone who, unknown till now to you, would mock its secrets or brush them off as trivial? It hurts, that moment of realization when you have to say yes, this person I put my faith in has betrayed that faith.

26

When people show you who they really are, your job is to SEE!

27

Carlyjay, I could have written that post exactly 7 years ago. I had a good friend and we were both engaged to best friends who broke up with us at the same time (long story). We became roommates and after a year and a half, she was still angry and bitter, while I had moved on and met someone wonderful. I moved in with my boyfriend and 3 months later, he proposed.

I called to ask her to be in the wedding and I got a loooooong pause and: “No, it would be too hard.”

For me that was the last straw. She was a very self-centered person and a constant “one-upper”, so for me to finally have something more than she had was really tough for her to swollow.

I haven’t spoken to her since and I feel so much better because of it. It was a one-sided friendship that I was doing all of the work on.

28

This thread brings up some issues for me. I got engaged this year and I swear ever since my sister has been so obnoxious! She seems totally insensitive and checked out. I know I’m getting a bit of the “me” disease that brides get, but I’m nothing compared to most. She just seems combative and argumentative, as well as insensitive and sneering.
I have been wondering if it’s just me or what. Maybe it’s not just me after all.

29

What is it with women? Do men do this kind of shit to their friends? I’ve been saving a letter in my email for over a year which I had written to a ‘friend’ who dumped me when she got a boyfriend. I just sent it. It won’t make a blind bit of difference but at least she’ll know how I feel.

PS if she was 17, I could kind of understand the dump-the-friend-for-the-boy scenario but she’s in her late 40s

30

I know how you feel and I’m sorry. I lost a friend I had had since I was 7 (I am 44). To make it short, there were inequities in our relationship which were ok, as long as they were my inequities, but as soon as the scales tipped the other way…out goes me. She never even called me when my sister died. Or when another sister died, 6 years later. I have talked to her once on the phone in the past 10 years. During that phone call, she said that she had replaced me with someone else. Not knowing what to say to that, I said good bye.

But here’s the thing: 2 of my sisters are gone. She was the only childhood friend I had left in the area or had contact with. There are few to no people who knew me as a girl–and that hurts now. It doesn’t keep me up at night or anything, but basically there is no one to go down memory lane with. A small grief, perhaps, but it’s there.

31

I dunno - threemae makes a good point. If she’s not acting like a friend, why would you want her as a friend? She acted jealous and immature, so now she’s a person whom you know to be jealous and immature.

I had a friend who was a great friend until she got her own car; I wasn’t thrilled to find out that what she liked best about me was my wheels, but as soon as I knew, I was able to put her in the correct category - “Person I know who I will not make the slightest effort for.”

If this had just happened, I would be all tea and sympathy. As it is, months later, I think it’s time for you to move on. Take the lessons you can from it, and leave it behind you.

32

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
… During that phone call, she said that she had replaced me with someone else…
[/QUOTE]

She replaced you?! Like a broken teapot or something? Jeez. :frowning:

33

[QUOTE=jabiru]
She replaced you?! Like a broken teapot or something? Jeez. :frowning:
[/QUOTE]

I believe the phrase was, “someone else has taken your place.” either way..not so nice. yes, so she’s a bit of shit-but no one else (barring family, and mine keeps dying), has known me for 37 years…

And to the person upthread re the wedding and the friend fall out. This is the same friend (for me) who dated my husband’s best friend for about 6 months in college. Fast foward 2 years. She is now dating her future husband and my husband’s BF has also moved on. He is best man at our wedding. She is maid of honor. When she discovers that she must <gasp> be escorted out of the church by the best man, she has the nerve to ask me how long is the aisle.

Unbelievable. So, she’s no great loss, I know-if we didn’t share a girlhood, I wouldn’t think of her at all. As it is, since we were tied at the hip throughout our childhood and teen years, it’s hard to reminisce and not think of her.

34

[QUOTE=Carlyjay]
I guess all of you are right, it just really sucks. I thought some people were beyond this sort of behaviour. I mean, we’re almost 30. Actually, she IS 30. And always seemed intelligent and above this sort of ridiculous behaviour.

Neither of us were ever the sort who talked about weddings. We never competed about anything in our friendship, ever. And suddenly this is a huge problem. I know LOADS of people who have gotten engaged and married, and I’ve never been anything but delighted for them. I didn’t think it was too much to ask that one of my closest friends would do the same for me.

Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. What a horrible person.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. People like this are nobody’s friend.

My situation is that my own sister (43) went out of her way to show total and utter boredom with anything even vaguely associated with my wedding (now over 2 years ago). She studied fashion design for several years (I even helped her out physically with her projects and financially with some materials) but she didn’t say one word about my dress, what would suit me, what wouldn’t etc. Even when I tried to draw her on the subject, her attitude as “blah”.

I was excited and happy and couldn’t wait, she was so sour and miserable and such a stone effing bitch about anything and everything to do with it. I had girls I used to work with some 5 years beforehand emailing me asking if they could do anything to help out (and they weren’t part of the wedding party, they just wanted to help). She made me sick to my stomach and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back with me - these days I don’t speak to her and, in the next month or so, she’ll be moving away and I’ll happily say that I will be disowning her from that point on (at the moment I have to deal with her and this problem is larger than just the wedding thing but that was the final thing to make me realize she’s a total cow).

