This is a ramble and I completely understand that many of you will not have time to read this till the end. Thank you in advance to anyone that can stick with it.
My friend ‘Anna’ is really upset with me and I don’t know what to do.
I’ve known her for a few years now and she befriended me at the kids’ bus stop when no-one else would as I’m introverted and socially awkward.
She brings me out of myself and we both have a weird sense of humour.
She’s been through some awful stuff in her life including marriage breakdown, financial strain and very serious health problems that are ongoing.
Despite facing all that she is an incredibly thoughtful and generous person and fiercely loyal – and expects that loyalty out of her friends.
For a good few months last year a weekly-ish social thing was being at the pub for an hour or two on a Saturday with Anna and my DH and a small group of other friends that are all couples except for Anna, as our DC (including Anna’s) attend a nearby activity.
At one point we ended up chatting to a random other couple that were sat there.
It was Anna that instigated this as she can be very outgoing (on the outside) when she’s had a drink.
The couple, ‘Gemma’ and ‘Steve’, happened to live nearby to me and DH.
Steve and my DH have a common interest (shared also with Steve’s son) and there have ended up being a few social occasions (again at the pub) centred around that interest.
Sometimes just the blokes, sometimes Gemma goes along too (their children are older so they have more freedom than the rest of us) and I’ve been a couple of times.
The summer pub thing fizzled out over the colder months but these other meet-ups, which started very infrequently and have now become a bit more regular since Christmas, continued.
Anna hasn’t been able to come along to these as her health has been awful – she has been virtually house bound for months.
Some other history that’s relevant to this is that towards the end of last summer I managed to get Anna out to a spa day with me for my birthday, and did invite Gemma to that, but she declined (with good reason, nothing sinister).
It had already been a while since Anna and Gemma had seen each other at that point. Last month (i.e. a further 5 months on), Anna’s very close best friend of old who lives further away invited me to join in a surprise show-up at Anna’s house for her birthday, which I went along to and did not invite Gemma.
It would have felt a bit odd to do that since it was organised by Anna’s friend who knows me a little bit but does not know Gemma, and also Anna and Gemma hadn’t by this time seen each other in several months.
With Anna in a poor health state in her home, not knowing anyone was coming round, it would have felt very inappropriate to invite Gemma to that - and at that point it didn’t seem that either of them would have expected Gemma to be there. A few days later I attempted to take Anna out to lunch during my lunch break on her actual birthday – we didn’t get far because her health was so bad that day – I told Gemma about this and she dropped off a card and bottle of wine for me to give to Anna.
More recently I actually managed to make it out to one of the blokes nights that Gemma couldn’t go to, and we all ended up stopping back at our house afterwards for a couple of drinks.
I told Anna about that night and she thought it was great that I’d been out and had a laugh - she didn’t have a problem with that.
Sorry for so much boring detail but it’s all been dragged up now in this mess.
Last weekend we (me and DH) were invited (via Steve, messaging my DH) to Gemma and Steve’s for Gemma’s birthday.
We went and had some drinks and a nice evening.
On Monday Anna asked what we’d been up to at the weekend and I told her we’d been round to Gemma and Steve’s.
Anna said she felt really hurt that Gemma had deliberately excluded her from being invited. She went on to message Gemma directly about it and Gemma sent back some defensive messages, a lot of it centred around the previously mentioned occasions - i.e. a lot of tit for tat type griping.
In her messages to me Anna became more and more upset that I wasn’t angry on her behalf about the situation, i.e. I wouldn’t agree that Gemma was in the wrong to have not invited her.
I feel very certain that Gemma (and Steve really since he was the one that did the actual inviting, although I know it wasn’t a surprise) just wouldn’t have even considered inviting Anna, the same as I wouldn’t have considered forewarning Anna that we were going round there.
But Anna is convinced it was a deliberate act by Gemma to push her out of what she still sees as the ‘pub group’ to exclude her and steal me all for herself (Anna’s actual words) – essentially Gemma doesn’t want Anna on the scene because she is single, and is taking advantage of the fact that she has been out of the social scene from illness.
To try and move away from the awful WhatsApp messages (which I’ve now deleted off my phone to stop myself from raking over them all in tears) where in my opinion I was playing devil’s advocate to try and get Anna to see things from a different perspective, but in her opinion I was refusing to have her back and standing up for Gemma instead, I suggested we meet for coffee on Wednesday lunchtime.
She brought written notes. And read through them whilst referring to screenshots of WhatsApp messages as evidence, all to try and convince me that Gemma is a horrible person. And Steve too. In honesty there may be certain truths in some of her observations about them. Before she got so poorly Anna was studying for a psychology degree so she does always seem really insightful about people.
But she was calling Steve a narcissist and Gemma a covert narcissist because Steve is probably horrible to her, and saying that Gemma is basically able to mould me because I’m a submissive person.
And it’s disgusting that while Anna was the one responsible for getting us all chatting to each other on that first day in the pub, Gemma’s plan now is to push Anna out for good.
I couldn’t really cope very well with the situation in public in my lunch break.
Anna’s way of talking intimidated me as she was quite loud and animated and she got herself really agitated, worked up and crying.
Basically I froze up and hardly spoke at all while she ranted at me, but when I did speak my stance didn’t change – I still wasn’t going to say that Gemma had been in the wrong.
So things ended horribly with Anna saying I’m not the person she thought I was.
Later she told me that on the way home she’d had another health episode and was bed bound with her back completely unable to move.
I felt awful as I hadn’t accompanied her home.
Yesterday she messaged me saying she was gutted that I was sticking up for Gemma and not her.
I said I didn’t want to talk on WhatsApp but could call her or pop round today.
When I’ve tried to do that today she has said she’s not up to it.
I feel like this is only going to resolve itself with Anna if I ‘dump’ Gemma – don’t agree to do anything further as couples and just leave the blokes to do their thing.
That’s the only way to validate to Anna that I ‘agree’ it was wrong for Gemma to have not invited Anna to her birthday.
But I still don’t believe that’s true.
I have tried to imagine what it would feel like the other way around – if I was in Anna’s shoes – and I just don’t think I would have gone off on one like this.
The loyal thing to do here is try to smooth things over with the vulnerable person who I’ve been friends with for longer, even though it will mean sucking up how I actually feel about the situation.
So why don’t I want to?
Am I being unreasonable and disloyal to Anna?