I hope you’re not feeling too bad over this.
might call yer buddy and chit chat it out. What friends are for
Therapists are overrated. At best,they will just tell you what we told you and you will still be out the money and have to do something yourself about it.I think you should just rent the movie City Slickers and then commit to going on the trip.
As you get older, these opportunities will become fewer and far between especially if you keep screwing people over. I had someone flake on me for a Las Vegas trip recently. He had a broken leg and foot but still could have made it. I ended up going by myself and even found people to jump off a skyscraper (the Stratosphere) with me. I had the time of my life but we haven’t spoken since. Your excuse is a lot more lame in comparison. You need to get some life experience in while you can. I am older than you and I promise you that is the truth.
I had a falling out with a friend due to my flakiness recently. It was with a friend from HS. We grew up to be rather different people. He keeps a super tight social circle (really just 2-3 friends now down to 1-2 friends without me) and I have a very large social circle. He wants to hang out which I try to oblige but between differing interests, differing social networks, and sometimes me just wanting to be left the fuck alone I’ve been incrementally hanging out with him less and less.
Then a few months ago things blew up when our rudimentary talks about a camping trip required me to cancel. He works odd hours and the availability of weekends he offered coincided with a 5k that I signed up for. He said that I was flakey, a douchebag, and a bad friend. Well it hurt me a good bit and bothered me for a while. Then I took a step back, examined my life and decided that as bad as a I felt about losing him as a friend, I didn’t want to be guilted like that so I cut him loose as a friend. It sucks that a friendship ended but ultimately I was happier because I didn’t have to stress about it and in a way it was like ending a failing relationship with a gf. Pulled that band-aid and time will heal all.
Friendships shouldn’t take too much work. If you’re working at a friendship and putting in more effort than the enjoyment, signs are it’s not a very good friendship.
What a jerk for wanting to have fun when he’s not hobbling around like Tiny Tim. A true friend would have shaken that shit off.
I also offered him an option, that we find a group of people to go with so that if I bail out then he would have someone to go with. I don’t know if that means anything but I was trying to be flexible. This is bothering me quite a bit.
And while my back pain is bearable, I’m not sure what lugging 45 pounds and climbing ladders would do to it. Maybe I’m making excuses.
Well yes, that is true. His leg was still going to be broken no matter where he was. He pushed me into that trip over two years and then bailed three days before. I offered to push him around in a wheel-chair in Las Vegas if he wanted me to. It wasn’t that part that pissed me off though. It was the non-commitment. He left his plane ticket open and said he might just show up at the gate and promised to call the day before to let me know the likelihood of that. He didn’t return any messages or show up at all so I just went on my own. It turns out he knew he wasn’t going to go at all but kept stringing me along.
Several years ago i canceled out on an elk hunt. I just didn’t feel confident I would be physicaly up to it after some test runs. elevation close to 10,000 ft, I was 60 years old and smoked all my life although still in pretty good shape. I gave him 9 months notice on the cancellation and we had both lived with the committment for only 2 months. He hasn’t spoken to me since. I am not mad at him or at myself as I had not made a firm commitment from the start.
Friendships can be odd sometimes. He did come at you pretty hard when all he had to really do was lower his expectations of the relationship to match yours.
I am getting a common theme from some who have talked about, half way committed, or implied a commitment of some sort. Standing out is the lack of commitment not only to the adventure, your friend but more importantly your commitment to yourselves to do whatever it takes to plan, prepare, commit and overcome whatever physical ailments present. If not important to overcome those things then advise your friend you are half ass committed from the get. Cancelling then would be less of a surprise…maybe even expected. Just sayin
Finding “a group of people” doesn’t sound like an option, Quasimodal - it sounds like a completely different trip.
Seems to me that your friend wanted to spend time with you; so your alternative plan probably sounded like you were backing off from him, not the trip.
Obviously I have no idea what you’re back issue is, or why you’d have to be carrying 20kg, but the fourth sentence of your thread is about “not wanting to make a large commitment.”
So how are you measuring the size of this commitment? Time? Effort? Money? What?
