This is the heart of the matter right here. The rule for my husband and me is plans made are plans made - now you’re busy for that time block. The exception to this is our standing Friday night couple dinner out - it’s not set in stone, but I do appreciate my husband checking with me if he makes other plans for Friday night, because I will be expecting us to go out for dinner together.
She did have some obligation to show up - one, because she told you she would, and two, because she is your girlfriend, and you are correct, wedding receptions fall under the category of “things your SO is expected to attend with you.” (Others are funerals, family holiday events, and work-related social events.) You definitely need to discuss expectations with her, so neither of you is feeling controlled or disappointed.
wasson, I think you might also want to re-visit your self-identification as easygoing. Would you be as easygoing and able to shrug off irritations if you felt a little more comfortable with confrontation?
She said she would meet friends for drinks, then forgot and said she’d go with you to the reception, then changed her mnd because of a pressing baby thing that she blew off, going for drinks after all. So, either she blew off two invitations (yours and the baby thing) or the baby thing was all a lie. My, my, my, any way you look at it that’s all kinds of screwed up. She’s either completely irresponsible and/or inconsiderate or she’s hiding something…because people only lie about where they’ve been (even if they 'fess up later like she did) when they’re hiding something. I’m wondering if she even met the co-workers.
You say she’s done things like this before! My, my, my. A pattern of inconsideration and rudeness, or a habitual liar.
You want to stay with this woman…why?
and finally
Being “controllling” is not the same as demanding the respect you deserve. In most circles, it’s considered extremely rude to change plans at the last minute unless it’s unavoidable or truly a matter of not missing out on an opportunity. For instance, if y’all had made plans to go to the reception, then her best friend who lives out of town and just had a baby calls and says she’s travelling and will have a four-hour layover in your town, how about getting together to see the baby? That would be understandable - meeting your co-workers for chrissakes is hardly reason to back out of plans already arranged. Oh, wait, the drinking WAS the plans already made! Jeez, there’s more than one maze in this story. My head is spinning.
Y’all need a long talk, and make sure all the topics here are discussed. But still, don’t expect this to be a long-term thing until you start demanding from her the respect you deserve. And it’s time to start demanding it from the rest of your friends, too. Even if it doesn’t “bother” you, you shouldn’t tolerate such shoddy behavior from your friends.
Sheesh. The friend that called me up and changed plans becuase in the meantime a date came along would immediately be an ex-friend. :dubious:
I’d be annoyed, but not because of any sense of required duty - At this stage of a relationship, I don’t think either partner should necessarily feel compelled to tag along with the other in every instance, but the whole issue of making an excuse, then doing something else smacks of dishonesty and a generally ‘don’t care’ sort of attitude.
In your situation (my understanding of which is, of course, based solely on the information in this thread), I would hope to apply the following sort of rationality:
-If she can’t just tell you ‘I just don’t want to go with you this time’, something is wrong; either wrong with her attitude or wrong with yours (i.e. maybe she fears how you might react).
-If she keeps on avoiding going places with you (say, more often than not), maybe it’s time to wonder where things are headed.
Unless there was a reason she couldn’t see the baby another day, this is just wrong - even apart from the social norms that expect SOs to go to such events together. I can’t stand it when people cancel at the last minute with some lame excuse, in the attempt to cover the fact that they just don’t want to go/too lazy to get out of the house/whatever.
In your other post you said she had originally made these plans, but forgot about them until the last minute. So apparently there was no reason she had to see aforementioned baby that very same day, if she canceled that to go see her friends.
Let me see if I have this straight.
She agreed to go with you to the reception.
She cancelled at the last minute to go see her friend’s baby (which was not something urgent she had to do that day).
She agreed to call you if she could make it to the reception later.
After you left, she remembered about her other plans to go drinking with her friends.
She went drinking with said friends and frolicked in the corn fields without calling you until after it was all over.
Ergo, importance-wise: going to the reception with you < seeing baby < drinking with friends
:dubious:
If I had a boyfriend and he did this to me, it would probably be the last thing he ever did. Strike one would have been when he cancelled at the last minute; strike two, when he chose to go drinking instead of accompanying me to something he knew he would be expected at. And strike three would have been the cornfields. Seriously. So there was a previous engagement he had before he made plans with me. I can understand he’d want to honor the one he made first. But I would expect him to call me, explain, and come join me at the reception asap instead of re-enacting Children of the Korn after consuming alcohol.
I’m just curious as to the thought process that makes it okay to choose a baby AND a bar date with friends over accompanying a social event with a SO. It definitely seems like something you’d want to discuss in depth with her. :dubious:
I’d be pretty pissed, but there’s nothing that says you have to destroy a relationship over one bad act.
She agreed to go to an event, then wanted to change plans at the last minute. You said OK to her going to see the baby. She said that she’d join you if she had time. This is cool, the reception isn’t super important, and she asked.
She didn’t follow through on the plan, though, that is not cool. She didn’t go see the baby, she hung out at a bar. She then met up with other friends to do an entirely different activity, never meeting up with you even though she certainly had time.
