AIBU to not give a gift to someone I am no longer friends with?

[WeAreEternal]

I have cut contact with a friend after what I consider to be some unforgivable behaviour. I have no interest in ever being friends again.

We have mutual friends and I have actually gone as far as to stop attending our weekly coffee meet ups just to avoid the ex friend, so as a result I'm not really seeing my other friends now either.

I bought them all gifts quite a while ago, they all know about them as we were together when u bought them.
I have made arrangements to meet the mutual friends after school tomorrow to exchange gifts.

I was chatting with one of the mutual friends earlier and she said that she is happy to "pass on [exfriends] gift if you are still ignoring her"
I told her that I'm not giving ex friend a gift, and she said, "but you bought it for her, she knows you bought it, you are just being silly not to give it to her"
I explained that I genuinely have no interest in reconciling the friendship so I have no intention of giving a gift that cost £40 to someone I don't like.
But she didn't understand and just thought I was being petty and unreasonable.

So MN AIBU?

I have a but of an update.

So I have been and met up with the mutual friends.
The one who suggested I give her the gift told me that I should reconsider making up with exfriend as it is "silly to throw away a friendship over one incident."
Actually they don't agree with what she said/did, but they don't think it's worth losing a friend over one bad act.

I was surprised though that two of the friends, one who is exfriends best friend, told me that they wished I would consider forgiving exfriend but they completely understand why I wouldn't want to.

They all said they hope that I even if I don't want to be exfriends frequent again I will eventually come back to the group meet ups as they miss me.

No.

They've made their choices, they just want everything back to how it was - but it won't be.

You know what the bitch is capable of and what she really thinks, and you'll be waiting for it to happen again. When it does, your "friends" still won't be there for you. Don't forget they might as well have slagged your ds off by not saying a thing against the one you fell out with.

They're not your friends. I think you'd be a fool to re-join them.

No YANBU. I debated giving a girl in one of my friendship groups who I have V little time for a present as I gave them to everyone else and ended up doing so just to avoid politics.

Wish I bloody hadn't, it was met with a "oh, a present for meeee"... she hadnt got me one and now probably thinks I give a damn about her. I don't, I can't stand her but I give enough of a damn about the others not to put them in the middle of anything.

The friends don't seem to realise that if you're giving a present to someone they know you've fallen out with you are seriously devaluing the presents given to those you still regard as friends!

it really depends on the incident, doesnt it? Sometimes, some things, once is too much to forgive.
but it doesnt sound like it was one incident but a pattern of behaviour.

they want you to accept this horrible treatment of your child and be mates with someone whotreatsvhim abusively to make their social interactions easier.They really arent your friends.
friends would understand that you love your child too much to give tacit approval to bad treatment of him.

By the sounds of it, they all say they want to have no part, but it seems they are siding with the other friend.
They still arrange their coffee mornings without you, and you need to arrange a separate meetings just to give gifts. Why do you bother? Why exchange gifts with them at all? They dont sound like friends.

WeAreEternal. I agree with everyone else about your ex-friend and your friends but its your work colleagues that I can't believe. They told you to give the gift because she would be expecting it? . Do they know that you have gone non contact with her? Seriously, what planet are they on?

BTW, I bet your ex-friend is chewing your mutual friends' ears off about it all. She probably can't quite believe that someone stood up to her.

Is there anyone who independently witnessed the scooter incident or was it just the two of them ?

If her DD is sticking to the story I can see how this could become a significant problem.

Is there anyway one of the friends could volunteer to sit down with the two children and tease out what really happened ?

Dear Lord - she sounds like a truly nasty piece of work, but your friends are pathetic if they are prepared to be friends with her KNOWING that she is making up lies about your son and driving a wedge between you and the rest of the group. By ignoring the fact that she is in the wrong they are basically just telling her that they don't care how she treats you, they will be her friend regardless, and that is almost worse than what she is doing as it allows her spite and malice to triumph.
How they can acknowledge that she's in the wrong, support your decision not to want to be friends with her, but still allow the group to effectively exclude you rather than her is beyond me...

Achy We were both there. We watched it happen, her DD was about 150m in front of DS, there is no way he did anything. Her DD fell off her scooter because she was going too fast, that was all.

