Does anyone have a queen bee type of person in a friendship group? I'm trying to work out the best way of dealing with her and wondered if you wise mumsnetters can help me.
I only recently realised that this is what is going on in a group of friends I'm in. I'll call her Debs she like to hold court, to have us around her like a queen bee - dancing to her tune, flattering her, praising her, thanking her for things she's done. She finds some other women (like me) a threat and will try to undermine them and criticise them to others in the group. I really don't know how to deal with her as I'm not even sure that she knows what she's doing consciously
I met Debs and her DH about 5 years ago she's a similar age to me, and she made a beeline ('scuse the pun) for me and DH - invited us to her house, to parties, included us in her friendship groups and her family. We went out together to the theatre, cinema etc she even met up with us on holiday for drinks and meals. At that time we didn't have many friends in the village and were flattered by it
This socialising went on for about a year, then we moved house a mile away, still near enough to meet up, and this carried on with us seeing them and them visiting us. After a few years, we missed all our old friends and the village so we decided we'd try to move back. Debs and all our mutual friends were pleased we were moving back and we slotted back into the same friendship group with Debs but things had changed somehow.
Debs had cooled off us and would often ignore me and talk to someone else - a female friend, to the point where I felt excluded. I almost felt that she was doing this to deliberately exclude me and other times she'd be friendly and chatty to me, she seemed to blow hot and cold and I couldn't really understand what was happening - had I offended her or upset her? She seems to have younger women friends who she becomes almost obsessed by, like she did me and it's these that she chats to exclusively and pushes me out, it seems like they bolster her ego - a mutual appreciation society.
Debs likes to organise trips for us as a group. I've found that if I suggest a trip or an activity she will question my ability to organise it properly to me and to others, and she seems quick to do me down with negative (jokey) comments
I've found this all very stressful as I couldn't see what had gone wrong with what I thought was a friendship and I couldn't see why she seemed to be pushing me out. As I write this it's seems more like what children can do to each other and we're grown women.
We keep in touch through a message group and Facebook. There's quite a bit of banter as well as chatting and support. I tend to like or comment on her posts as I do everybody else in the group. She commented to me recently, about someone who's always liking and commenting every post she puts on Facebook and how it's like she's stalking her, I wondered if this is how she sees me too, as in my efforts to revive our friendship back to how it was, I like and comment on her stuff on fbk and to chat to her and keep up the banter etc All it's achieved is a continuation of the exclusion and undermining me to others.
It all fell into place a week ago, and I realised that she fits the queen bee type and it's probably not about me except that I'm a friendly, funny, empathetic, likeable, person within this group of people and I might be seen by her as a threat to her queen bee status.
I want to continue to be part of this group, we meet in the pub once twice a week as well as doing activities together - it's nice to be part of such a social group but I feel that Debs is trying to undermine me and push me out. So, wise mumsnetters, how best do I deal with this - do I challenge her and risk losing friends within the group? Do I ignore it as she may not realise what she's doing? Do I chat to others instead? Do I do what she's doing?