Auntie SparkNotes: I Messed Up and Now My Friend Hates Me

Hi Auntie Sparknotes,

I’ve recently made some horrible mistakes. I honestly don’t want to get into the details, but long story short, I was partially in charge of organizing a Valentine’s Day event at my school, which ended in one of my best friends losing a whole school day delivering candygrams. She missed a lot of study time and was really mad at me. I completely understood why and was kicking myself about it for days. This isn’t about why she hates me, I completely understand her reasoning and would hate myself too. I just need advice on how to get our friendship back again and to understand how she acted.

I apologized to her a few days later and offered to help her catch up with what she missed. I expected her to maybe not accept it or just not listen to me. I didn’t expect her to shrug it off and say that she’s fine. For a bit, I thought we were cool again, but then she ignored my texts and doesn’t seem to want to talk to me. I have no idea how to talk to people or how to act, so I honestly don’t know what to do. I don’t want to seem too needy so I don’t want to keep bothering her, but I don’t want to lose her as a friend either. I’ve known her for years and have a lot of happy memories with her, I don’t want to see that thrown away.

Of course, I would understand if she doesn’t want me as a friend anymore, since I f****d up pretty badly.

Wait, really? You understand why your longtime friend would bail on your whole entire relationship, throwing years’ worth of good times and good memories on the trash heap, just because of one poorly-managed candygram incident?

Because I don’t! Oh man, I don’t understand that at all. And unless you’ve left out some crucial information about this Valentine’s Day mishap—e.g. that while your friend was busting her rear delivering candygrams, you were lounging on a velvet couch in a silk bathrobe while her boyfriend fed you grapes and fanned you with a palm frond—then I’ll happily go a step further to say that her reaction is completely freakin’ incomprehensible. I mean, missing a day of school and its attendant study time due to a friend’s poor organizing is not nothing, but it’s hardly the kind of slight that merits scorched earth and burned bridges. Especially when you apologized, took responsibility, and did your best to make things right.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean you can or should try to argue this girl into resuming your friendship. She’s entitled (as are we all) to end a relationship for whatever stupid reason she wants (or for that matter, to end it for a not-so-stupid reason that she doesn’t care to reveal), and if she’s not returning your messages, then continuing to pester her would be a mistake (with one caveat, which we’ll get to in a sec). But it would also be a mistake to interpret her behavior as in any way representative of how friendships go, generally, or to let this incident convince you that you’re bad at reading and/or talking to people, most of whom would agree that ending a relationship over a poorly-planned candygram operation is wildly disproportionate. The fact that you anticipated your friend’s punitive response, i.e. expecting she might refuse to listen to your apology, doesn’t make that response not-weird.

Which is what you can say, albeit not so bluntly, if you want to make a last attempt to salvage the friendship (and if you’re sure you really want to, knowing what you do about how your friend handles conflict). Try the in-your-own-words version of the following: “I completely understand why you’re upset about losing study time because of my poor planning, and I know you don’t forgive people easily. But our friendship matters a lot to me and I’d hate to lose it over something like this. If you decide you want to talk, I hope you’ll reach out to me.”

The bad news is, that’s all you can do—and you can only do it once —until or unless she decides to respond. The ball will be in her court after that, and if this girl has a zero-tolerance policy for fallibility in the people close to her, then that may be it for your friendship (though if it’s any comfort, you’ll be in good company with all the many other people she invariably jettisons from her life the first time they screw up). But whatever happens, don’t doubt that you did what you could to make things right—and that for most people, your ability to feel remorse, make apologies, and be graceful when you screw up will make you exactly the kind of friend they want to keep around.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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