Talk with her, explain what is bothering you about it. You expect her to be honest with you, and if you want to attend an event with her, she should respect that and give that desire weight. Certainly more weight than hanging out at a bar or running through a corn field.
It tells me that at least on this night, your desires and needs were far less important to her than a bit of fun with some friends. If she intends the relationship to be serious, that can’t be the norm.
You mentioned in the OP that you had known this girl for a long time. Is it possible that her brain hasn’t shifted you from “friend” to “significant other”? Going to receptions, etc. that you aren’t all excited about attending is one of the things SO’s do for each other - at least you will have one person there to talk to. Before you started “dating” did she blow you off like this? And if she starts with “you’re being controlling” - expecting someone to do what they say they will do is not being controlling. If she feels it is, she doesn’t need to be in a relationship with anyone.
This thread has been very enlightening for me. Yeah, she made some mistakes and was flaky about everything, but I also wasn’t 100% in the right. When she asked me if it was okay to skip plans, I should have told her “I’d prefer if you come with me to the reception, but if seeing this baby means that much, I don’t mind if you skip it.” I didn’t say anything remotely similar. I think I just said “yeah, that’s fine.” I can see how in her mind, that translated into “do whatever you want”, even though that’s not what I meant.
Anyway, I think some people in this thread are way blowing it out of proportion. It certainly isn’t break-up worthy. I’m already far over it.
I don’t know why it matters, to be honest. I think one of my better traits is the ability to forgive and forget, and TRULY forgive and forget. I wish I was a little more comfortable with confrontation, in that even when I’m upset, its hard for me to initialize the conversation to say so. But I don’t think I’d want to lose my ability to easily shrug off irritations and annoyances.
I can’t imagine getting worked up and confrontational over silly things like breaking plans. I pick my battles. Even she’s told me that she thinks one of my best traits is that I’m so “whatever” about decisions that don’t matter, but speak up pretty loudly when I do have a solid opinion to contribute. To me, that makes it have more weight when I actually do speak up.
Unfortunately, sometimes I don’t know what battles to pick. This is one I wasn’t sure about. On a “pissed off” scale of 1-10, at the height of this little dispute I was probably about a 6. It’s really not a big deal to me, but I think 6 is high enough that I need to talk to her about it.
Yes, I absolutely think both of our brains need a little bit of shifting into the “relationship” frame of mind. I think that’s a big part.
The thing is, the whole time we’ve been single and even sometimes when we weren’t, we’ve played wedding-date/family-event-date with each other. It was always just for fun though, and never an obligation. We both used to promise to go to a wedding as friends but change plans when something else came up. It was never a big deal for either of us… we were just friends. But now I think its more of an obligation than it was before.
I’ve wanted to try posting something like, “My wife didn’t say Bless You when I sneezed last night!” and see how many people told me to file for divorce :). Dopers are not the most forgiving lot when it comes to other people’s relationships.
I am interested in hearing what she says after you talk with her, though.
[QUOTE=wasson]
This thread has been very enlightening for me. Yeah, she made some mistakes and was flaky about everything, but I also wasn’t 100% in the right. When she asked me if it was okay to skip plans, I should have told her “I’d prefer if you come with me to the reception, but if seeing this baby means that much, I don’t mind if you skip it.” I didn’t say anything remotely similar. I think I just said “yeah, that’s fine.” I can see how in her mind, that translated into “do whatever you want”, even though that’s not what I meant.
Anyway, I think some people in this thread are way blowing it out of proportion. It certainly isn’t break-up worthy. I’m already far over it. QUOTE]
A reg flag for a “doormat” is to blame oneself for a minor shortcoming while someone is doing something much worse against them. Ask a group of battered women if they deserved it and at least half will come up with a reason that they probably did (Ok, that part is a bit of hyperbole but the point is true).
You say that you are “already far over it”. Well, I can honestly say that I am not. I am going to be pissed about this for days if not weeks.She is going to pay HARD the next time I run into her.
wasson, as long as you’re standing up for your needs and your boundaries, being easygoing is great. I have to agree with Shagnasty, though - you really don’t need to take the blame for your girlfriend being thoughtless. (And she was thoughtless - you wanted her to come, you told her that by asking her to come with you, and she blew you off for no good reason. Thoughtless.) But you’re also right that people are blowing this out of proportion. See what happens after you talk with her and discuss expectations - if she still acts thoughtlessly, it would be a very bad sign.
You do have the right to expect people to follow through on plans they’ve agreed to with you; they had every opportunity to say no when you asked them. The time to say no is not after they’ve agreed and plans have been made.
Now look what you did. You made me smack you upside your head.
Hey, bottom line is she would rather go drink in a bar, which she could do any night of the week, than hang out with you at your reception. Doesn’t sound like she’s all that into you. And I can’t figure out why you’re into her. It’s one thing if she’s just some girl you bang or whatever. I can respect that. But it doesn’t sound like she’s even a good friend.
I feel where you’re coming from, wasson. I have the same kind of “easygoing” personality. I let guys I’m seeing do their own thing for fear of being pegged as controlling.
The only things you can really do here is talk to HER about it, and also chalk it up to “a lesson learned.”
