The Vine: January 18, 2012
“H” and I have been friends for seven years. For the first four, we were very close; then I moved schools and we both went to university, so we saw each other less often, but still talked on the phone and met up regularly.
She is a much more dramatic and sensitive person than me, and over the years I’ve seen several of her friendships go up in flames. I know it takes two people to argue, and I’ve always been supportive of H when she’s been upset. I’ve always been quite sarcastic and cynical, as are most of our friends, but I always try to tone it down around H if I think she won’t appreciate the joke. Having said all this, we’re very similar in lots of ways, have had loads of fun together and have never had a serious argument. She’s been a good friend to me, and up until a few weeks ago I thought she felt the same way about me. I really hope the following isn’t too confusing.
This past summer we spent a lot of time with our other friends in the town we all come from, although this tailed off in the last few weeks of the holidays as we went on holiday with our families. About a week before term started, I received a long email from H which said that she thought we “hadn’t really spoken” over the summer, that our interests were diverging and that she had decided “not to contact [me]” again because she thought I didn’t find her interesting, but had decided to resume contact because she wanted to know what I thought about the whole issue.
It was a pretty confusing email and I wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted from me, but it was clear that I’d hurt her feelings, so I replied saying — truthfully — that I hadn’t noticed that she didn’t think we’d been getting along well, I was sorry if I’d seemed rude and she should have just said something casually. I also mentioned that, over the summer, H had said to me that she didn’t think she was getting on well with some of our other friends, trying to suggest (although I didn’t say it) that maybe the problem was with her and not me. I accepted that I might have accidentally been rude to her — I don’t think I was, but it’s a totally subjective issue and I fully acknowledge that I could have upset her.
I should also mention that when H talks about “speaking” to someone she means “having the kind of conversation you have at 3 AM when you’re 14, about which teachers you secretly have a crush on and how you do kind of wish you were one of the popular girls.” This is related to something I asked her about in my reply, which was her opinion that she’s interested in “us and why we are the way we are,” as in our small group of friends and acquaintances, and I’m interested in “films, politics and literature, and the outside world in general.” That she would present these as opposing interests which meant that we could no longer be friends completely baffles me. Sars, I know that university changes people, but I’ve always been interested in “the outside world,” which isn’t to say that I’m not interested in gossip or hearing about my friends’ lives. She seemed to be saying “I’m more interested in myself and my friends than anything else; sorry.”
H replied thanking me for being so “kind,” apologising for being “overly sensitive” and basically suggesting that we forget the whole thing. She said that she couldn’t really explain what she meant about our different interests. When we met up a few days later, she apologised again and seemed genuinely embarrassed. Apart from that, everything was as normal — no sign of the apparently insurmountable difference in interests. This was all a few weeks ago, and since then two things have been bugging me:
1) She said she decided never to contact me again (before changing her mind)! This only really struck me recently, but surely it’s pretty rude to tell someone that you decided your friendship with them was over. Although you might have a different interpretation, in my opinion her email basically said “I don’t really like you anymore, but I want you to know that it’s all your fault. Hey, want to apologise?” I now think I might have been too kind in my reply in an effort to reduce any awkwardness in the future, because even if H had stuck to her decision never to contact me again, we would definitely have seen each other at parties, etc.
2) I didn’t really care. I have so many friends from whom an email like this would have been really upsetting, but my reaction to this was nothing more than irritation. I think this is a mixture of knowing how dramatic H can be and also just…not really caring. I’m sorry that she was upset, but I wouldn’t have minded if our friendship never picked up again. She may have picked up on this before I did, which would explain why she felt I was being rude to her. I just don’t know, because until she emailed me I had no idea that I felt like this. This might be a simple case of “friendships have a lifespan,” except that H doesn’t know what she wants. I know this sounds odd, but I don’t really mind either way.
