Several months ago I set up a weekend trip to visit an old college friend and his wife to introduce them to my fiance’. We all selected this weekend as the trip which was in Portland three hours away from Seattle.
So we find out this week that her aunt and uncle are going to be in town and that she won’t be able to spend that much time with us–we offer to meet another weekend but they still want to us to come down.
So we travel down there yesterday and as soon as we get there we find that she has left for the day to go to the beach with her aunt and uncle. So we spend the day with my friend and have a good time, he enjoys my fiance’ and she enjoys his company, etc. We are thinking maybe we will hook up with his wife when she gets back–but late in the day we find out that they are staying at the beach, etc—so we don’t end up spending anytime with them.
But they say stop by this morning because they think the aunt and uncle will leave early, etc since they have a trip to Seattle planned as well. So we call them at 9 and tell them we are heading over from our hotel.
We get there and the aunt and uncle are still there, we chit chat with them a bit and then my friend gives us a tour of his house, etc. His wife doesn’t join us for the tour. We sit down in the living room and she joins us for like 2 minutes and then disappears–we chat with my friend for another 30 minutes or so. Then we graciously leave and she comes to the door and says goodbye, etc and we head back to Seattle.
On the trip back we discuss how surreal the whole thing was. I mean this is an old friend from college, I have known him and his wife for 20+ years, and this was a preplanned trip to introduce them to my fiance’ and we had all together set the date so I fully expected ‘some’ time with the two of them.
In your opinion was her not spending any time with us rude? We are reserving judgement on this–we will give them one more shot, but after that likely would cut them loose as friends. Life is too short to deal with that kind of rudeness–old friend or not.
Sad thing is we had a great time with him, and I have known her a long time as well so I know if she spent some time with us she would enjoy my fiance’ --who is great by the way
I don’t know if I would call it actually rude, but it was certainly inconsiderate and impolite. On second thought, you offered to reschedule the visit and she still pulled this - yeah, it’s rude. It’s a shame when old friends act like that.
The fact that you still refer to them as “my old friend and his wife”–not “two old friends of mine” suggests that you are really more friends with the guy, not his wife. There’s nothing wrong with this–my husband and I both have friends that the other likes, but isn’t close to. The wife may not have realized that her company was that important to you, and so didn’t worry about prioritizing it. I might behave that way with some of my husband’s friends. It’s not that I don’t like them–I might like them a great deal–but we aren’t really friends and don’t have much in common.
I would give them the benefit of the doubt, and maybe make a point of telling the wife you missed her company–not to make her feel bad, but to make her see that you do really like her and enjoy her company in and of itself.
Yes, it’s rude, but there may be extenuating circumstances. The fact that it was her family, for one. The aunt and uncle may have unilaterally announced their intention to visit and could not be dissuaded. The wife may have decided that family unity required her to entertain them at your expense.
that is one option we did consider. I have known him for a long time but I have known her for at least 15 years. But the friendship was initially with him, but maybe you are right, she might feel the friendship is with him only. But we have spent many weekends together, camped together, etc.
They knew me before with my exwife–but they also know that the divorce went amiably and that my fiance and my ex get along well, etc. So we don’t think it is any animosity that she feels I am betraying my ex or something like that. And it wasn’t like she was best buds with my ex–they got along, but I would be suprised if she felt that I wasn’t her friend.
I guess the issue for me is that this was the initial meeting with my fiance’ so I was hoping for some face time
I recall when I met her–I lived in DC and was coming back to Utah for a visit and she knew her husband and I were good friends, and so we set up this meeting so we could meet. She was upset because one of her husbands other friends dominated the conversation and she didn’t get the time with me that she wanted—so I would think she would understand the importance of this.
I like your thoughts about telling her we missed her company, etc. Right now we are giving them the benefit of the doubt since I have known them for so long. Guess we will find out on the next visit right
Since it was her family I was okay (somewhat) with it. And when I say aunt and uncle I should also preface that as saying that this aunt and uncle are the same age as the wife. You know how that can happen in a family–where the youngest aunt and uncle can be the same age as the oldest niece or nephew-that is the case here.
I met them, they are nice people so I doubt that is the case. The wife is a nice lady too–that is why it was so out of character for her. I would have been happy with a half hour visit with her this morning. It wasn’t like we were demanding that they tell the aunt and uncle to get lost The aunt and uncle didn’t seem like the type to require unity.
My take on it was that she had made a choice–and then felt obligated to stay with that choice even when the situation got a little unreal.
This might possibly explain cutting back to as little as 30 minutes. I’d have to conclude that devoting just 2 minutes to someone who has made a special trip is inexcusably rude.
Geez, isn’t it jumping the gun to label her actions as “inexcusably rude”? Yes, her behavior seems odd, but there are a hundred reasons why she might have felt compelled to spend more time with the aunt and uncle. To take an extreme example, what if Uncle Milt had just revealed to her that he had a terminal illness? Unlikely, but there are any number of situations that might caused her to feel she needed to spend more time with the Aunt and Uncle than she thought she would when they encouraged you to come down anyway.
You say that this is way out of character for her – it certainly seems premature to me to turn this weekend into a grave insult and make your next visit the “do or die” test case of whether you end a friendship of twenty years!
I think you’re doing the right thing with your “wait and see” attitude. We have a couple of friends (my husband’s oldest, best friend and his wife*) who always cancel out on plans to come over to our house at the last minute. They may really like us and want very much to come over for a visit, but we’ve stopped asking them after the third or fourth cancellation because there doesn’t seem to be any point to making plans we know they won’t follow through on. It might just be coincidence, but we can only make our decisions based on how they have already acted.
So, my point - give them another chance or two, and if they flake out on you again after a three-hour trip, don’t make plans with them that involve you going out of your way for them. You can always ask them what’s going on, too, in a very polite, non-attacking kind of way.
*These friends really are "Jim’s friend and his wife. She has made virtually no effort to become my friend, so I eventually started to respond in kind.
