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Since you are Christian women, here is my suggestion: have a prayer session; each of you pray for the other women verbally, and with compassion. You should know what they are going through. You sit in a circle and dedicate your time to prayer for each other. Afterwards you reconcile. That can be your parting meeting, and it should feel right to each one.
If you can't trust the other woman to pray sincerely for you, and vice versa, then I think you have a bigger problem that will take much more work.
I do think that in a Christian setting you need to police your language. I also think that you feel unfairly chastised by this person. After you have prayed for each other, you should be able to speak sincerely to each other about how you both feel.
Since you're in recovery, trying to just act like it never happened, probably is an old pattern you might want to get past.
If you do talk to her about it, do it in private, with no audience. Be open and honest. Start with explaining that you're especially sensitive to people "scolding" you, whether they intend to or not. Then explain "when you said X, I felt Y." If she is open to owning her role in this, then you can both agree "next time, we'll both do Z."
What have you got to lose? If the friendship is already over, you've lost nothing. But if it's salvageable, you'll be glad you at least tried. I think that whether a person is in recovery or not, we all get presented with these little lessons we need to learn, at the time we need to learn them. If you don't get it right this time, you'll keep getting the same thing coming up again until you do learn it. Clearly, feeling admonished or scolded by others is an issue for you. Maybe falling into scolding or judgmental language is an issue for her. Maybe you can both grow from this?
You think because a child is autistic it's OK to swear in front of them? There's a big part of your problem.
The kid in the other room probably heard you too, kids hear a LOT, especially what you don't want them to hear.
If you have sincerely apologized and not repeated this action you do not deserve being scolded for this and it doesn't give anyone the right to be your "mom" and point a finger at you. It's always hard to respond in the moment when something unexpected happens but you should have called her up later when you were calm and explained why it upset you and that you do not want it to happen again. Period. She doesn't get to re-hash the first offense (if you apologized). She should apologize to you but don't demand it, suggest that you and she start over as polite friends. If she keeps haranguing you say "I hope you will change your mind" and hang up.
The problem with a group of "friends" is that one person can always tell their story to the others and make themselves look good and you look bad. Talk to the other people and tell them you and the other person have a past issue and you've apologized but she won't let it go and is embarrassing you. Tell your story before leaving the group. I have found that "problem people" are usually a problem to other people too even if you haven't heard any stories yet.
You were wrong to be throwing the F word around when you know it offends a member of the group - especially in her house, and with kids present. I mean, is it that hard to keep from using this word? Surely you don't use it at work, or at church, or standing in the checkout line at the grocery store (hopefully), so can't you refrain from using it around this woman? Didn't you already know it bothered her?
That being said, she shouldn't have called you out on that or anything else in front of other people. That's wrong too. But you're not responsible for her behavior - you're only responsible for your own.
Frankly, it sounds like the two of you will never be close friends but who knows? Maybe one way to find out is to pull her aside PRIVATELY and say something like, "I know we've hit a few rough spots but I just want you to know that I appreciate many things about you," and then name a few things. Maybe she's a good cook, or she is a good hostess, or she's talented artistically or she's a tireless volunteer, who knows - anyway, surely you can find something to brag on her about. Then hug her and say, "Call me sometime if you like and we can go to lunch!" Maybe she'll call, maybe not but you left the door open.
DO NOT have some sort of group discussion about whatever her personal drama is. Please. And don't discuss this or your actions with the other group members. THAT, my friend, is being a Drama Queen. Don't go there.
Maintain your personal dignity but show her grace. I think that's what Jesus would do.
Will try to Reader's Digest version this for you. Four friends, all in recovery, ranging in age from 38-50, all Christians. Of course, people being people, and women being women, it's not all gonna be puppies and rainbows all the time. Three of us aren't afraid to still throw around the F word, one of us is prim and proper in that regard. So recently when I got a little too loose with my language, the prim one scolded me in front of everyone (including another lady) and said please stop cursing in front of my children. (one is autistic so can't speak and the other was playing video games on X Box Live in the other room). Fine, she's got every right, it was her home and all that, but I didn't like the tone and she could have pulled me aside and said it.
