The Vine: February 4, 2015
So, after being lucky enough to have a lovely wedding last month and a looong honeymoon, I am still dumb enough to have just one little bee in my bonnet that Will. Not. Die.
A dear friend was thrilled about the wedding until I told her the date, which was two days after her birthday. Apparently, several of her friends have gotten married on or around her birthday in the past. She complained about it quite a bit when I first told her, and I was like, “I feel you, but we’ve already spent lotsa money — we can’t change it, and it’s hard to find a date that isn’t going to be ‘bad’ for somebody. My aunt and uncle are coming, and that day IS their 50th wedding anniversary! We’re making a cake for them! We can make one for you! And we can celebrate the shit out of your next birthday!”
She eventually came around and started talking about how excited she was about the wedding, and I planned to involve her in the ceremony. Then, we got her RSVP. She checked “no,” and wrote on the card that she was going to be “unavoidably out of town.”
Had we not had the birthday discussion, I probably wouldn’t have given it much thought, but we’re pretty close friends — it was strange she didn’t tell me herself that she couldn’t come, or why, and given her phrasing, I felt like she didn’t want me to ask. Spouse rightly pointed out that she either had a good reason or a “selfish craptastic” reason she couldn’t tell me, and if it was the latter, I probably wouldn’t want to know. So, I put it out of my mind.
But I’m home now, and she’s home now, and she wants to get together, and I realized I feel kinda sad that she didn’t come. She is one of my only friends who really knows my spouse, who’s hung out with us many times.
(I think she also might have bagged because it was tough to see another friend get married. We’re in our 30s, and we live in NYC, so being single is hardly unusual, but I’m about seven years older than she and I know how hard it can be when it starts to look like everyone around you is paired up. But I ALSO know that the mature thing to do when your wingwoman tells you she’s getting hitched is to slap on a dress and a smile and go.)
So I’m wondering, how do I get past this? Do I ask her where she was? If she tells me she went on a last-minute vacation, I’m going to feel worse. Should I tell her how I feel, or keep it to myself? Why is this bugging me so much?
Personally, I’m with Patton Oswalt on the Birthday Thing
Dear Thing,
Me too. What is Friend, five? I know you don’t have it to do over again, but if you did, I hope you’d resist jollying her out of it by offering her a cake and a spirited defense she wasn’t owed even a little bit. The wedding wasn’t even on the day, is A. B, even if it were, she’s not a child. C, everyone in the world knows the agita and domino-arranging that goes into selecting a wedding date, and that it’s almost never anything to do with personal preference and a matter of getting a half-decent venue you can afford before 2019, and D, seriously, fuck off. You know what I did on my last birthday? I went to a funeral. That’s how shit goes sometimes for voting adults who don’t think everything is about them. And the “it’s hard to see everyone couple up” excuse is, except for the recently widowed, no excuse at all. And fuck off, and furthermore, fuck off.
This is not what you asked me about, but I don’t think I see why you should “get past” it, really. It’s annoying! She showed you her ass; you didn’t want to see it! She put your wedding side-by-side with her birthday and chose her birthday, and that hurts your feelings — and it’s fine for her to choose herself and fine for you to feel stung by it, but what you and Friend have in common is 1) hanging out with your husband and 2) that you both think she’s important enough to merit a birthday cake at someone else’s wedding because she pouted and complained?
I mean, sure, if you want to know where you stand, tell her you missed her at the wedding and you wish she could have come — but I think you’re right that this isn’t really a conversation she wants to have, so it could get awkward, and what do you want to happen, anyway? Do you want her to apologize for behaving like a toddler about the date? Do you want her to act MORE like a toddler in response so you’ll feel more justified in your frustration? The first thing’s unlikely; the second thing’s unnecessary. So then what?
You’ll get past it eventually on your own. Time passes; you stop giving a shit about the wedding WTFery after a while, or it becomes a joke with your spouse and that’s it. But weddings have a way of unveiling true colors. When people tell you who they are in this way, you have to believe them, and what Friend kinda told you is, if I’m not going to be more important than your wedding date, you’re not going to be important at all. This information isn’t really about you, but it’s worth paying attention to.
Tags: friendships
Bravissimo to Angie for the squirrelectomy imagery, because now whenever I’m at a wedding or a funeral, mostly the latter, I will probably envision someone pulling an actual squirrel out of his or her actual ass, and that is going to produce some funny stories all on its own. So thanks for that. Heh.
Also: I can’t help feeling that LW will, at some point, be provided with ample reasons to feel grateful that DF did in fact give her this very clear sign that she was maybe quite possibly not such an awfully dear friend after all. But that’s just me.
Bride here,
So many responses – thank you for weighing in. Just to be clear, I had no intention of telling Dear Friend that I thought she was “just jealous!” because, as other writers noted, that was not what I meant. I got married at 39. I know how hard it can be to be single sometimes, when it feels like the whole world is paired up. It’s my way of saying, I get it, some things about weddings are a drag – gift, travel, dress, often no single men over the age of 12, blerg. But I don’t have many close friends, and in fact had no wedding party to speak of – one friend read a poem, one acted as an usher, one gave a toast. No special costumes or planning of hen parties required. A few friends were pregnant (or giving speeches at medical conferences) and could not come. So it was tough that she couldn’t be there, too; I guess when I imagined my wedding, I didn’t imagine a room filled with mostly my parents’ friends, as wonderful as they are. I’d been sick for a couple of years’ prior and hadn’t been able to see friends as often as I wanted. I was really hoping to get as many of them in one room as I could.
I also wanted to be gracious about it when I saw her again. I guess I was really looking for perspective. And I got it. It was a beautiful day, I remember it clearly, we got some great pictures, and I hope to God I never have to plan one of those suckers again.
We did see each other again. She went to Europe for her birthday. I said she had been missed, and that was all I said. And I realized this is part of a larger pattern of her flaking on plans, sometimes even IN THE MIDDLE of said plans. We’re not growing apart because I’m beginning to see we weren’t as close as I imagine, despite the intimate conversations we’ve had. And that’s ok. I just can’t depend on her for more than a glass of wine or dinner and a nice deep chat every now and again.
Thanks again, all.
Oh, and she did give us a gift. And I did wish her a happy birthday. So we’re large and contain multitudes, one and all.