I managed (after hours of frantic page refreshing) to get some tickets to a local date of a world tour of an artist I'm mad about. The tickets sold out in a morning and I know of lots of acquaintances who tried and failed to get tickets.
One of my best friends is also a massive fan. We both tried and failed to get tickets for the previous tour and have often chatted about how we'd do anything to see this artist and had a very informal agreement that if one of us ever had the chance to see them, we'd go with eachother.
Neither of us knew about these particular tour dates, I found out the morning the tickets went on sale and didn't bother to contact friend first as she often can't take personal calls/messages while at work, plus I was totally consumed with monitoring the screens on laptop/IPad/iphone.
I thought I may as well get 4 tickets, one each for DH and I, and two more, thinking I would give friend 1st refusal on the extra tickets, but confident I could easily find many others who'd want them if for whatever reason she didn't.
So once I'd paid for tickets, I waited till I knew she would be on lunch break and messaged her the news. I told her that either one or two tickets were hers if she wanted them, the price and not to worry if for whatever reason she couldn't come, ie not to feel obliged. She was really excited and said it's likely she'd have a ticket for herself, but she'd need to check finances and whether DH wanted the 2nd ticket, and get back to me.
So that was 2 weeks ago and she's not mentioned it since. I put it down to Christmas busy, and possibly her worrying that if she gave me a definite yes she'd feel she'd have to give me the cash (out of her own inherent politeness rather than any demand from me) and she might be feeling skint in the run up to Xmas. We had plans to see them after Xmas so I thought maybe she was waiting till then to let me know, but it wasn't mentioned when we saw them and I didn't bring it up as I didn't want to make her feel awkward in company for whatever reason.
I never gave her a timeframe to confirm, partially because I didn't give it much thought, I guess I assumed she'd really want to go so it wouldn't take weeks of consideration, and also because it's money from my savings, I'm not particularly out of pocket as I could easily sell the tickets to someone else, I also have cancellation insurance so just not an issue (I didn't tell her any of that though, and as far as she's aware we're not especially flush atm)
I know I just need to ask her straight if she wants the tickets or not, and I plan to. Just in the meantime I guess I'm just a bit surprised and put out she's left me hanging like this. Also, our shared love of this artist has become quite a defining feature of of our friendship over the years and I always thought that if we had the chance to eventually see them, we'd spend the entire lead up getting excited and buzzing about it. As I said, there's loads of others I know would love to come, (and a few have already checked to see if my tickets are spoken for when they found out I had 4) but I know I'd have the most fun there with her. I imagine she knows I feel that way.
If I'm honest, I'm kind of stalling pressing her for an answer as if it's a no, I'll be disappointed. That said, I've been careful not to make her feel obliged and if she does say no I will be totally breezy really-disappointed-but-completely-understand. There's every chance they've decided they can't afford the tickets/time or whatever, which is completely fine, but I also think the onus is on her to let me know rather than me have to chase her. I also LOATHE feeling like I'm putting pressure on people.
Is she BU for not confirming either way yet, or am I for not being more direct?
NB I fully accept this is potentially a total non-issue and could be resolved with a simple text/call, but I'm a bit bored and this has genuinely been playing on my mind over the holidays. Curious to know how you'd all feel in this situation and how you'd handle it. If you managed to read all that and are still with me, you deserve a bloody ticket yourself.