Dear
Philip,
I had a falling out with a woman I’ve known
socially for years, and now she’s getting our mutual friends to put pressure on
me to apologize and make up with her.
The problem is I don’t want to.
I’m relieved to have her out of my life.
She’s a bully and has always been one, and our fight arose when I
finally had the nerve to disagree with her on something, and then didn’t back
down when she told me she felt “attacked.”
In the past, I’ve always gone along with whatever she wanted, because it
was easier than listening to her complain when she didn’t get her way.
It’s very upsetting that women I call
friends, who I know think she’s a bully, are taking her side and treating me
like I’ve done something wrong. It’s
like high school. How can I make them
either see my side or stay out of it?
Frozen Out
Dear Frozen,
It’s easy to feel
like high school never ends. Even as an
adult, you find yourself sitting in the cafeteria, watching with dread as the
mean girl rallies her troops. Any minute
now, you can expect nasty, anonymous notes to be pushed through the vent in
your locker. (Note to my younger readers: pre-internet, that’s how we rolled. Nasty, anonymous locker notes are ‘old school’…literally.)
I would humbly
suggest, though, that this kind of situation predates even high school.
Quick story: when my
daughter Anna was five, she used to play with two little girls, one of whom had
a favorite game she called “The Princess and her Handmaidens.” That girl, of course, was always the Princess…or
else. The other little girl, like Anna,
went along to get along, at first. When
they finally got tired of their supporting roles as Handmaiden One and
Handmaiden Two, they rebelled as five-year-olds will, with tears and calls for
the moms to come intervene. When the
princess’s mom sussed out the source of the unhappiness, she explained a basic
truth to her daughter: friends share, take turns and respect each other. Then she added a rule: you’ll share, take
turns and respect your friends, or you won’t be allowed to have any come
over.
Your bully
could’ve used that mom, Frozen, and while I totally agree that you should
continue to cut her out of your life as much as possible, make sure that among
your feelings for her you find some sympathy.
As we all figure out in high school, bullies are bullies because they’re
desperately insecure. For someone like
the woman you’ve been dealing with, even being disagreed with must be wounding:
she isn’t kidding when she says she feels “attacked” by your unwillingness to
let her have her way on everything. It’s
not your job to provide the lessons she clearly never learned on how friendship
works, but having a little empathy for her obvious internal misery might make
any incidental contact you have with her a little easier.
Don’t let your
mutual friends off the hook, though.
What they’re doing is cowardly and selfish: they’re letting on that
she’s bullying them even more than usual, now that you’ve abdicated your duties
as a suck-up, and they’re looking to you for relief when they should be growing
spines.
You asked how you
can make them see your side. You don’t
need to, because they already do. Your
side doesn’t matter to them in the least.
What matters is that the Queen Bee is abuzz, she’s making them miserable
and – directly or indirectly – letting them know that they have to get you back
in line, pronto.
Friendship allows
lapses: calmly tell any of the mutual friends who pressure you on behalf of the
bully that it isn’t their business. If
they accept that, forgive them their momentary cowardice. If they don’t, ask yourself if your
friendship with them meet’s Anna’s playmate’s mom’s threshold…especially the
‘respect each other’ part. If
friendships remind you of the worst parts of high school, then maybe it’s time
to graduate.
Yours in playing
nice,
Philip
