Friend keeps dragging up the past

Since you’ve already told her how it makes you feel, I would just say ‘Doreen, do you realise you bring this up every time we meet up?’ followed by silence/questioning stare. Make her feel uncomfortable rather than yourself.

Bloody hell, after 30 years I think id blunt and say "for fucks sake, do you really have nothing else to talk about after 30 years? Any new hobbies? No? Just spewing out the same old shite?"

Drop her,shes just being spiteful. A true friend would listen to you.

Eyebrow lift, pitying look - Sharon you really need new material luv' eye roll.
She sounds like a dose.

i suspect she just enjoys shaming you.
Maybe it was the last point at which she felt she was more in control than you. So she goes back to that incident to reassert herself.

But regardless don’t be polite about it. She isn’t. You and your husband need to coordinate and say enough.

My SIL is like this, I was only 7 when my brother met her, she was 19. I’m 60 now and she drags up tantrums I had as a child, bad fashion choices as a teenager, dubious boyfriends I brought home aged 17. It’s really fucking tedious and it’s very much to ensure I know my place as the eternal annoying wee sister. I haven’t seen or spoken to her for years but hear through the grapevine that she’s still doing it, even though I’m not there.

I agree with those saying to push back more firmly and try to make her uncomfortable raising it. If she responds as usual:
‘well you shouldn’t have kicked off then/you should have thought about what you were saying’.
then I would just continue to push back harder. Eg ’like you should be thinking about what you are saying now you mean, but actively chose not to?
or:
’Is your need to discuss this so great it matters more to you than our friendship, because you are going to have to choose. I will no longer accept this’
If she still wont drop it, you finally follow through and drop the friendship and be explicit why - her choice.

Could you try the "You've been here half an hour, Name. Isn't it time you started embarrassing us by bringing up that drunken fight we had in the pub all those years ago?" Keep on in the same vein every time you see her.

I wouldn't be seeing her twice a year if she did this. She's not being nice - simple.
If I'd told her to stop mentioning it and she didn't, that would be it. Bye bye bitch - because she is being one.

God would I love to do the second option in your situation OP. You don’t have to be nice anymore, she’s not. Vicious. LOVE IT.

As soon as she starts to mention, interrupt loudly with, “for the love of all things holy in the world, are you still banging on about something from 30 years ago. World has moved on Janet, so you need to let it go ( burst into a little Elsa here).” And when she starts up again , again go over her loudly, singing let it go.

Just keep on interrupting on repeat. Unless she is really thick skinned, she will drop it.

Yes, mention it in advance. Ask if she's going to bang on about this again, as if so you don't want to meet. If you then get 'you should have thought before speaking' say 'ok, that answers my question then' and end the call.

I think calling it out in this way would be helpful. “Barbara, I have told you many times it makes me uncomfortable that you bring this up. I don’t know if you realise you bring it up every single time we see each other face to face. We ask you to stop and you don’t listen. I don’t want to believe that you are deliberately trying to upset me, so could explain to me why you’re bringing it up again when you know it will?”

I think this is absolutely the right response. Elsa costume under some easily removable "normal" clothes, Spotify cued up ready to be blasted out the moment you nod to your DH, then full song and dance routine. Ideally a snow machine and glitterball. I would be very, very surprised if she mentioned it again.

On the other hand you might spend the next 30 years fielding reminiscences about your one-woman Disney flashmob. But then the joke's on her.

She sounds jealous of you. I’ve had a few people in my life who have done this jokey “let me put you in your place behaviour” - I never do this and people who behave like this aren’t in my life any more.
This friend is resentful - perhaps of your relationship with your husband. It’s not the bringing up something that’s uncomfortable that is the issue. It’s the fact she’s not your friend. People who have your best interests at heart and who love you don’t do this.
I would cease explaining that she’s hurting your feelings/ making you feel uncomfortable. This is what she wants. Instead I would let this relationship go.

When she brings it up, just ignore it, give no reaction at all. Don't give it any attention, just blank face.
Also try and not have any feelings around it anymore, it's just a silly thing from the past, everyone makes mistakes and that's ok. If you don't feel embarrassed about it anymore then when she brings it up you won't react to it, so you're not feeding it anymore.

I agree. I dont think this is quite as innocent as she makes out.

