Wow, that is really strange - And also, it’s not that strange either!
I can offer insight into what probably led to the point of no return, if you want to hear it?
I’m not sure from your OP whether you just want to vent or whether you’re open to understanding some ideas of why thus could have happened, so I guess I’m posting just in case.
I’ve taken ages to write this in between other tasks so sorry if the thread has moved on.
I also don’t think what happened was acceptable.
I think you should drop this ‘friendship’ ASAP, but there are lessons you could learn about how to behave towards others in the future with physical illnesses and disabilities. Should you want to.
Tbh when you first started recounting the way you were ‘helpfully’ suggesting your solutions for her physical disability, I was 100% on your friends side! And to keep doing this over and over again, well, you certainly have persistence don’t you?!
But then the reaction after was so disproportionate and shocking for you, and to spill over into the next day?! So of course I feel for you lots having to go through that, especially as you don’t seem to have seen it coming at all, so utterly blindsided by it.
But back to the beginning of your evening, where you’ll find the answers to what happened I think... As a disabled person, I can tell you that there’s nothing more alienating than being forced to parry people’s spontaneous and thoughtless solutions to your complex and multifaceted situation. Like you’ve never had those same ideas yourself in the weeks, months and years of your disability? There’s an all too familiar pattern to these ‘helpful’ problem-solvers. First the obvious questions. Then, I’ve noticed that people tend to get very fond of their bar-side ideas, and decide their uninformed ignorant pet theory is ‘The Answer’ to your problems. And then of course they get upset when you point out the essential flaws in their plan. The core issues that mean the idea isn’t practical, or has barriers that mean that although it’s a nice idea, in reality, it’s not practical. Honestly, if this simple idea was all it took, don’t you think your disabled friend (and all the other disabled people in the country?), would have jumped at the chance? But, and this is the predictable final stage in these types of conversations, to polish it off, it’s always the disabled persons fault for being ‘negative’. The person gets annoyed when the disabled person continues to be a party pooper and either explains why their lovely shiny new idea doesn’t work out, or how they’ve already tried it and X happened. Then it’s convenitently all the disabled persons fault. Now they don’t realky want to get back into work, they’re just being awkward, or they have a bad attitude, or they should try harder... I know it’s super annoying when disabled people keep pointing out how disabling being disabled is, but just imagine trying to live like that?!
Over the last 7 years, what I’ve found is that people Really Don’t Understand How Disabling Being Disabled Really Is. and I get it, I really do, as I once had that luxury too, of not understanding disability, of thinking I got it, but being able to walk away from my thoughtfulness and get on with my own life whenever I wanted to.
It’s incredibly hard when you can’t turn off the awkwardness of your condition, ever. Not just to get the essentials done, or to prioritise X task now and forget about the disability until it’s done, or to go be disabled on someone else’s time because X’s time is too important.
It’s utterly miserable and an evening of that type of behaviour from you would have been very upsetting for your friend. She would have felt belittled and also probably increasingly isolated, with your lack of insight demonstrating the yawning chasm between her as a physically disabled person, and you as a healthy person, and n’er the twain shall meet, as it were. If you persisted in this mode of interaction with her, it would have felt like an inquisition, a kangaroo court where she had to defend herself about why she was still inconveniently acting disabled to everyone, why hadn’t she just got up and battled it out and why, in effect, was she failing?
Even if you didn’t mean to make her feel like that, when someone is very low and unconfident, can’t you see that pushing her to justify why she hasn’t / won’t do X idea, isn’t going to be a terribly positive thing to do? It’s certainly no way to spend an evening out with a friend!
When an illness or accident suddenly takes away your health, it’s awful. It’s so much more than ‘just’ having a bad back, or being tired all the time or whatever. It stops you being able to do all the things you enjoy in life, all the things that you need to do, and most destructively, it stops you from being the person you used to be. It does hammer your confidence and you’re self esteem. It can take a long time and a hell of a lot of courage to rebuild the pieces again. And some people never do. That’s not because they are weak, or annoying, or because they want to have changed. It’s because it’s really really hard, and really really unfair. I suspect a lot of people who never have to even think about disability, who go through life blithe and happy and strong in their confidence and self belief, they may well simply crumble under the reality of the daily struggle of what it actually means to be disabled.
But, none of that excuses the swearing and pushing and general escalation of behaviour that happened after.
It probably does set the scene for it though.
This is probably one of the key reasons she completely lost it. And this is probably the reason she acted like you were the aggressor though you couldn’t see why she would have felt ‘got at’ at the time.
Once you’d hammered on those sensitive spots over the course of an evening, added in drink and / or tiredness, then it sounds like it was a highly fraught situation just waiting to explode.
They both handled it extremely badly, and it sounds horrible for you. You were actually in a somewhat ‘vulnerable’ position in that you were staying with them and reliant on their hospitality. Which sounds completely lacking as the stay just broke down.
I think it sounds like it got to such a high level of fraughtness that your friend completely lost control, and she should have been able to either head that off herself, or her husband should have been able to step in and get you, as the source of the upset, away from her ASAP. All terribly awkward.
No screaming and swearing and shoving ever acceptable though. It’s just not. Sounds like your friend just flipped, as a disproportionate response. That says to me that she has a lot of stuff to deal with.
As you don’t seem to have picked up on any of the signs before hand that anything you said could be upsetting, or that your friend was getting distressed, then to have this massive disproportionate response, it must have seemed really shocking to you.
I also wonder about how nice she is normally, the illness and the upset aside? You said she freaked out at you like this before? Was it in similar circumstances or before she became physically disabled? Do you think she’s a nice person in general? Or is this a factor?!
I’d walk away from this ‘friendship’ / situation and chalk it up to experience.
Of course she behaved terribly.
Honestly, it sounded like a tinder box situation to spark and unfold in this way.
You were just the spark. She obviously has a huge amount of highly flammable ‘baggage’ that she needs to sort out. That’s not your fault. Your spark would have just been a spark in an empty box.
But if you do want to learn anything from this, you could try and understand how to be a little gentler and more empathetic towards people with disabilities.