If you talk to her about it and are honest, and she goes apeshit and says you’re controlling or doesn’t see how you could be hurt at all then maybe it IS time to re-evaulate the relationship. You don’t really want to be dating someone that thinks your feeling are shit, do you? But that’s the extreme reaction - she’ll hopefully just listen and concede and it’ll be all good.
As for a “lesson learned” just remember in the future to think about how you realize she is a busy, popular girl and you’re not wanting to be controlling but yet you have expectations…so the only thing you can do is be upfront about what you want. You SAID she didn’t have to go but yet you were kind of disappointed that she didn’t go. So next time you need to make it more clear to her (and to yourself) that you want her to go with you then there won’t be this ambiguity about wether or not she should go and wether or not you should be pissed.
If in the future you say “I really want you to go with me” and she says “k, I’ll go” and then backs out, and you re-assert “I REALLY want you to go with me” and she balks … well then come back, bring some pie, we’ll tell you how angry to feel then
I think the problem stems from this. You said it wasn’t important so she didn’t feel obligated to go. Now you’re saying that it was important. But she didn’t know that. All she heard was, “I’ve got to go to this thing; it’s not important; sure, it’s fine for you to go do something else.”
Generally, I agree that it’s important for an SO to go to a wedding reception. But this sounds slightly different - it wasn’t right after the wedding, it was casual, and it really sounds more like just a get-together for some old friends. Especially combined with your statement that it wasn’t that important, she probably didn’t put it in the “SO obligation” category.
I definitely agree that you two need to talk about this. You need to figure out what is actually important to you - as this obviously was (although it sounds like you didn’t realize that until later) - and tell her when something is important. She can’t read your mind. If you say something isn’t, then she’s going to act as if it isn’t. Being laid-back is great, when things aren’t important. But if you don’t tell her, “Hey, this is important to me” BEFORE the event, being laid-back afterwards isn’t going to help.
She needs to listen to you and to understand that some things are going to be important to you and that if they are, she needs to step up and act accordingly. But before any of that happens, you both have to talk about these things.
It sounds like you haven’t talked through some of the “relationship issues” yet. You’re both still in that part of the relationship where you worry about what the other person will think if you say X. Will they get upset? Will she think I’m controlling? At some point you’ve got to just talk these things through and actually hear what the other person thinks/feels once you say them because otherwise you’ll always be second-guessing each other.
Good luck! I’ve been reading your posts about your relationship for a while, and I’m pulling for you!
what’s the deal with seeing the baby? i’ve seen a baby before. they all either look like winston churchill or w.c. fields.
i tend to believe that “seeing the baby” isn’t necessarily to see the baby…it’s to feed the (for lack of a better word) ego of the parents.
“look at what a beautiful baby he/she is” (nobody ever says that a baby is ugly. we should start now.)
“he has his mother’s/father’s (insert body part)”. (well, of COURSE they do. you’re pointing out the obvious because you don’t want to be here. it’s called genetics).
now…for fear that i’ll be viewed as totally insensitive to everything, if it’s a good friend and you haven’t seen the baby before/in a while, fine. but to see a new girlfriend’s baby just because? not a good reason. i hate pictures, but in this instance, a picture would do nicely. besides, with everyone always fawning over infants, isn’t it better to give the kid some space?
It’s the same in France. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that attending to boring receptions should be mandatory, especially for the boyfriend/girlfriend of the person invited. " If I decide to go, you must go too" is a rule I can live without.
See I think what folks are failing to get is that if she really liked him in any kind of relationship sense, she would want to go with him. People in love feel hurt when NOT invited to stuff (even stuff that sucks). They don’t look for excuses to get out of it.
Why so? I can’t love someone and deeply dislike office parties? (office parties!! :eek: )? If I refuse to waste a night listening to the stupid chit-chat of my SO’s coworkers it means that I don’t love her? Or it means that love isn’t important, but what makes a relationship “significant” is your willingness to be present at social events?
In this case, don’t call your gf/bf “significant other” but rather “public relations associate”.
Plan B is fun as hell
Consequence : I pick plan B. If you really feel like wasting your day attending a social event with people who obviously aren’t even friends (or else, it wouldn’t be boring, would it? You’d be pleased to meet them. And the OP mentionned he wouldn’t know anybody, anyway), then go ahead and have your boring afternoon without me.
Except if you can plead your case and convince me to waste my time for your benefit. But then, don’t even try the “It’s mandatory because as my SO you’re somehow expected to come according to some social or personnal rule”. That might not be a deal-breaker, but it would cetainly be an advance warning that maybe there’s going to be a problem in our relationship. And you can be essentially 100% certain I won’t be going with you after hearing such a statement. Generally speaking “you must” is something I expect from a boss or a police officer, not a SO.
The only part I don’t like much in the OP’s gf behavior is the “I’m going to do A…err…actually rather B…err…finally C”, and more importantly : “I’ll call you” (and doesnt) and “I’ll try to drop by” (and instead visits a cornfield). And even then it’s not necessarily a big deal. It depends on the circumstances an how often she does this kind of things.