The problem, I believe, comes down to jealously. She was green as green could be with jealously and she just couldn’t see beyond it, even for her own sister. If the tables were turned and she was getting married, I’d have been thrilled for her and happy she was happy. That would have been enough for me. I guess its true what they say, you can’t choose your family, nor can you kill them!

35

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
One thing I learned in a really nasty, nasty way, is never ever look up to a peer. Undoubtedly they will find some way to kick themselves off the pedestal as hard as they can.
[/QUOTE]

True isn’t it! :smiley:

I said a quick goodbye to someone I previously respected when he made some unspeakable suggestions about my unborn child and girlfriend, despite having never met either of them.

And my girlfriend’s family has its share of similar problems, one man who is childless being rather jealous of my girlfriend and her daughter both becoming pregnant within a few months of each other.

36

[QUOTE=featherlou]
I dunno - threemae makes a good point. If she’s not acting like a friend, why would you want her as a friend? She acted jealous and immature, so now she’s a person whom you know to be jealous and immature.
[/QUOTE]

You’re right. And I’m not sorry that I made the decision to cut her out. But it still pisses me off sometimes, because, as others have said, when it seems to come out of nowhere, the feeling of betrayal stings. And when you’re reminded of it, and you’ve had no real closure, it still stings.

Hence the rant. I figured that if there’s any way to get that anger out of me (that doesn’t involve speaking to her at all) it would be ranting on it in the Pit. And reading other people’s similar experiences has indeed made me feel better.

37

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it sure sounds like you got engaged, she panicked and threw out an ultimatum to her boyfriend. Now she feels embarassed about it, and somehow blames you.

One of my friend’s reaction to the news of my engagement wasn’t “Congratulations,” but “Omigod, you can’t get married and leave me as the last single woman in our group!” Yeah. She had a really strange almost-but-not-quite-jealous attitude throughout the wedding prep, too. We’re not close anymore. :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

What is it with people? When I got engaged, my fiance and I went back to my office together to show everybody the ring. (We picked it up at the jeweler on our lunch hour.) One of my co-workers actually said, when she saw my ring, “How can you do this to me?” and got tears in her eyes. She had gotten engaged a few months before. When I asked her later what she meant by what she said, she said: “It’s because your ring is so much bigger than mine.”

Oh, pul-eeeeezzzzeeeee…

38

[QUOTE=Squeaker Snow]
What is it with people? When I got engaged, my fiance and I went back to my office together to show everybody the ring. (We picked it up at the jeweler on our lunch hour.) One of my co-workers actually said, when she saw my ring, “How can you do this to me?” and got tears in her eyes. She had gotten engaged a few months before. When I asked her later what she meant by what she said, she said: “It’s because your ring is so much bigger than mine.”

Oh, pul-eeeeezzzzeeeee…
[/QUOTE]

A friend of mine used my engagement ring as a reason to badger her now-husband into a long odyssey of visiting jeweler after jeweler to pick out the perfect large rock for her engagement ring. Sure, mine is pretty impressive, but we’d made it clear this was not our choice, it was an inherited item that my husband’s grandmother had left to him. I would have chosen something much smaller and less ornate were it my pick. Then she told us that it was her (now-)husband’s doing that they’d spent a long time looking for the ring; we didn’t blink an eye as he is a bit of an anal-retentive at times, and is an engineer. We didn’t find out this was at her urging, and that my ring was one of the reasons behind it, until my husband later jokingly teased her fiance about it. IIRC it was the two of them in a car, fiance driving, and when my husband gave my friend’s version of the ring shopping, the fiance was so shocked he nearly stopped the car in the middle of the road.

My mother had problems with a sister-in-law (married one of her brothers) who had 4 kids but got obviously jealous when my mother was pregnant with her second (and last) child, saying how she wanted a baby, etc. Mom hoped her SIL’s kids never heard her go on about this as apparently they weren’t good enough now that they weren’t tiny babies any longer.

39

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
When she discovers that she must <gasp> be escorted out of the church by the best man, she has the nerve to ask me how long is the aisle.
[/QUOTE]

Ok I give up - what was the point there? She won’t do it if she has to walk next to the guy for too long?

:confused:

40

[QUOTE=Carlyjay]
You’re right. And I’m not sorry that I made the decision to cut her out. But it still pisses me off sometimes, because, as others have said, when it seems to come out of nowhere, the feeling of betrayal stings. And when you’re reminded of it, and you’ve had no real closure, it still stings.

Hence the rant. I figured that if there’s any way to get that anger out of me (that doesn’t involve speaking to her at all) it would be ranting on it in the Pit. And reading other people’s similar experiences has indeed made me feel better.
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s fair. You say it’s helping you feel better, but is this also giving you some closure now, reading about how people are just stupid sometimes, and there’s nothing you can do about it? (Asking seriously, not sarcastically.)