[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
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…
[/QUOTE]
That’s almost as bad. It implies she has only a limited number of vacancies in her list of friends. You got the sack - surplus to requirements and all that.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
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.)
[/QUOTE]
Not closure so much as just knowing that I’m not the only one who has been on the receiving end of this kind of behaviour. It’s hard to understand why someone might react this way when you can’t imagine doing so yourself, so hearing other people’s stories reassures me that a) I’m not the only one, and b) It’s okay for me to find this repugnant.
That’s all.
Oh, you’re not the only one.
After an admittedly stupid (and crude) whispered-in-her-ear comment I made to the MOH at my former-best-friend’s-daughter’s wedding, I was let go. It was a stupid nasty thing to say, but was at the time meant to be funny and clearly wasn’t. Okay, okay, I’ll tell you…
I made a completely thought-out crude comment to the MOH, because, like me, she had slept with the bride’s uncle. Now, I’m 40, uncle is 45, MOH is uh, 24 - I’ve known uncle for 20 years. I pondered making the comment “did’ja ever think D might be gay, since he likes it so much from behind”?, and did, because I thought it funny. Maybe we had something in common. Ummm, no. I apologized the moment it came out of my mouth. Her horrified look prompted it. I really thought I was being funny. Oops.
Turns out that this is the most awful thing ever done and that in spite of the drunken family members hitting on folks and in various states of undress while dancing - it is the only thing that stands out now in anyone’s recollection of the wedding. I guess word travels fast when it’s whispered and rude. Yes, I fucked up. I admitted it and apologized for it…many, many times - to many people.
After a month, I emailed former-best-friend. She responded with much vitriol and we went back and forth with me apologizing for everything I’ve ever done in her presence that had bothered her. A twenty-year friendship that apparently was totally superficial because she had secretly had all these things she hated about me. She pulled all of them out, and there I was apologizing for something said fifteen years ago. Idiot me. Well, after getting tired of grovelling, I reveiwed all of her emails and decided that if she really felt the way she said she did - we weren’t really friends to begin with.
It’s hard - I likened it to a break-up with a lover. I’d done so much for and with this friend, and still miss her. We stay in contact via impersonal email forwards, and I’ll occasionally drop her a personal email to which she’ll respond, but it’s not the same. I don’t think I can ever forget or forgive the nasty things she said about me.
Thank God I don’t have to get my KGB (prescription, folks, settle down!) thru D anymore. THAT would’a been some serious ass-kissin which I just wasn’t up to. Thank You California.
Oh, and I also lost a friend during MY wedding planning stage - she (as a bridesmaid) was angry she was not MOH, while we hadn’t been close in two + years. That’s about the time that former-best-friend and I had become quite close, so it was only natural to ask FBF. When she started balking at fittings and such I told her that maybe just being in the wedding was too much pressure/financial problem and gave her an out. She took it.
Well, it’s certainly not the classiest thing ever said, but I don’t know if I’d end a friendship over it. I guess you’re the only person in their circles who ever put her foot in her mouth, RSSchen. What lucky people.
I lost my best friend in a situation like this. We’d been friends since 4th grade. It was a definite Betty and Veronica situation through high school-- I always had a boyfriend, she never did. But she was that cheerful type who was endeared to everyone and never seemed too concerned about dating. Little did I know.
When we were in college, she started dating a friend of mine. Cool. It was the summer after my mother died, so I was depressed as fuck. She was my best friend, dating one of my other best friends, so the three of us spent a lot of time together. But it was awful-- she was always all over the guy, they were pawing each other constantly, to the point where I had to leave the room, in my own house.
Finally, I said something to her about the excessive PDA making me uncomfortable. Her response was, “Oh, you always had a boyfriend in high school, and now that I have one, you don’t like it, eh? Too fucking bad.”
I was shocked to find out that she was jealous of me and that she was screwing my friend just to fuck with me, as it turned out (he wasn’t too thrilled either). Why she waited until my mother died to pull this, I don’t know. But then things started coming out, that she was always jealous, that she wanted to date a guy I dated in high school but he chose me, a fact never disclosed to me until that day. She had been holding onto all this shit for YEARS and I had no idea. I had to just walk away because apparently on some deep but repressed level, she’d hated me for a long time but faked being my friend.
The magnitude of the betrayal and the horrendousness of the timing of losing my best friend were hugely disturbing to me. It was overshadowed by my mom dying, but it was still pretty big. It’s been 15 years and when I think about it, I am still confused and hurt. Her sister died on 9/11, so I sent her a card, and we talked briefly after that, but there hasn’t been any closure and I still feel bad about it. Probably always will.
God, I haven’t talked about this in years. Suffice it to say, I know what you mean, Carlyjay. It sucks. 