I had a work disagreement with a colleague and I ‘lost’ the argument which I wasn’t happy about. I decided to vent to my unemployed friend over text. At which point they got really mad about my salary and how I should basically put up with it for the amount I earn.
Said friend hasn’t spoken to me since and that was 2 months ago. Also have no longer been invited to group gatherings. I have been on holiday for part of that time and reached out once but no response.
This friend is my best friend of 10 years and we both graduated during tough economic times. She’s been looking for her dream job for at least a year now but no such luck. She’s only known about my salary for a few months of our friendship though and I told her in confidence because of our friendship.
Regardless of my obvious apparent insensitivity, how can I make this right?
I should probably add that this friend is a ‘lend you an ear’ type of friend who enjoys listening to problems and I didn’t seek her out because she was unemployed, I spoke to her in the capacity of ‘best friend’ first.
I’d say it sounds like a write-off. You blew it by complaining about work to an unemployed person.
When one has someone that they envy and who is in a better situation than they are complain to them about that situation, it goes south pretty fast. She was obviously a little jealous of you to begin with.
If she wasn’t jealous, she’d merely have told you to take your problems somewhere else, but not ditched you as a friend.
My advice: apologize for your insensitivity for the good of your own conscience, even if she still won’t reach out. At least you’ll have done your part and owned her mistake. I expect she’s gone forever though.
WATP-You vent about WORK to an UNEMPLOYED friend and are SHOCKED, SHOCKED she’s angry with you? :rolleyes: Since have such a great life, and a JOB, good to know you really don’t need friends all that much. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have rubbed her nose in the fact you have a job and she doesn’t.
Apologize for your lack of sensitivity and see if there is anything you can do to help her job search.
Having gone through 6 years of underemployment after losing my dream job it was my friends who got me through it. She may feel like you’ve abandoned her.
I know jealousy like this seems irrational…like the person should just be able to be mature and be the good friend you need her to be. But people don’t always react and behave in a grown-up, ideal fashion. It could be that no matter how good a person you are, you will continue to trigger all kinds of negative feelings in your friend. Until she finds her dream job. Neither of you is the good or the bad guy in this situation. It just is what it is.
Monstro: I VEHEMENTLY disagree about there being “no bad guy”! The OP is obviously too self-absorbed to realize talking about work with an unemployed “friend” (if she really WAS a friend, the OP would’ve known enough NOT to discuss work issues around her), is just an insensitive, jerkish thing to do. Good thing for you, AND you remaining “friends”, to know about you.
What the op did was normal every day griping. I had it happen to me all the time when I was between real jobs. I gently reminded my friends they were barking up the wrong tree at that point in time. They understood. What you don’t want to do is abandon your friends when they’re down even if you think they might be mad at you. Life’s too short.
What BS. Being unemployed sucks, but that doesn’t mean that being employed is automatically a cake walk. If you really are friends, you should be able to complain about the shitty side of work - you know, where you spend most of your time and energy - just as much as she should expect to be able to complain about how tough it is to find a job. At the end you both agree everyone else is to blame and get another beer.
If anything, I think it’d be more of a faux pas to gush about how great your job is to someone who is looking for work.
Yeah I don’t get the “not talking about work” to an unemployed friend. Sounds like that part of the unemployment situation is “waiting on the dream job” part as well. Hey we can’t all have our dream job…sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and work.
Advice to the OP…contact your friend about trying understand what has caused all the distance. Apologize if you feel necessary and understand going forward that you’ve got a somewhat flakey friend.
Magiver: Your real “friends” should’ve been sensitive enough to your situation not gripe. It’s like saying,“See, at least I HAVE a job to gripe about.” People shouldn’t have to put up with that from alleged “friends”.
The OP’s friend is throwing a childish snit. The OP can decide to write her off now or to apologize and, based on the friend’s response to the apology, either try to pick up where they left off or else write the friend off.
I had a long time friend who every now and then decided to be mightily offended about something I said. It usually had a lot more to do with how his life & depression was going at the time than the content of my comment. I’d apologize for the sake of the friendship, since he often had a pea-sized nugget of legitimate complaint in his boulder-sized ball of outrage.
After about the 5th event over about 10 years, I apologized, he remained snitful, and that’s the last communication we’ve had. It’s been 5 years since then.
Overly sensitive or inconsistent people eventually become more trouble than they are worth.
One more suggestion for the OP: The troubled friend does NOT get a veto over your other common friends or common social events. Go and do those things with those folks as you want. There may be some awkward moments, but that’s life.
See LSLguy, at least you had the introspection to see that you were partially to blame, in that their anger had a grain of truth to it. Good for you that have more friends than introspection, I guess.
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What BS. Being unemployed sucks, but that doesn’t mean that being employed is automatically a cake walk. If you really are friends, you should be able to complain about the shitty side of work - you know, where you spend most of your time and energy - just as much as she should expect to be able to complain about how tough it is to find a job. At the end you both agree everyone else is to blame and get another beer.
[/QUOTE]
Generally when I’m unemployed and my friends bitch to me about work, I’m usually like “well at least I don’t have to deal with THAT crap for awhile.”
The OPs friend sounds like a bit of an entitled flake. The whole world doesn’t have to walk on eggshells just because someone is unemployed. Especially if that person sounds like they are holding our for their “dream job” (which I would be willing to bet is some ridiculous combination of high salary, good hours, no travel unless it’s to someplace awesome and responsibility and prestige not realistic for the person’s actual experience).
I think the unemployed friend should have been sensitive enough to realize the OP needed to talk to someone and because the friend was unemployed she was the perfect person because she had all the time in the world to listen.
Basically the friend has an enormous amount of free time and the OP had very little and the friend selfishly was being very stingy with allocating that free time to the OP.
My view is that most controversies between most people have a pea-sized nugget of legitimacy wrapped up in a boulder-sized ball of outrage.
The folks who can recognize that and dial back their own outrage are the ones I think are worth dealing with.
The folks who treat their own outrage as 100% legitimate and always exactly proportional & appropriate to the issue at hand are IMO the problem.
Two people like me can get along indefinitely. Two people from the *always 100% justified outrage *school can also get along indefinitely, albeit noisily & drama-fully.
But one of each type is a recipe for relationship failure sooner rather than later. Which I suspect is the case with our OP.