Who is being unreasonable here? Wedding drama.

[manicinsomniac]

Ok, trying to keep the background simple and not too specific:

A while ago friend A quit her job, very suddenly, because she said she was being bullied by some of our colleagues.

Friend B is getting married. Friend A is the maid of honour.

Friend B has invited the 'bullying' colleagues to the wedding (partly out of politics but also because they are friendly with each other)

Right, so, last night friend B phoned me crying because friend A is now refusing to come to the wedding if the bullies come. She says it will make her physically sick to see them.

My response was 'for God's sake she's 40 not 10!' and I have more or less told friend A that to her face, in slightly less harsh terms.

Friend B asked me to try and talk friend A round and let her know how upset she was. My take on it was that if A is really B's best friend then she will appreciate that it is B's day, she can invite who she likes and that A will have to deal with it and socialise in an appropriate, polite, adult fashion.

A is now 'not speaking' to me I may have accidentally used the words selfish and childish . And doesn't appear any closer to giving in.

Who do you think is being unreasonable? Is Friend A pathetic? Is Friend B a bridezilla? Am I taking B's side unfairly and not appreciating A's POV?

OP

you clearly haven't experienced bullying or been close to someone who has. Others have expressed this better than me

I think this is a tricky problem. I think, if I were the OP that I would have done the same thing. Although, I would have toned down the phone all.

I would have tried not to get involved and would have tried not to discuss it too much. It is up to B who she invites and it is up to A to decide to go or not. I am not sure tears and drama will help resolve the situation.

Manicinsomniac - do you honestly think Friend A would withdraw as her best friend's Maid of Honour unless she had a really good reason? She must be hurting so badly to have to take this step, and what you have said will have made her feel even worse.

Omg your teachers . Shakes head for the future generation. You are behaving like school girls, what kind of example are you setting to your pupils. What if one of your students confided to you that they were being bullied, I would hate te response they wuld get. If I were friend A I would definitely not go to te wedding. Friend b should understand that. Ok se can invite tem if she wants that's her perogative, but don't exect friend A to be there

"neither I nor B mistrust or think A is lying........... I have no reason whatsoever to think they did anything wrong at all."

Do A a favour and, along with B, walk away from this 'friendship'. It all sounds very toxic.

piglet I am going to get my arse flamed off for this but I am not surprised. My baby group was full of teachers. They were bitchy, cliquey and excluded a woman there who was worried about her child's development. They were mean to the single Mums, had a bitchy little FB group that they loved cutting people from. I think they spent too long with children and had taken on some of their less nice characteristics and none of their nice ones. It was completely bizarre. Since then I am never surprised when I hear about groups of teachers being like this.

I am happy now limited. I seriously did wonder at one point if a memo of acceptable targets had gone out with me at the top of the list! And another to my teachers telling them to "just repeatedly tell her not to fight back ~(not that I did), cos that will solve it ".

Mrs TCO, I'm not in the least bit surprised either. IME teachers often perpetuate bullying instead of preventing it. OP's response to A - essentially "I know you think it was horrid, but really, it's all in your head flower, so run along and play nice" - is pretty much the response I got at school when I was bullied. So I stopped reporting it, and tried to kill myself instead.

"I know you think it was horrid, but really, it's all in your head flower, so run along and play nice"

I also liked the very useful "stop moaning" whenever I bothered to report the bullies.

Oh yes, "Just ignore it and they'll stop", that was a classic. Of course, I've always assumed that that's just how it was in the bad old days, and teachers are FAR too empathetic and well-trained about bullying and generally switched on to say anything like that now...

manicinsomniac Tue 11-Sep-12 16:00:22
B is still friends with the others because she has to be. They work together day in, day out.

^^ Holy fuck.
No, you do not have to be friends with work colleagues outside of work and you certainly don't have to invite them to your wedding. The only duty you have to them is to remain pleasant and civil at work.

She also has no real reason to believe that they did anything wrong.

Friend A & B are so close that B has asked her to made of honour...

Real reason for believing friend A number 1: She quit her job
Real reason for believing friend A number 2: She is declining the honour of being her best friends maid of honour and supposedly "spoiling" her best friends wedding

So you know A is feeling fragile, has had personal problems and self-esteem issues and has EITHER suffered from these so badly that her perception of other colleagues' behaviour has been seriously affected (suggesting a possible mental illness such as clinical depression) OR has genuinely been bullied, to the point she felt her only solution was to resign - it doesn't really matter which of these was the case, the important thing is the effect the situation has had on A...and you react not by being supportive and understanding, but by emotionally blackmailing her to attend her so-called best friend's wedding, by calling her 'childish' and 'selfish' in the process and by implying both that her reaction is unjustified and the bride-to-be's feelings are more important than hers are? Have you got ANY idea how utterly crap you will have made her feel? That's not friendship OP, it's - oh, guess what - bullying.

If I had to choose who was being "childish" and "selfish" - the person trying to preserve her sanity/health/dignity or the person crying and sulking and prodding others to do her dirty work so she gets to enjoy her "special day" at the expense of the feelings of one of her supposed friends...well, guess which one I'd pick.

And on a purely practical note, and assuming not unreasonably that the bullying did happen as A describes - A might not be expected to sit on a table with the bullies or speak to them in general circulation - but what happens if she comes out of the cubicle in the Ladies' and there they are touching up their lippy?

