Aw, sweetie, this just makes me feel so bad for you. (I had a similar thing happen with a group of friends in ninth grade and it still hurts when I think about it) It sounds like you’re getting on his nerves (can happen even among the best of friends) and he’s being a complete asshole about it. Some of the other posters have offered realy mature suggestion but, if it was me, I’d probably just go out of my way to avoid him from now on.
Thank you for your thoughtful post, Lola. I know it was confusing. I apologize.
Wow. Just wow. What a jerk. I don’t think he’s depressed, I think he’s a completely spoiled brat, and a mean, self-centered ass.
Do you really want this person in your circle of friends? It sounds like he’s just sitting around stewing, when everyone else is laughing and having a good time. It’s so self-centered for him to try to dictate what kind of parties you have at your own house. If you invite him and he thinks he might not have a good time, he could politely decline. It’s just astonishing that he thinks it’s okay to try to turn YOUR party into a guy thing. And he’s upset because you invited two more people. It’s your house, you have the right to invite whoever you want!
Personalities clash, people don’t get along. It’s life. There are people I don’t like, and there are people who don’t like me. I don’t feel the need to be mean about it, or to try to make people change to suit me. That’s just selfish.
Jerk!
Jerk!
JerkJerkJerkJerkJerk.
ME
I’ve read all the posts in reply and I don’t have time to answer each specifically. Some answers:
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I never “invited” myself over. I only stopped by for 5 minutes to say hello to the family and/or friends, then made myself scarce. In each of the three situations about which Bob is bitching. I would never invite myself over somewhere. I’ve had it done to me and I know how annoying it is.
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El Hubbo knows about the email I got today. Are you kidding? I totally shared it with him. He’s shocked at Bob’s arrogance and even before the email on Friday, he considered cutting Bob off for good.
Punoqllads, the sad thing is… the people he extolls as his “friends” really think he’s an asshole too. Basically, everyone we know is like, “Why is Heidi with this fucking guy?”
I’ll be back tomorrow with more elucidation.
Thanks, guys.
You know what, I’ll give props to Redprint because he’s honest, but he was way to harsh. Just the fact that he’s been holding that hatred for so long is pretty surprising, and he should have been able to give some more subtle signs. Still I think now at least you know what he thinks, and he’s not silently fuming in anger at your parties.
However I noticed that in your replies to his emails you were way to defensive, and too quick to agree with him. Look, he doesn’t like the way you act, that’s fine but that’s not your fault. Don’t apologise for who you are, it would be fine if it was just one or two things that he found fault with, but he basically hates you as a person. There’s not much you can do to change that. Don’t change your personality based on what he says, if you were really that annoying you wouldn’t have any friends at all, you two just rubbed the wrong way.
In other words, you’re inviting yourself over.
You may not be staying long (although I’ll bet you’re staying longer than the 5 minutes you think you’re staying), but you’re still intruding on someone else’s private function without a prior invitation. Some people may be cool with that. Some people may be OK with that some of the time, but resent it if it happens frequently. And some people just plain don’t like it at all. Bob obviously falls in the latter category.
That is something you should not have done. Bob addressed that email to you; he no doubt believed he was speaking to you privately and so was speaking very candidly. Would YOU like to have your private correspondence shared in that fashion?
For that matter, would this entire mess have happened in the first place if you hadn’t seen Bob’s comment about you in the private email he’d sent to your husband? If Bob had wanted you to know he found you annoying, he’d have told you himself. You saw a comment not intended for your eyes at all, got all upset over it, decided to press him about the issue, and as a result got a response that, while honest, was considerably more frank than you cared for. Basically, you set yourself up for this. Bob doesn’t sound like a particularly appealing person, to be sure, but I think you might want to reconsider this “share and share alike” approach you seem to have with your own and your husband’s emails. When you read things never indended for your eyes, it’s inevitable you’re eventually going to come across comments that hurt you.
I don’t see what the problem is, then. You think he’s an asshole, yet you’re mad that he thinks you’re obnoxious/pushy/loud/whatever? Why does his opinion matter?
And I have to agree with Artemis, that at least where I live, stopping by unannounced even for 5 minutes is pretty much inviting yourself over. I’ve heard that some parts of the country/some rural areas/etc. aren’t like this, but that’s how I was raised, at least.
I wasn’t going to respond because Shayna already said what I wanted to say, but I thought about it on the way home, and I’m just still absolutelly appalled by Bob’s gall. It’s your fucking house, your fucking party, and your fucking board game. You can invite whoever you want and where the fuck does he get off telling you it was a quiet “boys night”?! Where the fuck does he get off telling you that you should leave your own house?
