The bravest thing I've done recently is to confront a "friend" about lies she's told about me and how I feel about our friendship.
If you read my earlier blog post "To invite or not to invite?" you may remember the friend I'm referring to. For those that didn't or need a recap - here's a little back story:
In 2013 on of my former best friends asked if I'd be interested in temping at the bank she was temping at. I jumped at the opportunity and was very grateful. At the time I did not have a car and was working at a daycare making very little so I was unable to save the money I needed to purchase a new one. We lived within five minutes of each other so we would car pool. Her sister that also worked with us created a payment system - at first the three of us car pooled with her sister driving, we would each give her $30 a week, then when she got a car of her own and it was just the two of us driving, I would pay her $35 a week for gas. I thought this was a lot of money, but as I don't like confrontation I just went along with it.
In the beginning working together was great, but as things go when you're constantly around the same person day in and day out, you get a little annoyed of one another. After I purchased my own car, we began to distance ourselves a little, but I never thought anything had really changed in our friendship. She began to work from home more often and it eventually got to a point where we rarely carpooled together. Flash forward a few months and she gets fired. That is when I begin to hear all about the terrible things she was saying behind my back at work to our coworkers - such as I never gave her any gas money, I was a terrible person, etc. She also repeated these lies to my friends - including worse ones such as I screwed her out of thousands of dollars by not saying she recommended me to the position (the same position I was already temping in for over a year) I applied to within the bank when I got hired as a full time employee. It's years later and she is still mentioning these lies to our friends.
If you read my earlier blog post "To invite or not to invite?" you may remember the friend I'm referring to. For those that didn't or need a recap - here's a little back story:
In 2013 on of my former best friends asked if I'd be interested in temping at the bank she was temping at. I jumped at the opportunity and was very grateful. At the time I did not have a car and was working at a daycare making very little so I was unable to save the money I needed to purchase a new one. We lived within five minutes of each other so we would car pool. Her sister that also worked with us created a payment system - at first the three of us car pooled with her sister driving, we would each give her $30 a week, then when she got a car of her own and it was just the two of us driving, I would pay her $35 a week for gas. I thought this was a lot of money, but as I don't like confrontation I just went along with it.
In the beginning working together was great, but as things go when you're constantly around the same person day in and day out, you get a little annoyed of one another. After I purchased my own car, we began to distance ourselves a little, but I never thought anything had really changed in our friendship. She began to work from home more often and it eventually got to a point where we rarely carpooled together. Flash forward a few months and she gets fired. That is when I begin to hear all about the terrible things she was saying behind my back at work to our coworkers - such as I never gave her any gas money, I was a terrible person, etc. She also repeated these lies to my friends - including worse ones such as I screwed her out of thousands of dollars by not saying she recommended me to the position (the same position I was already temping in for over a year) I applied to within the bank when I got hired as a full time employee. It's years later and she is still mentioning these lies to our friends.
This really hurt me, but I never had the courage to confront her about it. She moved away, I distanced myself and only communicated with her when we had to see each other with our mutual friends. In December when I got engaged, she texted me congratulations, and has occasionally texted me a few times since or tagged me in Facebook posts. I responded but in short answers, not giving too much but not wanting to be rude. I honestly felt like the only reason she began reaching out to me is because she wanted to be invited to my wedding - she had years to reach out like this, but choose to now. If you read my previous post, you know that I am not planning on inviting her to our wedding.
I knew it was getting to the point where I had to eventually say something about it to her, but I wanted to avoid the situation until I absolutely had to. She texted me telling me that she misses me and our friendship, and she'd really like to hear from me. I wanted to be honest, so I finally faced the situation head on. I told her that she hurt me and that I would never had spread lies about her behind her back. I told her I'd like to remain cordial but I didn't know if we could ever get our friendship back to where it was. When she responded that if she had ever said anything nasty about me to our coworkers it was in a joking way - she completely avoided mentioning our friends. She had also called me, which I was unable to answer as I was in a store checking out. Instead of texting her back, I tried to call her so that we could talk about it over the phone, I didn't want to go through it on text so she could continue to lie about it. I wanted everything out in the open and hopefully resolved. She never called me back and blocked me on Facebook.
I knew it was getting to the point where I had to eventually say something about it to her, but I wanted to avoid the situation until I absolutely had to. She texted me telling me that she misses me and our friendship, and she'd really like to hear from me. I wanted to be honest, so I finally faced the situation head on. I told her that she hurt me and that I would never had spread lies about her behind her back. I told her I'd like to remain cordial but I didn't know if we could ever get our friendship back to where it was. When she responded that if she had ever said anything nasty about me to our coworkers it was in a joking way - she completely avoided mentioning our friends. She had also called me, which I was unable to answer as I was in a store checking out. Instead of texting her back, I tried to call her so that we could talk about it over the phone, I didn't want to go through it on text so she could continue to lie about it. I wanted everything out in the open and hopefully resolved. She never called me back and blocked me on Facebook.
I know I was wrong to wait so long to confront her about the situation, but I'm proud of myself for finally doing it. If she had just said the things to my coworkers and it was never brought up again, I probably would've swept it under the rug like I always do. I didn't realize how much the situation was truly weighing on me until I finally confronted it head on. I'm sad that I lost someone that I thought was my best friend, but at the end of the day do I really need a friend like that?
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