NC for this.
I feel upset as I have fallen out with a friend and not sure how to handle it. I don't really fall out with people as a rule and this has really unsettled me!
So I have been friends with this person for about 8 years. We used to work together but she was more senior than me, and then over a year ago, she was overlooked for a promotion and left for a better role elsewhere. I was really happy for her that she was doing well and I really really loved her as a friend. We have been through a lot together and I honestly thought it was a really special and valuable friendship.
However we went out for dinner last week with another mutual friend of ours, it was going well initially. Friend does drink pretty heavily and had a lot more to drink than I did. Then we went to a pub and out of nowhere, they unleashed this sort of diatribe about my workplace, very angry, going on and on about all the things we do badly, and whenever she mentioned the name of the organisation she sort of gestured towards me, even when talking about stuff that was nothing to do with me and way above my pay grade. It was very strange, they were so full of contempt and anger, I was quite taken aback by it. I wasn’t sure how to react really, and didn’t say very much. I felt like if I said anything it would sound defensive, and was interrupting me anyway, but mostly it just wasn’t really what I had expected on what should have been a fun night out and I didn’t really expect to be talking about work as much as we were or in that way. Then they left suddenly. Other friend commented on how angry they had seemed.
The next morning they text to apologise if they had upset me with their “views”. I replied and said that it had upset me a bit, not so much their views but they way they had been talking to me but that it was fine. Then they sent more apologies but along then lines of “I’m sorry if you felt that way”. I really do love this person as a friend and so I said I was sorry too, perhaps I had been a little sensitive and that I loved them and hoped they were ok.
That was over a week ago and they have ignored my message and not spoken to me since. I am in a group chat with the other friend and they have replied on there to others friend’s messages but not to mine. Other friend says they had had this before with them, the silent treatment and they need time to “come round” but they will eventually. But it just seems like a very immature way to deal with things and I’m not sure I want to Wait for them to come round and act like everything is normal again when they were pretty awful to me. It’s like they want me to do the running and repair things when really, I don’t think I was at fault?
Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this? Do I just need to get over it?