I find myself getting angry on your behalf. What a raging asshole. Even if you’re the most obnoxious bitch on the planet, that doesn’t excuse his behaivor. And I think you were absolutely right to share it with your husband. If anybody ever acted like such a fucking jerkoff–especially somebody I considered a friend–I’d share it with my husband as well.
Write him off and out of your life.
Hate to break it to you, toots, but that IS “inviting” yourself over. Stay the fuck away from their house when other people stop by.
Gotta say that PunditLisa and Miller have some good responses.
I can’t say that I agree with Bob’s methods, but I’d be pretty annoyed with you too. I can’t stand people who get drunk and dominate conversations with topics no one else gives a shit about. Ya think you might be being a little selfish with that behavior?
Sorry, but you’re wrong. First of all, it’s not your place to tell other people how to run their marriages. If they choose to make their correspondences known to each other, that’s entirely their prerogative. If a supposed friend spoke to me in that manner, you can bet your ass I’d be showing it to my husband!
Secondly, Gazelle didn’t sneak a look at a private email, her husband showed it to her – after it had gone from her to begin with, to her friend “Heidi”, who then forwarded it to “Bob”, who then replied to “El Hubbo”, as if it had ever been intended for his eyes in the first place. And you act as though she somehow violated “Bob’s” privacy, and therefore brought this all on herself. Hardly. She asked the man if they could work out a problem, he goes postal on her and it’s her fault. Riiiight.
True, BUT a courteous host doesn’t change the nature of the gathering after he/she has already invited the guests, at least not without speaking to the guests first and getting their OK (or giving them a chance to back out). If you received an invitation for a small get-together and then found out (after you’d accepted the invitation and after you’d altered your prior plans in order to attend) that the “small gathering” had morphed into something else, wouldn’t you be a bit put out? I certainly would be. (And the converse is also true; if I was invited over to a large cocktail party and found out after I accepted the invitation and made plans to attend that the event had transformed itself into a couple of people sitting around playing Scrabble, I’d be rather upset. It doesn’t matter whether or not I like Scrabble; that wasn’t the way I’d planned to spend my evening.)
Bob had been invited over to play Risk with the OP and a couple of close friends - and then discovered the party was apparently turning into something else, as the OP had invited too many people over to play that game, and the new couple were not people he knew (although his wife did). If he’d known that was what the get-together was going to be like, he’d probably have declined the invitation in the first place. And it sounds like this wasn’t the first time this had happened, either. He wasn’t tactful in his email - but he certainly had a right to be irritated.
I think people are cutting Bob wayyyy too much slack here. Bob may have had valid issues with Gazelle but I think he was extremely harsh and said many nasty things attacking her character. He comments on her drinking in a mocking manner without expressing any sort of concern. If he had any manners, he should have said “Look, you’re too loud and I don’t like it when you invite a bunch of random people, perhaps we should agree to keep some distance.”
Well, I think he “gets off” because she asked him about it. He’s not dictating what she’s allowed to do in her house, he’s explaining why he doesn’t want to be a part of it.
Similarly…
Gazelle asked for advice on a situation that heavily involves her relationship with her husband. As such, it is artemis’s place to tell Gazelle how to run her marriage, or at least offer what advice she thinks is pertinent to resolving the problem she’s having with Bob, even if part of that advice impinges on Gazelle’s marriage.
You’re right in that Gazelle isn’t to blame for seeing the inital e-mail that started this. But she is to blame for sharing the latest e-mail with someone else. If she doesn’t care about further alienating Bob, then that’s fine. She’s well within her rights to tell this guy to fuck off after this last e-mail. I know I probably would. But if she wants to mend fences with him, then she ought to respect his private correspondences.
On the other hand, if she doesn’t want to mend fences with him, she should edit his post with her own sarcastic comments and biting insults, then e-mail it to everyone she knows. 'Cause he certainly deserves that.
No, I don’t agree at all. Bob decided it was a small get together just for the guys. Bob told his wife to try to get Gizelle out of the house. Bub is put out because the get together she planned doesn’t meet his standards. I wouldn’t be put out at all if somebody invited 2 extra people to their home for their get together, which they are graciously hosting, and probably providing food and drink on top of that.
Bob is a first-class asshole, and he no right to get angry because the party he envisioned is not the one Gizelle plans to have. Furthermore, if he hadn’t been such a giant baby, he wouldn’t have had to put up with two whole people he didn’t know. Gizelle was willing to call Tom and take the invitation back. If Bob hadn’t been such a self-absorbed, entitled jerk-off, his perfect little party wouldn’t have changed at all…
Personally if I received that kind of email, I would drop him from the friendship list. Reason for that, I had to teach myself to respect myself and I don’t need someone else shooting me down, making me feel small. He made you cry, shame on him.