You put very little energy into how you were, and continue to be, wrong, and a whole lot of energy into how other people are supposed to behave while handling the fact that you are wrong.
Classic indicators of the pathology of addiction. It's someone else's fault. Not yours. And, if it is yours, it's all very conditional and qualified and there's a lot of shared responsibility and most of the time and energy is spent in relating (to anyone and everyone who will listen) all the details of what everyone else (not you) has done wrong. You might be a little bit wrong, but everyone else is so much worse.
You used profanity in the presence of someone else's house, in the presence of their children and presume to judge the manner in which they dealt with you. Someone else might have thrown you out, right then and there and never allowed you to return.
My guess is that you've been taking advantage of other people in your self-centered manner, completely oblivious to your own pathology, for a very long time; so long that it's become 2nd nature and it's "just the way you are". One thing that might help you is to consider that if you really had a valid opinion about anything, you wouldn't be in the situation that you are in. The grandiose and delusional belief in your own adequacy is your primary problem.
Last edited by Mac_Donalds; 03-11-2016 at 07:36 AM..
You were wrong to be throwing the F word around when you know it offends a member of the group - especially in her house, and with kids present. I mean, is it that hard to keep from using this word? Surely you don't use it at work, or at church, or standing in the checkout line at the grocery store (hopefully), so can't you refrain from using it around this woman? Didn't you already know it bothered her?
That being said, she shouldn't have called you out on that or anything else in front of other people. That's wrong too. But you're not responsible for her behavior - you're only responsible for your own.
Frankly, it sounds like the two of you will never be close friends but who knows? Maybe one way to find out is to pull her aside PRIVATELY and say something like, "I know we've hit a few rough spots but I just want you to know that I appreciate many things about you," and then name a few things. Maybe she's a good cook, or she is a good hostess, or she's talented artistically or she's a tireless volunteer, who knows - anyway, surely you can find something to brag on her about. Then hug her and say, "Call me sometime if you like and we can go to lunch!" Maybe she'll call, maybe not but you left the door open.
DO NOT have some sort of group discussion about whatever her personal drama is. Please. And don't discuss this or your actions with the other group members. THAT, my friend, is being a Drama Queen. Don't go there.
Maintain your personal dignity but show her grace. I think that's what Jesus would do.
OK just to clear things up, the night when she said please don't cuss in front of my kids, I said "ass" and I was reading a text out loud that we all received from one of the other friends. She said I said another word, and I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was the s word that rhymes with pit, who knows.
I probably do say F at the grocery store, just sayin'.
Last edited by aneye4detail; 03-11-2016 at 08:58 AM..
As I always like to say to all of you in my posts, thank you all, very much for all your responses and I appreciate them and thank you for your time and thought (even the ones that take the answer so far and calling me pathologically rude and self-centered based on one little story).
Just an update, I had a private talk with her and told her I apologize for the cursing and if there's anything else I've done, I apologize and if she could tell me what it was I may have done, but she for some reason is keeping tight-lipped over whatever it was that caused her to decide to stop hosting our group. I threw out some ideas and reasons why we could develop our friendship and I feel like all I got was a stoneface. Maybe she was hoping I'd apologize for more, but I really have no idea what. This is the woman that I wrote about in a previous post, about her dogs, and how I can't stand them and I won't pretend that I like them.
As to the suggestions of leaving all of them, that's not a viable option in my head right now. These women are my life right now. They are my friends. We do things together a lot and text each other all day long. It's just that I'm having this clash with the one. But hey, at this point, I reached out, did the olive branch thing, brought her a gift last night, I don't know what more I can do. I hope that this doesn't sour our relationship as 4 friends.
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