So...I'm not very good with being social. In fact i suck at it. In fact, i think personally, that i make for a very crappy friend. Most of the time i go through life, just fine, with having one friend and thats about it. I would say that my husband is my best friend and i have become an introvert over this past year, which is quite different then how i used to be(a social butterfly)
Anyway, I have been doing a lot of inward thinking. While i am on this quest to change my appearance, i realize that i want to change who i am on the inside as well. I have taken up the goal of starting to meet new people and strike up conversations (go team me) Point is: In this quest to become a better me, I ended up crossing paths with a girl that used to be my best friend. We were best friends from the time that we were 13 all the way up until i had my daughter which was 2 years ago. Long story short..She said some horrible things, i said some horrible things and in my attempt to make her understand that i was in need of a break from her, she thought i was calling are friendship quits. I never intended for our friendship to just end like that.
Over the next few months, she and her husband showed up at my husband's workplace to drop off "our stuff" which was essentially gifts that we have given them over the past few years. They seemed serious about getting rid of us in there lives.
Well, its a small town and its easy to come across people's paths.. you cant escape from someone in a town of 4000 and we kept bumping into each other. We would say hi, very politely, to each other and ask the occcasional "how is it going" and then part ways. We ran into each other last year at a common friend's wedding and we talked. She expressed that i had hurt her and i had expressed that she had hurt me. I apologized. She did not.(Which i was hurt by, because she thinks she didnt hurt me and im the bad guy ect) We went a little in depth about what happend and then that was that.
Well its now a year and a half later, and we bump into each other at the college and then we start up a converesation, which we continued on facebook over the next 2 hours. We never even touched the conversation of our friendship that had ended. At the end of the conversation , she said "nice catching up with you"...
Well its today, and im sitting here, feeling guilty. I feel like, just because i have gotten past what happend, i dont feel like she has and i think she is even still mad at me. I have this desire to say sorry for hurting her even though i could care less now about how she hurt me at the time. I just want to make things right between each other even if we never become friends again..
So how do i do this? How do i bring it up? And does someone saying "nice catching up " mean "thanks for the chit chat but....."? Im no good at this..someone help me out please.
You apologized before, I really don't think you need to again! Especially when she didn't also apologize when you expressed that she hurt you. Even if she didn't think she did, you told her she DID, the fact that she didn't say that she was sorry that you were hurt, seems petty, stubborn, and childish.
I wouldn't go out of my way to befriend her any more than you already have. I would have taken the "nice catching up with you" as an abrupt close to the conversation, unless it was followed by "hope to hear from you soon" or "lets not let it be so long next time".
I totally get that you are maybe a little itchy for a friend, but don't settle! You deserve a good friend!
well, I think that maybe she is missing you too..why else would she chat with you for two hours and then say that that was nice..I think you should think about the person she was when you were friends with her and judge by that what she may be feeling ..sometimes, when so much time has gone by, it becomes hard to say what one feels if you are afraid to be rejected..just my two cents..
Some very good people suck at apologizing, and some can't do it at all. They don't know how to apologize, or they believe that apologies are only for when you think you could have or should have responded a different way. If they think they reacted as best they could, even if it wasn't good enough, then they see an apology as being equivalebt to a lie.
I have a lot of rotten apologizers in my family. I can live with the fact that I'm a better apologizer than they are, and even that some can't apologize directly. Their "version" of an apology is to do something nice (with the expectation that the offensive incidents will never be mentioned again).
You have to decide whether you need an apology or can live without one. She may always feel that her actions were justified, or she may regret her actions but be unable to put her feelings into words. You have to do what you can live with.
I always figured that you find out who your real friends are pretty quick after you have an argument with them. With my real friends we can apologize, make up and go on as friends. If someone can't do that, they aren't really my friend. In marriage or besties or any relationship, you have to know how to get over those hurdles, and if you can't, then the relationship isn't really that strong to begin with. I also wouldn't want to be friends with someone who was nursing a grudge against me that is years old. If she doesn't want to apologize or move on, does she really want to be friends with you, or was she just using you for a "feel good friendship" because it made her feel good at the time? Some people stick around as long as it benefits them and then they are gone as soon as the friendship demands something from them that they aren't willing to give.
Not too long ago I had a conversation with an old friend, during which I expressed my hurt at how my brother-in-law had treated me some years ago after my sister died. The old friend is still in touch with him and she came back to me and told me that he remembers what happened differently from me and, in his recollection, it was me who created the situation.
