Best friend complains about missing wedding
DEAR CAROLYN: My girlfriend and I decided to have a small, intimate wedding in a foreign country and invited guests with one month’s notice. We anticipated most wouldn’t come, so we clarified that there was no pressure at all and that we didn’t want gifts. Most of my friends couldn’t come but congratulated me and wished me the best.
My best friend, however, was silent until I followed up. When I did, he launched an avalanche of complaints: that he would have to ask for days off, pay for the plane ticket, buy a suit, and so on. He wrote that he detests me 5% of the time and called me a “wedding terrorist.” He was given the days off, but when he realized travel time would be six hours each way, he canceled.
I told him I don’t mind that he’s not coming, but I was hurt and upset that instead of congratulating me he adopted a victim mindset and complained for nearly two weeks before ultimately reneging. Am I wrong to be angry? — The Uncongratulated Fiance
DEAR READER: Adult tantrums never fly, and you’re also hurt by his lashing out, understandably. But you’re reacting to the wrong thing.
It’s clear you took pains to let guests off the hook, which is good and necessary when asking them to take a 12-hour round trip out of the country on very little notice during a yep-still-there pandemic, with all the maximized airfares, passport expediting fees, covid-mitigation steps and rush tailoring that imposes.
But it seems you’ve failed to consider that not everyone sees wedding attendance as a hook they’re grateful to be off.
You “don’t mind that he’s not coming,” but he does. He minds. He wanted in on his best friend’s wedding! Right? Is attendance at his wedding something you’re indifferent to?
He may well have held in the back of his mind, for years, a vision of your toasting each other and hitting life milestones at each other’s sides. That doesn’t obligate you to make his vision a reality. However, basically the entire job description for a friend is to care what your friends want and either provide it or be thoughtful in choosing not to.
Plus, he could be processing the effective loss of your old relationship as you re-center yourself on your wife-to-be. That can be normal, healthy, and hurt like a kind of death.
Again, he could handle these things better. Much. But so could you.
You took the imposition on your guests into account, yes — on the very surface, regarding money and time. About your loved ones’ attachments and feelings, you’ve been pretty self- and girlfriend-absorbed.
That’s hardly rare and to some extent understandable at a time like this — a multibillion-dollar industry was built on that reflex — but still, when it happens, and when a best friend winds up on the receiving end of the resulting thoughtlessness, then a prompt, thorough and heartfelt apology is due on receipt. “I’m sorry we made it virtually impossible for you to be there. I should have anticipated that you’d feel blindsided and left out.”
DEAR CAROLYN: I am a writer by profession — meaning I get paid to do what I do. I am constantly asked to edit someone’s community newsletter, write something about someone’s kid who plays lacrosse to send to college coaches, or write someone’s family Christmas letter (I hate those things, but anyway).
When I quote my hourly rate, I get the hurt look and, “Oh, I thought you’d just do it for me as a friend,” or — in the case of a newsletter — “Oh, I just thought it would be fun for you; it is a good cause and probably would not take much time.”
I keep quoting the hourly rate but it is the sad and hurt reactions that bother me. How to draw the line so that people do not see it as a rejection? I have even tried a slightly discounted friends-and-family rate but the problem persists.
—
DEAR READER: The sad and hurt reactions bother me, too, but not for the same reason.
These people have just been reminded they’re asking you to work for free, and they think “no” is the wrong answer? Come on, people.
Go ask for free haircuts, housecleaning and brain surgery, and get back to me.
Or don’t. As a society, we’re not exactly at peak manners right now.
Your answer is fine; you are reasonably treating them as polite people looking to hire you for skilled work, and you’re responding accordingly. The burden of their cheek is on them.
But if these exchanges gnaw at you, then, sure, shift your answer a bit: “Thanks for asking. Are you offering a job or asking a favor?” So when they say, “Favor” — blowing through the sawhorse of a hint you just dragged across that road — you can say, kindly, “I’m sorry — if I agreed to those, then that’s all I’d ever do.”
Chat online with Carolyn at 11 a.m. each Friday at washingtonpost.com. Write to Tell Me About It in care of The Washington Post, Style Plus, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071; or email