Dear Kim,
My best friend of 15 years hosted a get-together two weekends ago and I wasn’t invited. I found out from photos online, and I’ve been sick about it ever since. We haven’t fought, at least not that I know of. But now I’m replaying every conversation from the last six months, and I keep landing on a comment I made about her son’s wedding. I’ve written her a dozen texts and deleted every one. My husband says I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but he didn’t see the photos. Was it something I said?
Sick About It
Dear Sick,
I want you to notice what you’ve been doing for two weeks, because you’ve been doing something impressive. With no new information at all, you have written, directed and starred in an entire movie. In your movie, your friend is angry, the wedding comment is the reason, the party was the punishment, and you are now on the outside of a 15-year friendship looking in. That’s a lot of production value for a story with exactly one confirmed fact: you weren’t at a party.
Here’s a truth about how our brains naturally work: In the absence of knowing, we are hard-wired to make up a story. The brain hates a blank space the way nature hates a vacuum, so it fills the gap fast, and it almost never fills it with “she probably kept it small” or “she assumed I was busy” or “her sister-in-law made the list.” It fills it with our own fears. Which means the story you’re telling yourself right now says more about what you’re afraid of than about what your friend actually did.
And could the story be true? Sure. Maybe the wedding comment landed wrong. But notice what your movie has cost you already: two weeks of misery, 12 deleted texts, and, if you keep this up, you’ll start acting cold toward her to protect yourself, she’ll wonder what she did, and the two of you will end up in a real conflict manufactured entirely from an imaginary one. I have watched 15-year friendships end exactly this way, with both people responding to stories the other one never wrote.
So, here’s your assignment, and it takes one sentence, which is 13 fewer drafts than you’ve already written: “I saw the photos from your get-together and I’m telling myself a story that I did something to hurt you. Did I?”
That phrase, the story I’m telling myself, is doing quiet, heavy lifting. It’s honest about what’s on your mind without accusing her of anything, because you’re not saying she excluded you, you’re admitting your brain went somewhere and you’d like to check the map. It gives her every chance to say “Oh honey, it was just the neighbors” or, if the wedding comment did sting, to finally say so, which would be a gift, because then you’d have a real conversation instead of a rerun.
Fifteen years has earned her the chance to answer a question instead of a verdict. Ask it.
Kim
Have a conversation you’ve been avoiding? Write to Kim at kim@bestconflictsolutions.com. Letters may be edited for length and privacy.
Kimberly Best, RN, MA, is a court-listed mediator in Missouri and Tennessee, a FINRA arbitrator, and founder of Best Conflict Solutions, LLC in St. Louis. She is the creator of the Best Conflict Conversation Cards. Letters are edited for length and privacy. Learn more at bestconflictsolutions.com.
Editor’s note: This column is for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional advice.
