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birthday invite dilemma (long)
To spare you the long and drawn out version, I am trying to decide if I should send an invitation for Audrey's birthday party to "friends" of ours who are also Jacob's godparents. The friendship has been on a downward slope for nearly 2 years now, and she has done a lot of things that have hurt my feelings, but I am not a confrontational person so I never said anything.
The reason I am questioning it now is because of a few text messages she sent me last week. I rarely hear from her, but I got a random text asking when I was going to send her the info so she could design Audrey's invitation, which was followed up by or am I not good enough to do her's either?...she is referring to the fact that I did not ask her to do Jacob's this year, yet even if I wanted her to she never asked. I think she is still bitter about the fact that I ended up having someone else do his last year even though initially she was going to, because I didn't feel like she was reliable and would get it done since she is a poor communicator these days. Aside from that, I was very disappointed with how Audrey's birth announcements turned out (which I did not want or ask her to do, but she hassled me about it until I just gave in) and while she does great work in general, the stuff she has done for me has been just "ok".
I told her that I am ordering through the company that did Jacob's birth announcements because I won a $50 credit from FB, and it was going to be dirt cheap and they will print them and send envelopes. Well that ticked her off and it spun out of control from there. She said that dirt cheap can't beat free (from her) and the cost of hurting my "best friend's" feelings and that is when she went into the ordeal of invites from last year and Jacob's this year blah blah blah. Yes, she would design them for free, but I still have to have them printed, cut them and buy envelopes and probably not love it...so no it is not "free" She basically said that I "owed" her the business because she is trying to build up her side business because we are friends.
I tried to get away from the topic and asked her if she was coming to Jacob's party because I never heard anything from her about it...and she responded "I suppose we wont not come because of this"...so she obviously considered not showing up over some stupid invitations....which she claims she was just joking. So, I don't really know at this point if she really is coming. A lot of other stuff was said on my part after this because I was fuming. She says she wants to get together this week to talk and hash stuff out, but I am not making the effort, if she attempts we will go from there.
So, my dilemma is...do I send her an invitation to Audrey's party if we do not get together and talk about things? Sending her an invite would just be a formality because I already know they won't be coming because they will be out of town.
This whole situation is just really uncomfortable to me at this point....
Thanks if you made it through all of this.
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Re: birthday invite dilemma (long)
I would send the invite if you don't get together and talk about things. It's a double-edged sword though. If you send it, she may think you are rubbing it in her face that you used someone else to make them or something like that. And if you don't send one, then you don't want her there and don't want to be friends with her.
I say the lesser of two evils is to send one!
It sounds like she's already making the effort. She's recognizing that there's a problem and saying that she wants to get together to fix things. She was a good enough friend that you made her the godmother of your child, so either get together to smooth things over or just let go of the friendship altogether.
What happened last year? Did you tell her that you had found someone else? Or did she just find out when she got the invite?
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I was actually up in the air until I got to the bolded. If you know they can't come, I'd send the invitation. That way you're being nice, and you don't have to worry about things being awkward at the party because she won't be there.
Amen to everything Jersey said.
The whole thing reeks of passive aggressive behavior on both sides. She extended the willingness to get together to address the relationship either take her up on it or let the friendship end. Do not send an invitation to someone just to prove a point or "be the bigger person" or as a formality or for any other reason than because you hope that the invitee will be a part of the joyful celebration of your child's birthday.
If you do not wish to continue a friendship with her, be gracious and honor the friendship you once had by telling her you feel the relationship has run its course and that you wish her well in future OR sit down, be honest, loving, and solution-focused and fix the relationship. But carrying on as it is right now shouldn't be an option, imo.
Yes, on the surface it appears she is making an effort, but she will tell me countless times we will get together and do XYZ and never follows up with it. For the past year and a half I have called, left messages, emailed, texted etc and I will not get responses probably 75% of the time. We invite them over, ask them go out and do various things...they completely ignore the attempt at communication as if it never happened and we never asked. So, if she takes the next step and wants to get together I am ok with that because I do value the friendship, but I am not putting forth the effort and looking "desperate" and going to haggle her to get together with me. I truly don't believe our friendship is that important to her for many many reasons that I did not go into.
Jersey: what happened last year was that I had asked her to do Jacob's invites and she said she would...this was fairly early in the year and his birthday isn't until June. I did not expect her to start working on anything until after her wedding which was mid April because obviously she is very busy with that. But over the course of the next few months the communication got even worse....again not responding to calls/messages/emails/texts and I hardly heard from her at all. she would not even get back to me on matters of her wedding in which the 3 of us were in. So, it was still early at this point...like April and I really questioned if she was going to do it and pull through since she was basically ignoring any and all attempts at contacting her, and I didn't trust that she would do it. So, I found someone else to do it and I had posted something on FB about how happy I was about it and she got ticked off...and of course called me immediately then. She told me she had it all done and that she had even told me it was complete and thinks I went behind her back and had someone else do it on purpose to spite her. What do I have to gain from having someone else do it if hers was done and I knew about it? I PAID someone else to do it, that is just ridiculous. She claims she had texts and emails to prove that she told me....which I never received and never happened, but I wasn't even going to go down that road of..."oh well prove it to me"...it wasn't worth it and I knew she couldn't. If I would have known that she was already working on it (which I did not expect her to do be doing that while planning a wedding for a party that isn't until June) then I never would have asked someone else.
I truly can not believe that there is all of this petty drama over kid's birthday invitations....I mean, really????
I don't know what has happened, but she is not the person I called my best friend and I really don't know what happened.
Sounds like maybe there's something else going on, and you're bearing the brunt of it.
I would go ahead & try to meet up with her to hash things out. I actually did this with a good friend-turned-frenemy a couple of years ago and it worked out really well. There were a lot of misunderstandings between the two of us, miscommunications, assumptions, etc. Throw in rumors that mutual "friends" started, and... disaster. In one night we repaired years of bad blood between us.
And it sounds like she realizes that there's a problem that can be talked out, so I would give it a go.
Now... if she bails / doesn't follow thru / whatever - then... sounds like you have a decision to make.
As far as the invite, I would wait & see how the hash-out goes before I decided. If you're still up in the air, personally, I would still send it. I'd rather err on the side of being "too nice".