Auntie SparkNotes: My Friend’s Mom Holds My Past Against Me

Hello Auntie!

I made a big mistake a year or so ago, and it got me in a ton of trouble that I almost literally had to scrape myself out of. I deeply regret it, and am past that immaturity, I hope. But my closest friend’s mother still holds it over my head. I know she never says it to my face, but she marks me as “untrustworthy” and “a bad influence” whenever my friend mentions going to me for help with something. She even said—and I quote—”Are you sure you want to consider living with her? What if she abandons you in London or something and takes all the bank funds? You can’t trust her.” She also says things like, “Just because she doesn’t tell you about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” (I don’t talk about it because it is agonizing to talk about and it was a year ago. It makes me queasy just thinking about it.)

My friend is not the gossiping type, and she’s never lied to me, so I trust that the information she is telling me is correct. I do not know if I should talk to her mother about it, or leave it be, but it really hurts that she acts like I’m the most wonderful friend she could imagine for her daughter when she sees me, and she consistently puts me down for something in the past that I deeply regret. The rest of my family has let it go, even the school let it go. We’ve all done terrible things we regret, and it really pains me that she can’t let my mistakes go.

Well, geez, Sparkler. Of course it does. What you’re experiencing—a person pretending to have forgiven you your trespasses while trashing you for them behind your back—is like a straight-up anxious nightmare come to life. It’s completely natural that you’d find it upsetting, and it hardly speaks well of your friend’s mom that she’d be so two-faced with you. It takes a special kind of judgmental nastypants to hold someone’s adolescent mistakes against them, particularly when those mistakes have been acknowledged, atoned for, learned from, and left in the past with no sign that they’ll ever be repeated.

Of course, it also takes a special kind of clueless weenie to be so unbelievably tactless with this kind of information, which serves no useful purpose except to hurt the feelings of the person being secretly trashed. Which is why, before you do anything else, I hope you’ll instruct your bestie to stop tattling to you every time her mom says something crappy about you behind your back, for crying out loud. There’s absolutely no reason why you needed to know about this to begin with, when all the knowledge accomplishes is to make you feel hurt and paranoid. (And if your friend were here, I’d be giving her the hairiest of hairy eyeballs and gently suggesting that the next time her mom calls you a bad influence, instead of turning around and telling you as much, maybe she should ask her mom why she’s so hung up on this.)

With that said, the fact also remains that you do know, which means that forcing the truth out into the open isn’t necessarily the worst idea. Confronting it head-on may be humiliating and painful, but it would also be brief—whereas the anguish of your current situation could continue on virtually forever. So I don’t know, sweet pea. You’ll have to decide for yourself which of these things would be worse to endure. But if you’re feeling brave, then I’d recommend an in-your-own-words version of the following:

“[Friend] tells me that you no longer believe I’m trustworthy because of what happened last year. I’m sorry to hear you feel that way. It was an awful, immature mistake I deeply regret, but I’ve done my best to learn from it. I hope one day you’ll find it in your heart not to hold it against me.”

To be clear, there’s no guarantee that this will result in instant forgiveness (although your friend’s mom, if she has a shred of decency, should at least feel pretty bad about trashing you behind your back.) But even if she doesn’t feel guilty about being so two-faced, she should at least have the sense to realize she’s been doing it for the wrong audience—and if she doesn’t stop the smack-talking, to at least stop doing it in front of people who can’t keep their mouths shut.

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