Yeah, and it has dove crap all over it. What’s with that, huh?
I declined one once - I like to think I did it with tact and grace, and without pettiness.
I said “apology accepted, I wish you well, but I think that too much has happened for us to go back to being friends the way it was before. If we ever meet by chance, I hope we can have a friendly chat”.
I once ignored what I thought was one. In late 2001 my best friend of 16 years and I had a nasty “breakup,” and we haven’t spoken to each other since. In early 2002 she finally stopped sending me occasional e-mails (which were always nasty).
Then, a couple of years ago, she found out that a mutual friend from high school had died. She Googled my work e-mail address and sent me a message out of the blue one day, acknowledging that I’d been closer to our friend than she’d been and asking if I had any info about his death. I saw that as an olive branch of sorts, and, while I understood her shock and desire for information, I felt sure that if I replied it would be opening a door that I still wanted to keep locked. So I simply ignored it.
Wow … at first I was going to say that if my former friend had sent me tickets and a note like that I’d probably tear them up and send them back, too, but then I read this! :eek:
I sent one not too long ago and it worked.
I was best friends with a girl for a long, long time. The girl got involved with a married man. I didn’t like it, and while I hinted a bit (what can I say, I was young) I didn’t nag her about it too much.
Then I got into a relationship by cheating on my boyfriend. Boyfriend, of 12 months. Still wrong but IMO nowhere near on the same level - especially since we were the first serious relationship the other had had. Anyway she told me that a relationship “built on lies” would never go far. I couldn’t deal with the hypocrisy and cut her out of my life.
Years later I realized - we were both young and I had essentially abandoned her at the time of her life when she needed me the most. Just because she chose to judge me in the same way I was judging her! She did not judge herself badly but then neither did I.
I wrote her a letter and got back a response and we are now friends again. We are not at the same point we were before and may never be. But at least we get together, share some part of our lives, etc.
I don’t quite get what you mean here. “A note like that”? It was just a handwritten note saying that I loved her, missed our friendship, and was sorry that feelings had been hurt.
I don’t think that it was the content of the note but a note of any kind from her ex-friend. The reason being the cause of the break-up. She changed her mind because the cause of the break-up in your case was so petty.
Hajario pretty much nailed it: in my situation, a gift like that and a note with that kind of wording would have been inappropriate and likely would have sent me a bit over the edge given my particular history with my particular ex-friend. Sorry for not being clear about that. 
Mine worked out, and frankly I had no right to expect it to.
In the darkest days of my drinking and drug abuse, I slept with my best friend’s boyfriend on purpose. I fucking planned it. I was a truly awful person and did a monumentally shitty thing.
What made it worse? She was always my defender in the face of people who would say “What the hell is wrong with her?” She would always say “No, you just don’t know her.”
She was never going to forgive me, and I actually left the college we attended over it.
Years later, I got sober, and one of the things I have to do to stay that way is to clean up the wreckage in my past. It took me years to get the courage up and the ego down, but I did write to her, apologizing like hell as well as explaining how my situation had changed and how I was keeping it that way.
I never expected a reply- hell, I thought she might come and knock me out. But she didn’t- she wrote back, said that all was forgiven, and that we should get together.
I cried my eyes out that day. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness for my betrayal of her deepest trust, but she was the better woman.
Good for you, WhyNot.
Yay! A happy story!