I totally agree that you needed to show this to your hubby. How else will he understand and support you. How else will he understand when you don’t want to be around Bob. But it is up to hubby to determine his own relationship with Bob.
I am like you. I have a very outgoing personality and will say stuff that shocks others. I am friendly to anyone and everyone. I can start a conversation with someone who speaks a different language from me, and have many times. But this is who we are, we don’t need to change. I am also used to being around very introverted people and they seem to be ok with me, they open up and talk to me (or at least as much as they can). You obviously accepted Bob for who he is, he obviously can’t accept you for who you are, he is violating one of the basic tenents to friendship–acceptance.
You realize, though, that Bob does have a point about not talking to others about this breakup of friends, but for a different reason than his (my opinion is that he is paranoid that he will look bad in this situation) . You should be the better person than he has been and just avoid talking about him to others. What is that Ann Landers said “small people talk about people, average people talk about things, great people talk about ideas.” I find it words best if I stay in the average and above range.
I do think you handled his emails the best you could. When I was reading it, my heart went out to you cause I knew I would be hurt if I had received that kind of stuff. It is nice that your husband sounds like he is understanding your side of it and giving you comfort, good for him.
True, they can do that if they wish to - but then Gazelle needs to accept the fact that she’s inevitably going to see things she was never intended to see when she reads her husband’s emails and try not get so upset with the other person when it happens, or this isn’t the only relationship she’s likely to see crash and burn in this way.
Gazelle DID violate Bob’s privacy; Bob sent that final email (the one I was referring to in my prior post was the red one in the OP, not the one from Bob that Gazelle’s husband had showed her earlier) to her, not to El Hubbo. The fact that Heidi, Bob, and El Hubbo were also violating each other’s (and Gazelle’s) privacy with their own earlier email forwarding doesn’t change that (although it probably should have tipped Bob off to the fact that his comments to Gazelle might not remain private).
And she DID bring this on herself, by pressing Bob to work out a problem he hadn’t wanted to reveal to her in the first place (or he’d have told her about it directly). Certainly that’s not a crime, and in this case all it did was accelerate the end of a relationship that was probably doomed in the long run in any case, but Gazelle isn’t an innocent victim here. She did play a key role in bringing these events about.
It’s not quite that simple, though. Bob was invited over for a specific purpose: to play a game. Inviting other people over meant they couldn’t play the game. Bob sounds like a gamer, which means a game isn’t something you play when you happen to get together, it’s something you get together specifically to play. To Bob, it’s like being invited over to go swimming, and when you show up in swim trunks, being told that everyone has decided to go clubbing, instead.
Some friendships last for ever some are just ephemeral. All you have to do is pick when they are over and it’s easy. When you get angry with your fim friends it stays within the bounds of your friendship and is soon forgotten. Often things that anger you in your friends’ words or behaviour you wouldn’t even think about if offered up by an acquaintance. If your frustration becomes “why do I bother” and complaints to other friends or, nowadays, posts to a message board the friendship is shredded and on its way out. Look back at former friends that drifted away and you can console yourself that your anger will soon become indifference. This is handy because it allows you to travel in the same rough circle of people.
And there’s no question that THAT was rude. I won’t defend that behavior at all.
Except that inviting those two extra people means the entire nature of the party changes, as RISK is a 6-person game, not an 8-person game. Bob was invited over to play RISK; the odds are that the groups won’t be playing RISK if that other couple also attends, as playing that game leave two of the party-goers with nothing to do. That’s a legitimate source of irritation, as Bob accepted the invitation because he wanted to play that game. And I suspect Bob’s irritation is magnified in this case because this isn’t the first time this has happened (there are hints that this is the case in the OP).
True, Bob has shown himself to be a clueless, rude jerk. But he does have the right to be annoyed when he discoveres that the party he was invited to is apparently NOT the party he’s actually going to be attending.
That’s assuming, of course, that Tom and his wife were willing to bow out. You DO realize there’s really no polite way to “take an invitation back”?
I agree.
Also, Gazelle don’t apologize for the mistakes, it was confusing but I figured it out. I hope you feel better.
One more thing I just thought about…perhaps Bob was really taken aback by the idea that Hubby showed Gazelle what he had said. He was really pissed and took it out on her? Maybe if he had time to cool off (if he was upset about this breach) he may have told her what he wanted to say, but not so harshly.