I think she is jealous of your relationship and thats why she continually brings up the one time you've had a huge public row despite it being 30 years ago. The fact that when you told her it upsets you she didnt even say "oh sorry! I didnt realise" and then stop, it means she knows it hurts you and doesnt GAF. In fact, she even blames you for the fact she has to keep regurgitating it because she says "well you shouldn't have done it then". Think about how ludicrous and nonsensical that is.

She is not a good person and I think after a few glasses of wine the mask slips and her spitefulness and jealousy comes out. I dont think firm words will stop her I'm afraid. I would be distancing myself- she doesnt have your best interests at heart.

There are literally thousands of topics of conversations to have at a dinner table, and she continually circles back to this one. Ask yourself why.

Explain that you dont like hearing it - everything you said on here. After that, tell her calmly that if she ever mentions this again you will never speak to her. And follow through.

I’d say it makes you feel humiliated and your husband uncomfortable, so please stop. If she doesn’t, then I’d let her go. I had a school friend who would criticise my family, life decisions and my opinions, stating it wasn’t me (based on who we were as teenagers). I’m 55, I’ve matured and with life experiences, a family and kids, I have changed from who I was at 15 like most people. She never moved on and it was tiresome, she also liked repeating embarrassing stories to my DH from when we were teenagers. It felt like she did it to humiliate me so I don’t see her anymore. She still lives with her mother and didn’t make a life for herself so I think that’s why she’s still stuck in the mid 1980s.

I had a ‘friend’ who used to do this too. Every bloody time we’d meet up she’d bring up something I told her and just wouldn’t let it go even when I pointed out we had far more interesting things to talk about! I think it made her feel better in some way. I dropped her eventually and never looked back 👍🏻

What @wizzywig said. Maybe it's because she thninks you haven't got much else in common. Maybe it's a compulsion. I would bring it up before she does or ask her seriously why she brings it up every single time. It's very odd if nothing else. As PP says we all did stupid stuff when we were younger.

I can understand that your concerns were significant at the time, but obviously - as you say - it's ancient history now; and it wasn't even something bad that DID happen all of that time ago, but just the worry that it might have.

Can you find something minor and slightly embarrassing at the time but otherwise unremarkable that happened to her decades ago - and keep mentioning it every time she brings this up?

Did she once accidentally put salt in her coffee instead of sugar? Did she once comment on a book that she'd borrowed from the library, when she'd forgotten that she'd actually bought that one from a bookshop? Did she once forget to put her clocks forward and turn up to work an hour late? Did she once accidentally hand over a fiver instead of a tenner when spending £7.42 and the shop assistant had to ask her for more money? Did she ever sneeze in public and do an involuntary fart as well?

Has she really done/seen/experienced nothing in her own life In 30 years that this is the only 'anecdote' that she has to this day? One that wasn't even hers but somebody else's at any rate?

Absolutely unbelievable that you would continue to have contact with her and invite her into your home to upset you again and again.

I genuinely cannot understand that. She doesn't like you, she doesn't like to see you happy, she certainly doesn't want to allow you or your husband forget a low point in your relationship.

Horrible woman.
Let her go.

She sours any time you spent together by picking the scab in your relationship, never allowing it to fully heal.

It's really fxxked up that you both would agree to be around that.

I think she's jealous of your relationship and is trying to "prove" that you're not actually happy together.

If you really want to keep the friendship, then I'd write her a message (saying it's from both of you) that says you feel like she's trying to cause trouble in your marriage over a misunderstanding from 30+ years ago and that if she does it again then neither of you want to see her again. Make sure it's a united front to show her she's going to have problems with both of you if she does it again.

Yes, I agree.

I had a friend who'd bring up random comments made years ago and ask me to explain what I'd meant by it. She was the type who enjoyed making other people uncomfortable in a 'gotcha' sort of way.

She started dropping things into conversations that were relevant to my life but I hadn't told her about. She admitted inserting herself in a friendship group with my ex's wife (the woman he cheated on me with). She was getting gossip about his previous girlfriend (me) and then testing me with the gossip to see what I'd say.

I knew this woman for 30 years. She wasn't really a friend. I was her entertainment. Her life fell apart and after several snivelling phone calls about the self inflicted drama, I realised I didn't care. I told her I wasn't going to be taking any more calls from her and to find a therapist.

I was done but it took me far too long to get there. I don't miss her.

We have an aunt like this. Expectation that she'll be invited and when she does she has a drink and starts needling away at people.

She last did it at an appalling Sunday lunch several years ago to the extent that we have never seen her again. It was just too soul destroying to keep putting ourselves in the way of her spitefulness. Life is better without her in it.