I worked with two friends, B and T. T was dating B’s brother. T thought she was pregnant. She was going to move in with me for a while (long story). Months later, after we found out she wasn’t pregnant, and she didn’t need to move in with me, I accidentally slipped out something to do with the pregnancy scare to B. To be honest, at that point, I thought B knew–I mean, it WAS her brother involved. T never mentioned to me why she was angry. She just stopped talking to me. It took another co-worker telling me why she’d stopped talking to me for me to have a clue.
And the prize thing about all this? T is the one who would always get angry if someone didn’t come to her with an issue they were having with her. “If people have a problem with me, they need to come to me and tell me!” Right…like you did me? If you had done that, T, I could have explained and apologized. By the time I found out why you were angry, I figured it was far too late to do any good, plus why didn’t you give me the same courtesy you expect from everyone else?
Just as in the “loading the van” case, it rarely comes out of nowhere - it isn’t likely that the sister all of a sudden out of the blue stopped respecting wishes, much more likely that she was always like that, and the Christmas Card thing just the last incident in a series of lack of respect incidents - one all the more annoying because seemingly innocuous to outsiders (“My sister is so unreasonable, she gets angry just because I send her a Christmas card”)
When I was in college, I had a friend who was really good friends with this guy she introduced me to, and I asked her a million times over about a year’s time, whether she was interested in him (not because I thought she was interested, but because I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t- he was a honey, and I told her so!), to which she always exasperatedly said, “No way! Gross! Why would you even ASK that? He’s like my brother!” And so we all went to a concert together, got stoned, and I ended up making out with him- he initiated. I drove him home afterward and didn’t screw him, even though he wanted me to- I was a good girl. When I got to my place there was a message from her telling me I was a whore and how could I do that to her. I tried to call her to ask how she could possibly be upset about me making out with her friend- she hung up the minute she heard my voice. That was the last time we ever spoke.
Methinks she liked him…yathink? One should always fess up to these kinds of things if they worry about being “betrayed”. I never felt guilty for one minute about what I did with that guy, then or now. Meh…
I was also really good friends with a girl who had a lot of family problems. She was constantly in a state of crisis, and was calling me at all hours to listen to what was going on and console her. One day she called while I was at work, freaking out about somebody from her family. From the synopsis she gave me, this was not an emergency and I asked if I could please call later because I was swamped at work. I got home that night, exhausted, and fell asleep, forgetting to call her back. She called the next day and read me the riot act, saying how could I do that to her, and even when I apologized she would not forgive me. I explained that just because I wasn’t able to be there for her ONE time out of the HUNDREDS of other times, did not make me the horrible person she was making me out to be, and that maybe the friendship was over. We never spoke again. I’m okay with it.
I once ‘lost’ a friend to Alanis freakin’ Morissette.
It started like this: Friend commented upon AM “compromising” her artistic integrity when she dyed her hair blond. I looked blank and asked “what artistic integrity?” aaaannnnnddd the conversation went downhill from there.
I suppose I’m the one who ended the friendship, if only because he (yes, it was a guy) really pissed me off with the entire thing. I don’t give a crap about AM…why on earth is it such a big deal? We’d had arguments/discussions like this in the past, but mostly about serious topics, like religion or evolution. I can understand getting worked up about something like religion…but an aging pop-star? C’mon…
Has anyone ever noticed how easily “You don’t respect my opinions” becomes code for “I don’t respect YOUR opinions and I’m offended that yours differs from mine”?
Not accusing you, SGS, but rather pointing out the behavior of your friend. He was offended by your difference of opinion, which means that he didn’t respect your right to hold a differing one. And like earlier comments, it was probably a long, drawn out affair where he finally got fed up with you being so insistently different from what he wanted you to be.
How long ago did you send the e-mail, sandra? Is it possible that your friend could have overlooked it? Maybe something happened IRL that just prevented him from answering (family emergency, computer problems, etc.) The forum posts could have stopped for the same reason. I’ve been in this situation before where friends haven’t answered my e-mails, and in each case I worried over nothing.
Do you have this friend’s phone number? If you haven’t heard from him in awhile, it might be a good idea to call him.
I remember the entire matter as being rather bizarre. He was a fundamentalist Christian and I wasn’t even raised Christian, but I always enjoyed discussing stuff with him, because he had such a radically different point of view. Those discussions I didn’t mind.
But he brought such a level of intensity to the AM matter…and did the same “My opinion is correct and yours is not and you are being foolish for even trying to protest” thing that he did with religion. He got wildly offensive (to me personally) and I just didn’t want to deal with it. He periodically pops up on AIM to make bizarre comments about science, which is rather foolish of him since I hold a couple of degrees in technical fields and last time I checked, he was majoring in film art-something-or-other. He’s allowed to make whatever wild claims he wants to, but I’m still going to laugh at him, or ignore him.
So, I dunno. The entire thing was much too stressful and I decided I didn’t want to deal with it. I guess I could extend the peace branch, but frankly, my friend group is trending towards the “mostly sane” and I don’t want to screw with the mean.
In college there was a group of us that used to hang out together all the time, about 7 girls and one guy. Towards the end of our first year I started to go out with the guy but the relationship was hopeless and only lasted for about two months. We didn’t really like each other but got over it in second year when the two of us were put in the same class together and none of the other group were. So in our third year the two of us ended up going on the same exchange to Canada for four months. Fine we were friends we could handle it, besides there were two others coming (not the original friends) and we weren’t living together.
Anyway we got there and naturally got to know a several Canadians and we hung out with them a fair bit, but for some reason he was jealous of this and got really annoyed over it. To vent his anger everything he said to me was a nasty jibe or smart remark so we had a huge fight about stuff that had happened years ago.
A couple days later we were all hanging out again and he showed us this huge email he was writing home (it was about 10 pages) I said you should let us read it and he said no way so I jokingly said you must be bitching me out of it so. From his reaction I knew thats exactly what had been done.
Came back home after the exchange and were friends again (no Canadians around to bother him I suppose) but the rest of the group treated me differently and it was never the same again. Finished up on college with them in year four and have only spoke to one of them since.
So I lost a bunch of friends based on a stupid argument that arose because of his dislike of these new friends.
Or maybe thats just how I’m seeing it - maybe there was some underlying thing that made them want to stop talking to me.
On the basis of your post, I sent another email today, a ‘Did you get my last email, I was aware of any ill feeling so don’t know why you haven’t replied’ and got a lengthy reply back. Turns out he’s isolated himself from all his friends due to family issues which have resulted in mental health issues. Stupid sod. :rolleyes:
