In my opinion, Jane is my best friend, and also happens to be the girl I like. Two days ago, we spent a great deal of time together (from after school till about 11 pm), and I thought things went well. The next morning at school, she was really short with me, and it turns out I’ve done something to seriously offend her.
She says she doesn’t want to talk to me right now, since I’ve ‘disprespected her to the extreme’.
This is my best friend. The person I do everything with. And she doesn’t want to talk to me. I tried to apologize, but I can’t say sorry for something I don’t know I’ve done… It’s taking all my will to not cry right now.
Normally, I’d talk to C, another good friend, but she seems to have found a boyfriend, and poof, she doesn’t have time for me anymore. I suddenly feel so alone. My two best friends don’t like me, another thinks I’m a pig.
Can you remember any part of your conversation that MIGHT have offended her? Did you discuss sex? Or ex-boyfriends? Did you ask her any question that could have been misconstrued as disrespectful?
You’re probably just going to have to go over to her house, sit her down, and ask her. Tell her if she doesn’t tell you, then you won’t know what you’ve done wrong, and you’ll probably make the same dumb mistake again. It sounds painful, but if she’s reasonable at all, she’ll take it as an opportunity to make up.
I’ve done something similar in the past - I’ve made general comments that a friend took to be personal. It wasn’t until much later that I realized why the friend was so upset about my comments.
I would let her calm down a couple of days, and then ask what you said that upset her so much.
I’ve heard these kind of stories in the past and I just don’t what to think unless your friend is a hyper-senstive insaniac or you are just a stone cold clueless wonder, or there is a third party involved spreading false stories. I’ve had women get annoyed with me for some bit of unintended boorishnness, but annoyance is about as far it went, and I was pretty sure what they were peeved about even if I thought it was over the top and un-necessary. If a girl/woman says I “disrespected her to the extreme” most people would have some grasp of what they were talking about unless she is a drama queen or she expected you to say something and you didn’t follow the script .
Telling her face to face that you are clueless about your slight is likely to drive her greater heights of furious anger. “You can’t not know etc etc!” Just send her a note apologizing (for whatever) and tell her that whenever she wants to get around to clueing you in to the point of her dis-pleasure you’ll be glad to talk to her.
Okay, there are 2 things that I think could have annoyed her this much (annoyed is a major understatement…):
Right at the end of the night, when my mom was going to come, the movie we were watching (Ali) was almost done, but there was maybe 7 or 8 minutes left. I told her she didn’t have to come upstairs (so she could finish the movie), and that I’d see her at a friend’s party tomorrow.
Afterward, she came upstairs, and her mom was sending off strong vibes that she wanted me to leave, so I said I was going to wait for my mom outside, and said goodbye to Jance and left.
Now, Danny is very sensitive (relatively speaking) about people just leaving, and I think she may have felt that I left to get out of there… but if she knew how much I treasured every minute with her, she wouldn’t think that.
On top of saying she doesn’t want to talk to me, she also doesn’t want to see me. I have a feeling that even if she never saw me again, she’d be perfectly happy, so I’m thinking that I may as well indulge her wish.
Definitely don’t apologize blindly. Tell her you wish to know what it is you did that offended her so. If you don’t know what you did, then how can you expect not to do it again? And since her friendship is so important to you, the last thing you want to do is hurt her feelings.
If leaving abruptly bothers her this much, you may want to rethink the whole thing. It sounds to me as if she needs to chill out. Seriously.
Semi-related Anecdote: I got really annoyed at a coach at school week before last. He came into my room during an end-of-the-year party, took three slices of pizza, chips and a drink, and left. He never said please or thank you. He never asked. When I realized what he was doing, I said, “Didn’t you have a party in your class already today?” And he said, “Yeah, but I’m a growing boy, and I need to eat more.” And then he said nothing else.
I stewed over my anger for about a week, realized he had no clue what he had done, and decided to educate him. I walked up to him and said, “Look Coach, I don’t know how to say this without sounding mean, but please don’t ever come in my room again and take food that doesn’t belong to you without asking. You would have been welcome to it if you had only asked, but after you left I had to defend your behavior to my students who were dumbfounded that I had allowed you to behave so rudely.”
He was clueless. I actually had to REMIND him that he had come in my room and gotten said food. He even sent some girls back about twenty minutes later to get him some cake. After speaking with him, however, I discovered that one of my female students in ANOTHER class had INVITED him without telling me. Still doesn’t excuse his behavior, but I did feel better about it. Of course, he then offered to pay for the pizza he’d eaten, which almost pissed me off worse, but I knew he just didn’t know what else to do. He apologized, and we were done.
The point of my long and uninteresting story? Just ask her. I doubt very seriously if she means that she doesn’t want to see or hear from you again. Every time I’ve ever said that, it’s only meant that he had a lot of begging to do. Of course, I’ve only said it once.
The “guess what I’m mad about” schtick is pretty nasty. (It tends to be a female bit (although my best friend in high school and college used to use it pretty frequently until he got married and his wife used it on him).)
I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. That will only encourage her to use it in the future. Ask her once, politely, why she is upset. If she won’t say, then tell her that she obviously misunderstood something and that if she does not want it cleared up, that is fine with you. The walk away and don’t think about it. If she wants to be honest about it, let her bring it up. Otherwise, I’d start looking for better friends.
Seriously, though, I’m sure she wouldn’t care less if I never talked to her again. The only thing she would care about would be to find a new travel partner for our planned trip to Egypt after high school.
That’s not to say that it wouldn’t tear me apart inside, but I’m basically telling you what I see.
Speaker for the Dead, the vibe I’m getting is that your friend has decided that she no longer wants to be friends with you and is using this ploy to yank your chain. Maybe she is upset about something else and is using this episode to make herself feel that she is in control of something. It’s a particularly vicious kind of game that two girls do in order to freeze out a third girl’s feelings. Try to get past this slight, make new friends and don’t mention anything else to this girl. Let her make the first move, if she was truly offended and wants to salvage the friendship.
Did you choose the movie? Maybe she’s mad that you made her watch 3 hours of that wretched pap.
But seriously, people have already said that this is not legit friend behavior. Also, if you actually believe that she wouldn’t care if she never saw you again, you need to get out of this relationship right away. That’s as unhealthy as it gets.
I had something like this happen to me once with a co-worker. Something I did piss her off, and I didn’t know what. I don’t know how I was inspired to resolve it, but I pursued the point, asking her what I did. I didn’t demand it, nor did I lose my temper. I did say that I didn’t know what I did to make her upset, but that I considered highly her opinion of me, and that I’m sorry that whatever I did pissed her off.
Turned out that I had sent an e-mail using her first name and (unintentionally) another woman’s last name, a name that could have suggested that I was slighting her (for example, instead of calling her by her real name of, say, Patsy Pesch, I called her Patsy Pigg).
There is a point behind this pointless ancedote, however. Because I said that I really didn’t know what I did, but that I’m sorry it upset her so, she told me why. I explained, she accepted my explanation, and we were back on course again.
In other words, lay your cards on the table and see what she says. Then, if she still wants to play that “I’m not going to tell you” game, then you blow her off with a clear conscience.