Basically, my questions are: What exactly happened here? Was H wrong to express her anger/sadness/irritation by telling me that she had decided to end our friendship? Was I too kind to her, or not kind enough? My instinct at the moment is to do what H wants and forget the whole thing — maybe it was caused by another problem in her life which she hasn’t told me about — but I need some perspective on this.
Thanks,
Yes, we really are 19
Dear Nineteen,
I think you’re right that H picked up on your…well, “apathy” is maybe a little harsh, but the fact that you don’t have as much invested in the friendship as she apparently does. So, to answer your first question, I think that’s what happened: she sensed that she doesn’t mean as much to you as you do to her; she decided to make a big old drama out of capital-W Walking Away from it; when you failed to follow her, which she could have predicted, because you don’t care as much as she does, she decided to make sure you knew she’d changed her mind about storming out of the relationship. That would get your attention, in a way that a more graceful withdrawal from/acceptance of the evolution of the friendship would not, and your attention is the central issue for H, I would guess — that she doesn’t get enough of it, or the right kind, or whatever, and she hasn’t gotten to that point in her life where she can accept that not everybody is BFF, or manage her feelings about that.
As far as whether it’s “wrong” for H to have handled it that way…yeah, I suppose. “Wrong-headed” is probably more accurate, because at best, she overreacted to a simple miscommunication and now she looks like a dramaholic. More likely, she’s playing on a sense of guilt, or pity, to keep you close to and/or paying attention to her; that isn’t the most awesome friendship foundation, but…honestly, I don’t know how much of a “friendship” this is. You walk on eggshells around her; the way you describe her hurt feelings, it’s like a lawyer instructed you on how to phrase it so as not to draw any further ire, with the “subjective” this and the “I fully acknowledge” that. It’s…not actually that subjective. Girl needs to grow a thicker skin, like yesterday, especially if she’s going to try to provoke her so-called besties with condescending nonsense about how she’s just more interested in people than in books, or…whatever that was.
She’s got some growing up to do, and that being the case, you handled it the best way you could have. You let it go, which is the smart play; you took the least enmeshed, operatic route. I don’t think a harsher tone or response would have helped the situation, but I do think you spend more time on managing her oversensitivity than your stated feelings for her would warrant. Don’t you think? For instance: “I always try to tone it down around H if I think she won’t appreciate the joke.” Well, fine, that’s nice of you, but if you can’t even be yourself around her, what’s the point of any of this. Not appreciating a joke is not going to kill her, and you calling her on it when she gets way oversensitive and brings the whole room down isn’t going to kill you, either. In fact, it sounds like it’s overdue.
The short version: she’s a drama queen. She’ll get over it eventually. Regardless, stop handling her like she’s a bomb with 4 seconds left on the timer; you have better ways to spend your time.
Tags: friendships
Oh lawdy, I have had two friends like H, and I wish I’d had Sars’ advice back when I was dealing with the uglier side of our friendships. It is so tempting to blame the drama on yourself (“But maybe if I called her twice a day even though I really don’t want to, she’ll stop crying and threatening never to speak to me again…”), but that’s not the source of the problem.
I am still friends with the two Hs in my life, but I keep them at a much further distance. The aggravation of constantly doing something “wrong” in their eyes was too much. I care about them and always will, but MAN, I could not handle all that drama with a tiny side of friendship.
Oh, God, age nineteen. It’s right up there with ages seven, eleven, and thirteen as “harsh land to cross with no real idea of how our culture wants us to behave.”
I mean, you can vote, but in lots of states you can’t drink yet. It’s a wierd no-man’s-land of an age; not a big “YOU’RE EIGHTEEN, BIG GROWN UP GIRL!” thing, but not a teenage kind of terrain either.
That said, here’s a piece of advice from an ol’ forty year old: Drama Needs An Audience.
Drama Queens/Kings need audiences to validate all the crap they’re learning to process as an “adult”. Freindships, college, realizing you are really, truly going to have to get a job–they need to perform their anxieties about these big changes, and if they sense their audience dozing off, they’re going to pull a gun in the first act, whether or not they have any intention of firing it in the third.
