tl;dr. Friend ruined a holiday another friend (who she only knows through me) had organised and bank rolled. I am inevitably going to run into her. How to approach 1. navigating that and 2. making it up or apologising beyond "I'm so sorry" to the friend who organised the trip?
Hey everyone, sorry about the bullshit drama in this post, I'm posting here specifically to try and AVOID any senior school nonsense. Also I wrote too much. Sorry.
I've known X (53f) for four years or so. We lived together in a large shared house for a year, terminating two years ago when I moved for reasons unrelated to her. We remained close and see each other on average four or five days a week due to both of us being in a very communal area - the locals are basically a huge slightly dysfunctional family with all the pros and cons that environment comes with. The local pub is basically our living room.
X and I are very close. Her husband views me as a sort of daughter kind of figure, he and I are also close, same with her son who's around ny age. X is also aquaintances with my partner of two years, he doesn't like her much but is friendly whereas she raves about him. This is sort of important later.
X and I have had minor arguments, normally based on my perceiving her as controlling and petty on occasion and her perceiving me as "wanting all the attention" and being selfish. She's basically always been a sort of 'Mum' figure and I think feels to some degree threatened by how ingrained I have become in our community since moving to the area six years ago. The sarcastic "you're the princess of the pub, now, aren't you?" gets thrown out when she's being argumentative. These arguments are minor, pretty much always when she's been drinking, and my normal response is to shut it down, walk away, let it go and hang out with her again when she's sobered up.
So. Background done.
A friend of mine who knows X through me was visiting from another city a long way away. This friend has always been very generous to me and people I'm close to, and suggested a group trip to the coast. We would not have been able to have afforded this without his help, it was a wonderful gesture. So, Friend (referred to onwards as such), me, my BF, X, her husband and a couple other mates planned on going, all booked, all paid for, AWESOME!
It starts getting knarly here. X basically took the reins of this trip. Kept inviting other people without consulting Friend which he was amazingly relaxed about, but put up some red flags for me. I talked to Friend about it and he said not to worry.
The day of, she AGAIN did a switch up of Friend's guests (?!), basically informed him her son was coming who's a bit of a wild card so we tried to dissuade but conflict is not Friend nor my's strong suit. He ended up coming.
She then packed several of my belongings and when I was getting anxious about, you know, KNOWING WHERE MY SHIT IS, was rude to me. I was heading down later than the rest of them as my BF was late from work.
BF and I got there, Friend picked us up, all went to the place he'd rented. Second we get inside, she's giving me a hard time. She's cooking something, very pointedly keeping me out of the kitchen (we cook together a LOT and it's one of our shared passions), making comments about how she's doing all the cooking, I don't care at this point so just say sure. She then uses up all of a specialist food stuff that I need to have due to allergies. Okaaaaaay, I'll just buy some more or eat something else then.
Everyone is tense now. With perhaps the exception of her husband as he's pretty deaf. I've apologised to Friend about how she's acting, he has absurd patience and brushes it off. (NB. Friend had never been to this location before and was excited, so I was even more horrified). I know that if I'd engaged or confronted her, she would really kick off, so I was basically hoping the copious amounts of wine she was drinking woild send her to bed which 8/10 times does when she's in this mode.
No such luck. I snap at the point where she realises I'm grey rocking, says something like "OP, you have to taste test! You're the only one I trust!" I say sure, and she then goes around the room smirking and glaring (quite a multi task) at me giving tests to literally EVERYONE else, finishing with my BF who had totally missed that particular interaction. She then asks if I wanted any, I just say nah and go back to what I was doing.
Another friend there (Y) lost her Dad last week. X goes up to her, interrupts our conversation and starts going on about it. After a few minutes, I can see Y really getting stressed by the convo, so I intervene, suggest Y and I go have a smoke outside. We do. I again apologise to Friend on our way.
When we get back inside, X has left. She began to argue with her husband about the weather, burst into tears, and went home. We were worried as she was drunk and in a strange city so her son hunted for her for two hours just in case, easily 20 calls between us, and we only stopped worrying when a housemate of hers called and was with her. At that point we just washed our hands of it, all had a lovely few days (yes, her husband and son included) and put it out of our minds.
We got back a few days ago and with the exception of seeing her on Saturday evening in the pub (she scarpered within ten minutes of us (BF, Friend and me) being there and sent her husband to clean out the cat litter trays (pub cats, her responsibility) which I ended up doing because of his breathing. Obviously avoiding us.
Friend left yesterday. She knows this. I KNOW I'm going to see her sooner rather than later, I'm furious with her. Friend had tried to do a lovely thing, she ruined the build up, the first night, and didn't even have the grace to apologise to him. We've planned a Take Two trip next time he's down, strictly him, me, BF and another close friend of all of us who definitely would not be pulling any shit. Even leaving to one side how nasty she was to me, how it affected Friend and everyone else wouod have severely damaged our relationship anyway, and frankly I never really want to see her again.
She's very likely to approach at some point, angry, yelling, telling me off for I'm not sure what (probably ruining everything???) and my plan is to just walk away but I don't think that's really going to work longterm.
We share a social group that I would be devastated to lose, live five minutes apart, shop at the same grocers etc etc etc, THERE IS NO WAY I'M CAPABLE OF AVOIDING HER. UGH.
Basically my question is: when the inevitable X flip out at OP happens, how best should I aporoach this? Walk away, reply (doubt I'll get much in)? Should I approach her when she's sober and have a, IDK, break up conversation? Also, how can I make this up to Friend? I am so ashamed of this and don't know how I can ever apologise enough.
I'm lost. Please Reddit, any advice?
edit. another detail I just remembered. When we got back, she'd left an envelope addressed to Friend behind the bar with money for her, her husband's and son's ticket in it. No note. Nothing. Luckily Friend found it amusing and actually pinned it on the wall (he was staying at mine, the damn thing went in the recycling thr second he left.)
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