OMG teachers? Bloody hell, I think you ought to swap places with the kids. I overhear my reception age dd1 and her friends negotiating and they have more understanding and fellow feeling than anything I've seen from you.

it's not helpful to slag off and generalise about teachers. At our primary school they are all lovely and I am often astonished at how together some of the younger newly qualified teachers are! I wasn't that mature when I was their age

My mum told me to ignore the bullying and it would stop. She was wrong - and worse, she made me feel as though I couldn't go back to her when it did carry on despite my ignoring to - I just felt she'd say I hadn't ignored it well enough. I honestly don't know what my teachers would have done - I never told them, because if my mum wasn't going to help me, why would they?

Manicinsomniac - what would you have said to me, if I had come to you and reported the bullying that continued all through senior school, made me suicidal by age 14, and blighted my entire life with depression? Is it different to the way you've treated your friend? If so, why?

Another question - if you trust Friend A, do you accept that you have done the wrong thing (and a very hurtful and potentially damaging thing) by trying to emotionally blackmail her into being the Maid of Honour? Which is more important to you - your friendship with the people at work, or your friendship with her?

Bullying is very common in teaching. I've been bullied by my HOD in the past, who was promptly promoted to Assistant Head. She was the school golden girl and it was awful. I actually ended up suicidal and signed off with stress. She even told the children that I was 'mental' when I was off. Thankfully she's moved on and since then loads of other people have come out and said that she bullied them too, but at the time no-one believed a word I said.

I've had a more recent experience that has been pretty devastating too, but as it was a colleague with no power over me it has been easier to cope with.

I only socialise with people from work one-on-one now as all I can think of is that they didn't support me, but instead supported her.

YABU - A should not have to face them at all.

I knew right away that you were teachers after I read those 'notes'. Sounded exactly like standard teacher/pupil 'talk' about bullying...ignore it, life's like that, we can all get on in social situations, blah, blah. That poor woman. Time to stand up and be counted then...

Good post OrangeFireandAshes

Wow, I think people are being very hard on the OP. The alleged bullies are her friends too - in fact I think she said in one post that she has known them longer than she has friend A. It's basically their word against hers - so how is she meant to know whose version of events is correct? I've been caught in a similar situation - 2 friends telling me conflicting versions of events and no idea which one to believe and it's not easy.

I'm not at all saying that friend A is lying - but things aren't always as straightforward as they seem. I have, in the past, considered myself bullied at work. Nobody was openly horrible to me, it was more a feeling of being excluded - but I realise with hindsight that I was depressed at the time, so those feelings might have come from within me. I do know that I probably wasn't thinking very clearly at the time and to this day I'm not really sure if it was bullying or not. I share this just to highlight the fact that things are not always black and white.

So, you have never maintained a relationship longer than 2 months, have been accused of bullying in the past...and now have driven a 'friend' into not speaking to you. You sound nasty. I hope friend 'A' finds the strength to cut you and 'B' from her life for good.

Obviously a lot of people here have been bullied. Me too. But that doesn't mean that we can reasonably be sure that Friend A was being bullied. It seems a bit much that people are piling on to accuse OP of being blind to the bullying, when none of us know the situation. I think OP has given a plausible account of how Friend A could have believed certain colleagues were treating her more badly than was the case.

I have encountered bullies in my life, I have also encountered people who are over-sensitive and who never leave schoolgirl "friendship politics" behind. It's plausible that Friend A, if she was already thinking about leaving work as it's not neccessary for her and she is happier not working, could have made a mountain out of a molehill, but has got so worked up she is now unable or unwilling to move past it thus causing wedding upset.

In which case Friend B and OP don't seem so unreasonable.

I don't know if the above scenario is true or not, but it seems plausible.

A couple of points though: it seems vaguely unhealthy that work relationships and personal friendships are mixed up so inextricably here, and also even if the above scenario is the case, since it is clear that Friend A is at the least very sensitive, the "childish and selfish" comments still seem inappropriate and I think you should probably apologise, for the sake of getting a better outcome even if you don't actually feel sorry about it.

I don't think it matters whether bullying actually took place or not - of course we can't tell that from a thread (though I thought there were gaping hopes in the OP's reasoning there, personally). The thing that matters is that, as OP has acknowledged, friend A feels very strongly that it has.

In that scenario, if A is the best friend and MOH, I can't see why Bride wouldn't defer to her feelings over those of the colleagues (difficult as that will be now).

It's no good "believing" someone's suffered in a pat-on-the-back way and then when the chips are down suddenly revealing that you don't really believe them at all.

But they're not just her colleages; they're her friends.

Honestly if OP had left out the detail about them all being work colleages I think people might react differently. Imagine if one of your friends accused other mutual friends of bullying them - it wouldn't be a straightforward situation.

(as an aside, I do think it's a bit unhealthy for people's personal lives and work to be so clsoely intertwined.)

Yes, that's a good point MadBus. It is quite difficult to actually imagine the friendship dynamics here, and work out why everyone is acting in this way...I do have a friend that could be like Friend A in terms of being hugely sensitive, overreacting to any perceived slight, and employing "I'm not talking to you if you're talking to X who I don't like" type tactics. Which I do find extremely trying, but because there are sides to her that I really like and because we are old friends and I know she cares about me, I maintain the friendship and try to ignore/minimise all that stuff. And so because I know it would be pointless to call her out on some of the things she accuses people of, I just let it all go. Which is maybe wrong. But I would be pissed off if she then started pulling all that shit around my wedding day. So maybe the wedding interference is a step too far for Friend B.

But then I could never be best friends with this type of person, if indeed that is a Friend A type person, it just wouldn't be possible. So I'm back to not understanding the dynamics.

Well I am not pigeon holing all rpteachers just the op group. However I have heard f many lie them on MN