Was it? I honestly don't know. As I recall it he said some terribly painful things and I was extremely vulnerable at the time. However, what he remembers makes me the bad guy and that it what is pertinent.
We mis-remember things, we create a different focus and perhaps this is what your friend has done.
In the situation with my brother-in-law we simply walked away and relegated things to history. We no longer exist for each other and I guess we both know in our heart of hearts we will never talk again, his children will know that they have an auntie that they will never contact etcetc
Your friendship suffered a loss. I guess that you need to decide if you want to walk away and just let it go. You need to judge if she has already done that. Some rifts, especially after time has passed, are simply not bridgeable.
Having said that you do seem to talk and perhaps a different sort of friendship can develop. You are both older, you have changed, your values and maturity are different now. This means there are possibilities.
I'm exactly in the same position in my life right now. In fact, some of this really could have been written by me.
I am also an introvert now despite previously being extroverted. I had a close group of friends in high school, and over the years, there have been some falling outs. I've struggled with not being able to create close relationships with people in college, but I've almost accepted the fact that I'm just not super great at making friends.
Long story short, the biggest falling out I had was with a close friend who I tried to roommate with. Things went south, and there's really no point in going into the details of it now. Three years later, and we both work in the same school. We have really attempted to patch up our friendship, but neither of us EVER made mention of what happened before. To me, we were both still kids, and we both did things that I think we both regret. I think we're both too chicken to even bring it up.
What has been hard in the whole deal is that, for some reasons, I still feel slight reservations at becoming THAT close again. We text each other regularly. We eat lunch together every day at work. We sometimes hang out in each other's rooms after work. We've even gone on one or two double dates with our significant others. It would seem like every thing is fine, but there still seems to be a wall up for me. I don't want there to be, and I'm not mad anymore, but I still see in her the same faults that caused our previous issues. I'm sure she still sees the same ones in me as well.
I am so glad that my friend and I have patched things up. I really am. I hate unfinished anger in my life. All I'm saying, in advice to you though, is that you need to realize that maybe your relationship can never be the same. I don't think that means you have to completely cut ties with this person. It's good that you have opened a line of conversation with this person. Saying that, however, I do think that you should definitely reconsider making this person your lifeline for friendship.
Well...we are going to meet up in a few days to have tea together at her house. She seemed up for it, so thats good news. I think more than anything, i just want to be done with the past and make sure there is some closure. I guess i have to realize there is a possibility that she may never forgive me...however.. i think there is hope too.. I know things can never be the same. So much has changed in both of our lives..but to maintain a friendship on a strictly shallow conversational level would be good.
For some strange reason, i just feel like i need to start seeking out the forgiveness of others(kind of like the step in the AA program) I just need to be free of who i was..so i can become the person i want to be.
I just need to be free of who i was..so i can become the person i want to be.
When I was young I watched my father grow old and bowed with regrets and I swore that I would live my life so I did not grow old with regrets for the things I could have done and should have done ... and for things I did.
I am 60 now and bowed with regrets. What I seek now is to forgive myself because so many of the people whose lives I touched badly are gone or I have no idea how to contact them (many years, many countries, many lifetimes).
Do what you can do but do not blame yourself for things that are past and cannot be rewritten. And if you do see blame, forgive yourself. Life is about what is now ... you cannot change what happened, you cannot predict the future, all you can do is sit quietly in the present and look into your heart for the person you are, and love her.
I don't do blame, I don't do regrets, and I don't do grudges. When I apologize for something, it's because I FEEL apologetic. I don't apologize because "it's the right thing to do" - I do it because I feel bad & I want the other person to know that I AM SORRY.
But I don't keep on apologizing. And I don't reiterate how sorry I am, etc. If someone apologizes, and the person they're apologizing to isn't a big enough person to ACCEPT that apology, then c'est la vie. I have a few ex-friends who just cannot accept the person I am - flaws & all. That's why they're ex friends. Then again, I have some friends I've known almost all my life, and we've had our ups/downs & disagreements/arguments, but we've been able to settle things because we know that sometimes, anger/fear/sadness/whatever gets the best of you & sometimes you say stupid crap that doesn't necessarily "mean" anything. And sometimes, you just have to agree to disagree. That's the meaning of "adult" to me.
If you miss your friend, write her a letter, or call her! - and tell her so. You don't have to apologize all over again or get back on that track of what happened, who said what, who hurt who, etc. You just need to express the desire that YOU WANT YOUR FRIEND BACK. Then the ball is in her court.
How to put behind the past and undo wrongs?
