So in my last post, I talked about how my friends keep posting pictures hanging out without me and I couldn't figure out if it was intentional or not.
Well, I confronted one of my friends about it today. In retrospect it was stupid of me to do it one by own instead of the whole group, but honestly I was scared they would all team up on me. Three against one is scary. But I should have had more courage and just done it that way because it's screwed things up.
In the message, I just asked basically if I had done something that made them feel like they couldn't invite me or if I had done something that made them not want to invite me. I said that I just wanted to know so I could either apologize if necessary or work on fixing it if I could.
The friend I messaged first got very defensive. She said that being friends goes two ways and takes work and she didn't feel like I tried. She said that her and the other girls tried to get me to do things with them and to talk to them but no luck. I don't feel like thats the truth. I feel like I tried very hard to be a good friend. I said yes to literally everything they wanted me to do, even when I didn't want to. Our conversations show me being the one left on read, and I always responded when they messaged me. I just didn't make any effort to keep the conversation going, but I will say I did that for months before deciding I didn't want to anymore. I'd get like one word replies or vanilla replies that weren't engaging.
And I told her all of this, a lot nicer but very similar. She still didn't agree.
Here's where I made a mistake I think. I told her that maybe next time when she and my friends get together, they should refrain from posting about it if they've excluded someone. I shouldn't have said that looking back.
She responded by saying that I had no right to tell her what she can or can't post and that posting of her friends makes her happy so she's going to continue to do it. I was irritated at that so I said that like or not, posting pictures of a gathering when you've excluded someone is rude, whether you excluded them on purpose or not.
I regret saying that because in total, she is not the friend that does this the most. So I will end up apologizing for that.
I just feel like I have ruined things with her. She was so defensive and felt like I was attacking her, which was not what I wanted. I messaged her first because I knew she would tell me the truth. I knew she would tell me if I had accidentally said something that hurt someone's feelings or if they had decided they didn't want to be friends with me. But I should have just messaged them all at once.
The good thing is, when I messaged my other friend she was a lot nicer about it. I had messaged her and the other girl after messaging the first, because the first was getting so upset that I didn't want her to tell the other girls and make it seem like I was being sneaky. The one who was nice apologized and said that she hadn't invited me to the gathering last night due to covid (which I still think is dumb because there was six of them there and I don't see how one more person could have endangered things, especially since they know I have had covid), but that she wants to keep talking to me and enjoys talking to me.
I know I've screwed up and maybe my first friend was right, maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I should have put aside my pride and kept trying to initiate conversations. Maybe I should have been a better friend.