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My friend and I are fighting and I think I'm right
I am 16 and I'm a female. i moved to a new town about 8 months ago and I've made amazing new friends and I love them. My best friend from my old town gets jealous of my new friends and she was being rude to one of my new friends online so I defended my new friends and not her. I called her immature and she is very upset with me now. How should I tell her it was her fault and she shouldn't have been rude? I don't want to apologize because I feel I did nothing wrong
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Maybe give some free advice about: Friendship?
Do you like being corrected, by parents, teacher, friends, etc... Its not a good feeling at all to be corrected whether the person correcting us is in the right or wrong about it.
Thats how human beings are dear..at any age. So what you need to learn in life which will take years to perfect, is using tact, when talking to someone, to pass on info, to remember to put yourself in their shoes. And I have also learned to use myself as an example, telling stories of a time where I faced the same situation and how I handled it. If I handled it bad, what did I learn to do instead better, or if I handled it good, how did it make others feel.
So lets say it was you who got jealous when your old friend starts talking about a new best friend of hers. You want to have contact with her new friend and you say some things that are hurtful to her new friend so your old friend tells you that was rude, and what you think about this new friend isn't true and you are rude. That makes you upset to be told you were rude. You're mad at her and she believes she was right. See the situation, feel yourself playing the characters in reverse. What feelings come up? How would you feel if it happened to you.
Hon, I understand you are just 16, but situations like this are going to come up in life over and over. Now is the perfect time to start to learn how to handle situations of conflict. There are great books on handling specific conflicts. But in this case, simply knowing how easily another can be hurt by being corrected is one step. Another for you is to always ask yourself, why a person might be acting a certain way.
If you had to live another persons life for a day, you might understand why some kid stole fruit at the farmers market, cus his only parent, mom is a drug addict and there is no food at home and he is starving. You don't call police and put that kid in jail. You find out why he stole and discover a mom who needs to go into drug rehab. treatment and get the professional help she needs while the state puts him either with relatives or in state foster care until Mom is deemed ready to have him back.
So let me give you a story of how much different your s tory could have gone. You already recognized a vital fact, that she is jealous. If you talk a lot about your new friends and keep telling her all the things you've done with them, how awesome and fun they are and giving all the details to that, you are basically focusing your talk only on the new friends instead of going over with her memories of the good times you had together, something that would make her feel better about herself. You could have wondered and /or asked if she has made any new friends. She may have, or not and be very lonely right now. Or she may be having troubles or issues with a new friend and needs someone to be a listening ear. Humans don't always need a solution from you, just your attention because half the time, as we tell our storys of woes or problems out loud, the answer will come to us. I really don't know how well you have been there for her at this hard transitional time of parting and having to make new friends. Maybe its easier for you than her.
So instead of going on the defense, which means you now have to pick a side, making either the old friend upset or the new friend upset for you not defending her, you dont defend at all. Heres how I would have said something and I'll make up some names like Hannah for old friend.
"Hannah, I heard what you said to Lisa. It reminds me of when I said something like that in a different situation, and the only reason I did it is because I felt jealous of my sister ( or put 'a friend') So I am wondering if maybe you're really jealous. Is it anything I am doing? Maybe I am not asking you enough questions about you or maybe I talk too much about my new friends or maybe you're having trouble finding new friends. I know they won't be anything like a replacement for what we had together as best friends but new friends can still be good friends. I guess I was lucky. So tell me, whats really going on for you Hannah. I want to be there for you as much as I can over the miles, even if just on the phone or in chat online."
Now if envious of what you have because she doesnt have it to distract her from the empty hole in her life when you had to leave, she might say that she is jealous and why do you have to talk about your new friends all the time. instead of a come back about how you dont always talk about them or saying something like that, you could answer, "Do I really talk about them that much? I'm sorry...it must make you miss me more and feel bad. Okay, I promise to not talk about them so much and I give you permission to tell me to stop if I actually do say too much about my new friends."
That hon, is problem solving. And its hard to teach you, you just have to be willing to be soft hearted, and care about others feelings, and always ready and willing to go the extra step to do something that might help a person feel better.
As already stated, do you prefer to be in the right or keep your old friend? Twice in my life with family when I had done nothing wrong, Mom misunderstood my reaction to her announcement, seemed I wasn't as boisterously excited as other meembers of the family...her first error...comparing me to others and not asking the distorted thougts that were on her mind. She stopped speaking to me for a long time like 6 months to a yr time frame. I was newly married but we worked at the same company and it was hurtful to have people notice. But after some tries to iniatiate contact, eventually she responded as if nothing had ever happened. The same happened when My dad took offense at free firewood he brought me...from a construction site with nails sticking out. Not only had we had a chimney fire but the company who cleaned our chimney told us to s top burning construction wood cus its treated with chemicals that make the chimney build up soot much faster. So I told him I couldn't accept the wood and to no longer bring it. He got so upset he stopped talking to me. No idea what he told my sister but she stopped talking to me, avoiding me for months. I again tried to be casual with phone calls and got hung up on or not answered at all.
One day as I called to tell her something funny my kid had done, she actually listened and laughed. And then carried on as if nothing happened. SHe never apologized. No one in the family had and family is as close as best friends so yes, it hurt...I was right but I was willing to bend and to mend the rift because those people were worth it to me, not the words of apology but how they showed it in how they treated me.
So its up to you to stubbornly hold on to your right to be Right and lose a friend, or to find ways to make amends. Apologize for calling her rude instead of seeing how much she was hurting and missing you still and may not have made friends. Or her new friends are a far cry from being as wonderful as friend as you were and still are. Its up to you dear, a chance to learn as I said in the beginning
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Do you want to be right or do you want to keep her friendship?
Of course you should stand up for your friends, but let's be honest, you probably could have done that without calling your old friend names and insulting her. Just because you are doing the right thing, doesn't mean you do it a way that is 100% okay.
Your old friend is in pain, and insecure. That's normal and perfectly human. If you don't cut her any slack on that normal, human pain she's feeling, she isn't going to be your friend anymore.
It's fine to say you don't owe her an apology, but you do owe her some more sympathy and respect than you are showing in your question here. If you don't give her some of that sympathy and respect, it'll be your fault the friendship is over just as much as it'll be hers.
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Its normal for your friend to feel that way if she feels the bond you too had is being threatened. sorry but thats just teenage girls for you! ; )
What you could do is let her know that your friendship is in no danger and that she doesnt need to be mean to other people youve just met. Its natural when you move to a new place that you will start making new friends, thats life and human nature and its not going to change.
Being nice to her isnt going to make you seem weak or anything, but you dont have to say your sorry either.
You can tell her in an adult manner that you care for her but that the things she said were totally unnecessary and if she is really your friend she will understand that.
Teen girls can be notoriously territorial over best friends and is probably sad and upset that you moved in the first place. What shes doing is showing you that shes upset you left and its really kind of a cry for help and shes probably just needs a good pep talk from you.
be the mature one about this, hear her out and try to be kind instead of responding with an overly emotional reaction that in the end wont fix anything at all.
you can do it ; )
good luck
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