I've (28F) been best friends with Lindsay (28F) and Stephanie (28F) since early childhood. Lindsay got married to her long-time boyfriend Chris (28M) this weekend, and Stephanie and I were bridesmaids along with Lana (28F), a close friend of all three of us since middle school.
I'm just going to list all the stuff that went down with this event in roughly chronological order and hope it's not too incoherent.
1) Lindsay held her bachelorette party months before the wedding. Her sister (the maid of honor, 26F) had a horrible time getting Stephanie to RSVP to anything, which made figuring out who owed money for what very frustrating for the rest of us.
Finally, on the day before the party started, Stephanie confirmed that she'd come to the party on Saturday morning and leave Sunday morning. Her boyfriend Mark (early 30s M) drove her two hours to the party, and picked her up from the hotel Sunday morning. She spent the whole weekend texting and calling him (which she usually does when we hang out with her -- while also being slow to respond to texts from us, if she responds at all) and left without saying goodbye to any of us.
2) The wedding was in a city that none of us live in and hotels in the neighborhood were pretty expensive, so in February, Lana and I emailed Stephanie and proposed renting a homestay. Stephanie never responded with any opinions or preferences from her or Mark, so we booked a reasonable option for Friday and Saturday nights and sent out an email explaining where it was/how much each person owed for the weekend.
3) My family lives in the same town that Stephanie and Mark do, so I decided to tack a few days onto my trip to see them and asked Stephanie if I could ride back with them on Sunday. She said yes and then mentioned that they weren't sure what day they would be coming down for the wedding.
4) The weekend before the wedding, Stephanie told Lindsay that she wasn't coming into town until Saturday morning due to a "last-minute work conflict" and couldn't make it to the rehearsal or rehearsal dinner.
5) On Thursday, Stephanie texted Lana to say she and Mark got a hotel room for themselves and wouldn't stay in the homestay with the rest of us but would pay for their share of it. As of right now, they have not paid for their share of it.
6) Stephanie came down to get ready for the ceremony on Saturday morning and, again, spent most of the time texting Mark/talking to him on the phone. He came to the reception but not the ceremony because "he would get bored and doesn't know anyone who's not in the wedding party."
7) Stephanie and Mark left the reception at 10pm without saying goodbye to anyone. Mark was seated at a table with another of our mutual friends and kept talking about how he loves Stephanie so much and never wants to be apart from her and doesn't like that she has hobbies because "that's time we could be spending together."
8) After they left, Stephanie texted me to tell me that they were leaving at 9 am the next morning and the hotel was an hour from where I was staying, so I'd have to find a way to get to them if I still wanted to ride with them. I did not want to get up that early AND it was not logistically feasible for various reasons, so I made other plans.
Honestly, I'm a little mad/annoyed about all of this -- it's been logistically frustrating for Lana and me, and also pretty insulting to Lindsay, who is truly one of the best people I know and has plenty of people in her life who would have been thrilled to be part of her wedding party.
But mostly I'm just concerned for Stephanie. She's always been someone who will prioritize romantic relationships over friendships/her own selfhood, but it's never been this drastic. She's also been noticeably more anxious and insecure since they started seeing each other, and has quit things that have been important to her. I've never personally seen him be angry or controlling or abusive, but this relationship is clearly a controlling, unhealthy force in her life. There are just so many red flags.
However, I don't know how to express that worry without alienating her further, and I don't know how to get a solid grasp on what's going on without potential negative repercussions. (And I don't know how to grapple with the possibility that she's just a flaky asshole who doesn't care about us, which is also a problem I would like resolved if that ends up being the case!)
If you've ever had a similar situation with a friend (especially if you were geographically distant from them) how did you approach the situation, and what happened as a result? I'm normally clear-headed about difficulties in my friendships, but I'm really at a loss here.
TL;DR: I think my friend is in a controlling/abusive relationship, and I don't know how to confirm/deny those suspicions or express my concerns to her.
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