I forgot to mention in my update, You makes a good point, I have seriously considered that it could have been the exfriend who made the allegation about us being away when DS was ill, but exfriend was on holiday just before I received the letter, for two weeks (she got back two days after I received the letter) so unless the school sat on the allegation for several weeks it might not have been her. It puts enough doubt in my head to have stopped me confronting her with it anyway.

My colleagues are pretty useless, the person who said she would be expecting it is the same person I posted about a while ago who reported me for unprofessional behaviour for crying in the toilets at work.
Yes, I work with some lovely people.
I have no idea why I actually listen to them.

Sounds like you surrounded by idiots, tbh WeAre!
If some fool reported you for unprofessional behaviour for crying in the loos, then that says pretty much everything you need to know about their opinion!

As for your friends - No. Just no. I still can't believe they're trying to condone what the Queen Bitch has done in any way. Perhaps they are doing so because they half believe her? In which case, they're no friends of yours either.

So sad for them that they "miss you" - but why on earth would that matter to you? If they miss you so much then they should make an effort to meet up with you at a different time from QB, not try and drag you along to a place you don't want to be for forced socialisation with some idiot who loathes your son! Do they perhaps think that you will "forget" about it and start to be friends again if you're exposed to her enough?

CRAZY.

I don't understand your friends!! If I had 2 friends that had fallen out, I would meet one, one day and the other another day. Personally I would put time and energy into other friendships!

In your situation, I would not want to renew a friendship with her. And definitely I would not give her a gift!!

I remember your thread about that colleague reporting you.

She was a complete Bitch, don't give her opinion head space.

Id drop the other friends too, there's no loyalty there.

I'm a little confused by this.

You've decided that your friend is waging a vendetta against your seven year old son, based on what? The fact that your other friends assured you that she'd made an allegation that your son pushed her daughter off her scooter, hoping that she would die??

It sounds really implausible, I'm afraid. Have you heard this allegation from the horse's mouth, i.e. directly from your friend? All I could pick up from your posts was that she'd said that she'd been meaning to talk to you about his behaviour for some time.

Is it so inconceivable that your son is badly behaved at times? It strikes me that your friend may have genuine cause for complaint but that your friends have worked it up into "she thinks your son is a devil child!" and you've obediently started fizzing with indignation, calling a halt to the friendship with no further discussion etc.

How do you know what she "genuinely believes"? How have you, and others, decided that she's a "queen bitch" and a psychopath?

There's much more to this than whether you hand over a present. Why don't you actually listen to your friend and talk to her one to one? The other friends probably feel bad for stirring, and that's why they want you to reconcile. It's also why they don't want to discuss it any further.

Incidentally, I don't say that this applies to you, but in my experience, people who grouse about members of their social group being "manipulative", "outwardly charming" and "knows everything" feel frustrated because the person in question is cleverer than them and has won a logical argument with them.

I'm a bit confused by the bit about your colleagues, too. What has that, and your suspicion that one of them reported you for crying in the ladies, to do with the situation with your friends?

Financeprincess there is a lot more to it that one allegation that DS behaved viciously, as i stated in previous posts. She has done a lot of horrible things over the last four months directed at my DS, i just dont want to drag it all out on this thread as it was not its purpose.
The scooter incident was just one example of a story that she told about DS, she did far worse, including making multiple comments and allegations to the school.

I never said that i though DS was an angelic angel that is how she views her DDs i know he can be boisterous and naughty, like any 7 year old boy, but he isnt the vicious bully that she has made him out to be.

I have not discussed our falling out with the rest of the friends other than the text chat we had about whether or not i planned to give her the gift, a couple of texts asking if im ok and if we are going to sort things out (after it first happened) and the brief conversation we had over coffee on Friday afternoon.
When i first found out what she had been doing and saying about my DS i asked everyone if she had said anything to them, and they all confirmed what i had discovered, but there was no real discusion about it.
In actual fact friday was the first time i have really seen them since i stopped speaking to exfriend four weeks ago.

When i confronted exfriend about what she had been doing and saying we talked 'one on one' for about an hour while she sat there and basically told me that she thinks DS is a horrible boy. I know what she 'genuinely believes' because she told me.

The bit about the colleague was unnecessary but does relate to a very long thread i had quite a while ago on here, i was just stating that my colleagues arent exactly the best people to listen to, which is one reason why i asked MN.

I do hope that clears up your confusion.