You did the right thing. It may not feel right because it doesn’t feel like “closure”, which pop culture insists is a)needed for everything and b)realistic in any way, but that’s real life. You have to live with the bumpy leftovers of things you didn’t instigate but had to finish off, and, well, you just kind of do. That’s life.
Your freind still thinks of her feelings/problems/anxieties as something that must be presented and wrapped up with a pop song swelling on some ambient hovering soundtrack. Maybe she’ll get over this and maybe she won’t, but it’s not your job to fix it either way. Be as supportive and kind as you can. That’s all that’s required.
I had a period where I behaved like H, and I think a lot of it was that I was not happy in the friendship, but it’s hard to admit you’re not happy when you’ve been friends with a group of people for years, and there’s a lot of self blame that gets unconsciously redirected outward, so the relationship deteriorates into a festival o’ passive aggression and snippiness and an inability to define what exactly is bothering you because when you do define it, you have to start dealing with some hard truths.
Is this nineteen’s fault? No. Should she put up with it? No. But I can understand what H might be going through, and it’s not a fun place to be.
Great advice from Sars. The only thing I’d add is this: if you do want to continue being friends with H, try to set aside the whole ‘was she wrong to do what she did’ thing. She was a drama queen, but you’ve either got to put it behind you and continue to be friends, or decide that she was out of line and that you can’t be bothered with the whole thing (and that would be fair enough, in my opinion). What won’t work, though, is being friends while still thinking that she’s a pain in the neck.
Hey, Nineteen – that’s Aretha Franklin. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I’m in my early forties and unfortunately, in my experience, you will probably meet this person many times in your life. I think that you handled it well and did the right thing running it by Sars to help you sort it out. This will give you a head start on how to handle this type of personality in the future, and it won’t always be a 19 year old acting like a 13 year old. The last person who did something like this to me was a 60 year old man, a college professor and longtime friend I had always admired and looked up to. I had no idea he was capable of acting like the meanest mean girl to ever roam the halls of junior high and he did a number on my head before I even knew what was happening. I was stunned when he very dramatically broke off our friendship because of my “biting sarcasm” and my failure to consistently couch everything I said in terms that were agreeable to him. I wasted a few days thinking of all the things I wanted to say but in the end let it go because any further attempt to engage would only give him the attention he wanted and end in a repeat performance. Jen S 1.0 is right about trying to get closure in situations like this. The best thing you can do is take the high road then leave it alone. I’m spending more time with my other friends who are sharp, witty, and ready to pass judgement on everything from the latest literary wunderkind to the crappy tie-died dress Sarah Michelle Gellar wore to the Golden Globes like we’re Dorothy Parker or something. And that was a bad dress even if her toddler picked it out herself. Clearly Charlotte is no Suri Cruse. ;)
I agree with everything that’s been said (with a special agreement to Jacq – you DO have to let it go if you decide to proceed with the friendship). So I don’t want to pile on any more advice, but I just wanted to flesh out one thing that your friend said.
I don’t know her, so I don’t know if this is what she meant or not, but I can relate to the disappointment of having spent a lot of time with a friend, but leaving and not feeling like we actually connected on a deeper level (this is especially true on vacations or out of town visits). Sometimes there is nothing more frustrating than feeling like you had all this fun time with someone and then when you left you didn’t have any sense of what is going on in their life really. That is what the “I want to talk about us, not the outside world” comment meant to me. She may have just been missing that truly connected feeling you used to share and started regretting the 4 hours you spent talking about your favorite TV shows. There’s nothing wrong with talking about TV for four hours, obviously, but she probably wanted to follow that with an hour of “so tell me how you are really doing these days.”
Jen S 1.0, I want to marry your whole comment, with a special ring for ‘ambient hovering soundtrack’.
@attica, ah, that our comment love could be recognized in this country…
I agree with pretty much what Sars said.
