Engagement joy overshadowed by best friend’s insulting hatred of her relationship. AITA?
"Me with my best friend, I just got engaged and wanted to share the news and all she said was; 'Relationships are trash.'"
To be honest, I'm kinda done with this relationship but wanted to check if I'm out of line first. I've been friends with Laura for like, fifteen years now. We went to high school, college together and now live in the same city, though in different parts.
Basically, we were single for awhile together but after about a year of working my new job here, I met a boy and we fell in love. yesterday after 3 years of dating he asked me to marry him!!!
I was so excited and so, of course, I went to tell Laura right away, and so I texted her a picture of my hand with the ring and she sent back "that's cool. relationships are trash."
I was a bit taken aback tbh. She can DEF be rude, especially when someone else shares news that she doesn't have (like when I got my job she was still unemployed and told me that my job was a crappy temp one anyway (it wasn't temp at all), but when she got HER job we had to have a big party to celebrate "the start of her career!!").
Anyway, I'm thinking of sort of ghosting her after all this. I don't have very many friends so, for my best friend to kinda crap on a special day made me really angry and sad.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP’s post:
Wow. With friends like Laura, who needs enemies? She's clearly peanut butter and jealous of your life accomplishments, viewing them as attempts to one-up her instead of opportunities to celebrate you.
I think unless you're happy for your friendship to be a competition forever, you're better off without her. Fading out is the best and most mature thing to do - though the petty side of me would be tempted to text back with, "And this is why you're still single and miserable. Do not contact me again" and then block from everything.
relationshipsrtrash (OP)
Ha! I like that too. I really wanted to say something nasty back but resisted it. you're totally right, im just going to fade out now. it sucks because she was my only real friend but im better off without her probably.
I'd text back "That was really rude and uncalled for." She's jealous and I wouldn't let her get away with not being called out. Then I'd ghost her.
Fifteen days later, the OP returned with an update.
It's been a few days since I posted here for advice and wanted to give yall a followup since I got so many kind comments (and a few pretty horrible ones, people can be so mean!)
Anyway a few of you gave me the courage to follow through with my decision to stop being friends with Laura. I didn't reply to her after she sent the original "relationships are trash" message for two reasons - one, I was busy having fun with my new FIANCE (i love saying that) and two I wanted to see if she would apologize.
Surprise surprise, she texted me like three days later asking if I wanted to go dancing and I just wrote back "nah." She then sent me a loooong message about how hard it was to be my friend since i never wanted to do anything with her anymore because i was too busy with my "crappy boyfriend".
That was pretty much the last straw and I'll admit it, I was petty and just wrote back "Thats cool. Your friendship is trash."
It felt great.
After i posted here last time I did a lot of thinking and realized that i was the one who was actually looking out for us and trying to make the friendship work and Laura just used me to talk about herself and make herself feel great at the expense of other people.
I'll be honest I cried a lot after that because like I said I don't have a lot of friends and it hurt to realize my "best friend" didn't really care about me. But with the comments here and the help of my lovely Brian I realized I wasn't doing enough to love myself or allow myself to grow.
So I signed up for some yoga classes and hope to meet some new friends there, and I've also decided to go to more of the events in our community to hopefully meet cool neighbors! Thanks for giving me the courage to love myself y'all.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP’s post:
I thank all the gods in the universe every day that I do not live with such exhaustingly petty and hurtful friends as this.
LOL gotta love that Laura still keeps reaching out like OP still wants to be her friend when she basically told her to suck it. These sorts of people only keep their meek friends around to dump on so they can feel better about themselves.
It’s telling that in Laura’s rant to OOP she called her fiancé “boyfriend.”
I have a long distance friend like this, luckily the distance helps create distance. She’s a friend I had in high school who became a roommate until she moved 12 hours away. Recently I’ve been on a fitness journey and have lost about 60 lbs (my goal is 100).
When we were catching up with each other, I told her about my weight loss and how I think if I successfully keep the weight off I’d like to become a personal trainer bc of my new found love for fitness. Her response was “ugh fitness girls annoy me.” It hurt and I didn’t really respond after that bc the negativity was just not worth the energy.
I'm betting that, once she got away from Laura, OP started to discover that Laura was the reason she didn't have other friends.
I love that she used the "your friendship is trash" retort. Unlike some posts where the offered retorts are ridiculous or way too personal, this is like, the perfect level of petty while also not really even being that mean. How could it be seen as anything but just desserts?