A 26-year-old woman has approached the Internet to ask whether or not it’s time to end one of her longest friendships.
The woman, who has not identified herself but we will refer to as ‘Sally’, posted to the thread Reddit Relationships; “I’m kinda done with this relationship but wanted to check if I’m out of line first.”
“I’ve been friends with Laura for fifteen years now,” she explained.
The pair went to high school and university together, and now live in the same suburb.
“Basically, we were single for a while together but after about a year of working my new job, I met a boy and we fell in love. Yesterday, after three years of dating, he asked me to marry him!
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“I was so excited so of course I went to tell Laura right away, and so I texted her a pic of my hand with the ring.
“She sent back: ‘That’s cool. Relationships are trash.'”
Sally was very much taken aback.
“She can definitely be rude, especially when someone else shares news that she doesn’t have (like when I got my job she was still unemployed and told me that my job was a crappy temp one anyway (it wasn’t temp at all), but when she got HER job we had to have a big party to celebrate “the start of her career!”)
“Anyway, I’m thinking of pretty much ghosting her after this. I don’t have very many friends so for my best friend to crap on my special day made me really angry and sad,” Sally concluded.
Ah… yep.
Angry and sad seems like a completely valid response to your friend trivialising your engagement.
Some relationships are inherently competitive, even if one party does not realise it’s a competition. And in such cases, the friendship is toxic for both people involved.
It hardly needs to be said that Laura is feeling pretty awful about being single herself, which is an emotion she is entitled to feel. Maybe she expected to be getting engaged at this age, or is feeling particularly lonely at the moment.
However.
This is where Laura needs to practice some discipline.
The polite response would be, “Congratulations! I’m so happy for you!”
It was a text message, meaning that one can entirely fake their emotions. It would have taken no more than six words for Laura to put one of her best friends before herself. But the message she sent was purposeful, and intended to – just for a moment – detract from Sally’s joy.
This says everything about Laura, and nothing about Sally.
It can be really hard when the people around you are hitting what you perceive to be ‘milestones’ and experiencing success after success. The same might happen if a friend falls pregnant, and you’ve just suffered a miscarriage. Or you’ve just been dumped, and you have to be Maid of Honour at your sister’s wedding. That’s rough. But when it comes to the ebs and flows of life, it’s also inevitable.
Sally would be doing herself and Laura a favour by stepping back and creating some distance. It doesn’t mean the friendship has to be over forever, but clearly they are not complementing each other well at this particular life stage.
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Top Comments
Ok, two things. One, 'Sally should ignore what others think and just focus on what matters to her, and makes her happy. Your fella decided to go to the next level of commitment and 'put a ring on it'? Awesome. Fantastic. Good for you. It's a wonderful feeling when the love of our life makes that decision and proposes. But understand that you don't need external congratulations to be happy about this moment. Other people are going through crap that you don't even know the half of, and/or desperately want to have that same connection to someone that you have, but have constantly failed at it. Don't be a heartless bitch if this happens. Your friends have their reasons for reacting the way they do. Don't take it personally.
Two, 'Laura' could have definitely chosen different words to use in her message. The best option is to just be honest about how you feel, in my opinion. Be polite and let the engaged friend know that it isn't her fault for the way you feel right now, but you honestly can't share in the excitement because of ...............
On my last note, I think the friendship may be on its last legs. Seems like there's a lack of empathy and communication in the friendship.