You then say about your “minor back pain” so yeah - that part sounds like an a convenient “injury!” excuse.
Being “not sure of yourself” in view of a new experience is completely normal. NObody knows how they’re going to do, until they do it. So, as they say in the classics, ‘feel the fear and do it anyway.’
I think anyone who considers an adventurous trip with a good friend a “commitment” is really unclear on what commitment really is.
I guess you’re right. Commitment for me was training and planning etc. Time and effort and money I suppose all factored in. The back thing is real, but I should have gone to the doctor / did a test run before getting his hopes up about this trip. Having a backpack on a long hike was the concern.
“Minor back pain” 4 months before the trip sounds like an excuse, not a valid reason. You’ve got 4 months to fix your back. If you haven’t gone to the doctor, do so. Do some back-strengthening exercises. If you just don’t want to go, do use spurious excuses, just tell your friend.
StG
Is this a recent, or recurring back issue?
Can you talk to your friend about scaling the trip down a bit? Or do you really not want to go on any kind of hiking trip?
You must care about this friendship, or you wouldn’t have started a thread on it. How important is it to you?
If you 'fess up, it’s easier to find the solution.
(And like StGermain says, “do use spurious excuses..” Not. 
)
People learn to say what you mean and mean what you say!
Do not engage in a weeks worth of planning without seriously reinforcing that, while it sounds great, you’re not yet fully committed. If he thinks you’re flaking out, you failed on that front.
When your friend backs out but says, “maybe I’ll turn up at the gate!”, then you don’t hear from him, I’m thinking you weren’t really hearing him say ‘I don’t think so’, and you’re trying to pressure him.
Singularly the most outstanding thing the OP said, for me, was the opening sentence…“It’s probably partially my fault, but…”. Not partially, not probably and no buts!
Say what you mean, and mean what you say, it’s not that hard really.
I do very much care. I feel so bad I didn’t eat breakfast this morning and I left a message with my therapist who I haven’t seen in 4 months because I felt I was doing better. The backpain was a result of a car accident 6 weeks ago. I want to talk to him but I’m afraid i’ll only screw things up further.
Yay. I just chatted with my friend and we worked things out. 
I still have to work on my own abilities to understand what I can commit to and avoiding disappointing people. But at least our friendship is okay. I really want to thank people here for their honest input. It’s not easy for me to read it but it makes me stronger in the end. I will still see my therapist and get working on this issue.
Don’t beat yourself up. It’s not as though things are impossible to fix at this point, and you’ve received some good advice here.
I understand your reluctance to make big travel committments with friends that you’re not super duper close with. This reluctance doesn’t make you an unredeemable flake or a bad friend; it just means for one reason or another, your mind is making this trip out to be a stressful endeavor instead of an exciting event. Who is to say your mind isn’t wrong? I’m not too different. Friends of mine will sometimes suggest we take a trip overseas or something, but rarely am I gungho about it. Why? Because my friends can start to aggravate me after being around them longer than 72 hours. When I’m suddenly having to share a room with them, their quirks and habits rapidly tend towards annoying. This can be a burden to put up with during a vacation.
Perhaps he is wired differently than you, and doesn’t get how this experience could be more stressful than fun to you. It sounds like this was all his idea. If you have a hard time asserting yourself, I could easily see how you got roped into an idea that you didn’t fully buy into in the first place, and are now taking flak for backing out. However unfortunate this reality is, it doesn’t relieve you of taking responsibility for making things better now. He is looking to have a good time and wants to do something with you. So propose doing something that both of you would enjoy, that doesn’t fill you with dread.
Now that your buddy has had time to cool down, he may be open to listening to you. But I wouldn’t wait too long.
ETA: I just saw your last post. Good for you!
It’s really good to see you were able to communicate so well with your friend that the two of you could play it out Quasimodal.
I think it’s important for you to acknowledge the courage it took for you to do that.
It’s probably useful to remember how uncertain you felt about it all when it initially happened, and how pessimistic you seemed about the outcome. You felt that fear, and did it anyway - and the result is an absolute achievement.
You wanna celebrate that with a challenging hike…