I just want to add something about the “I’m sarcastic and cynical, but I tone it down for her” aspect.
As a mid-30s someone who is sarcastic and cynical & was sarcastic and cynical at 19, I want to suggest that while H may very well be an overly sensitive drama queen, toning things down for someone who is sensitive or won’t appreciate the joke is NOT the same as walking on egg shells around someone. A lot of times, the reason the person won’t appreciate the joke is because it is at the expense of someone else, and not everyone rolls that way (thick skin, we are all the butt of the joke sometimes, etc.). It’s especially true when you realize that in group dynamics, the sarcasm is not usually evenhandedly directed either.
When I think about how 19 year old me talked to and around friends, I cringe at some of the obnoxious or mean-spirited humor we all engaged in (usually bolstered by it being funny and/or by group behavior, rather than 1 on 1 with people). It’s easy for the direct, brash and sarcastic among us to genuinely hurt someone’s feelings, because we use empathy standards based on what would offend US (answer: not a whole lot) rather than what offends them (answer: more than you might realize, and it’s unfair to label them as overly sensitive or egg shells).
When H is saying “we didn’t really spend time together,” what she may really mean is: hanging out with you and our friends who all share a specific sense of humor, way of talking, looking at the world, etc., is NOT the same as hanging out together alone, where we can talk about *personal*/deep STUFF. And she knows she doesn’t really fit in with that whole group, attitude, etc. whether you’re self-censoring or not.
Now, playing the “I wasn’t going to say anything and I was going to just stop being friends” card IS a whole lot of junior high drama bs. Yeah, it’s immature, and it doesn’t adequately express what’s really going on. She felt insecure and badly about the situation, and she redirected that emotion toward you via very imprecise communication. The goal being either to make YOU feel insecure or badly OR to get reassurance and feel better (or both).
Anyway, this does seem like friendship lifespan stuff, realizing as an adult you can hang out with people who you do have more outside interests in common with, and so forth, and it’s not something to get mad about or anything when someone has a ‘bad reaction’ to figuring out they don’t really fit in your circle.
it’s unfair to label them as overly sensitive or egg shells
Generally, this is a great point; I think your last comment, that the reaction is probably more H’s realization that she’s not so much in tune with this crowd, is also right on. Nineteen is where you start to realize that you have different friends for different situations, and that it’s okay if not everybody hangs out all together all the time like in a sitcom.
In THIS case, I stand by the egg-shells label, because of H’s handling of the main situation — but also because of the LW’s way of expressing things. I just get the feeling that the acknowledgment that H could have taken XYZ in a hurtful way etc. etc. is one Nineteen has had to make dozens of times in the past, if you know what I’m saying. Toning it down occasionally around people who don’t “play as rough” is a part of life and not something to resent, or end a friendship over; it’s more the sense I get that a snarky remark is made, H takes it personally, there has to be A Conversation About It, and it’s at the point where people aren’t speaking freely around her because they don’t have time for another summit meeting.
Or maybe we’re all projecting. Welcome to internet advice. Heh.
I think it’s a question of degree. If you have to second guess certain kinds of jokes sometimes, then she’s just sensitive, and you live with it.
But if you have to second guess everything you want to say just about every other time you want to say something, and find that even the most innocuous of remarks totally gets taken the wrong way and you end up with a headache trying to figure out just what the hell was up with that, I’ll save you a few years.
That friendship is just not worth the level of drama not just because you’re not you when you’re hanging around that person who’s a ticking bomb of hurt feelings waiting to happen, but because that person will eventually go out of their way to find more stuff you do that upsets him/her as the friendship goes on. You will find yourself apologizing for things you didn’t say or do, all because the friend needs the validation of “I want to be your friend so badly that I will admit to a wrong I never did to you”.
Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. One day you wake up, compare notes with friends you have in common, and realize that this sort of person is toxic for you, and then you get mad for not having realized it five years ago and let them go back then.