Dear Reader,
Next week I head into the hospital for surgery on my sacral chordoma. This column will run Monday and possibly Tuesday. Surgery happens Thursday at UCSF Medical Center on Parnassus Avenue in San Francisco. I'll stay at UCSF for eight to 10 days before moving to St. Mary's Medical Center on Stanyan Street for a few weeks of physical therapy and rehabilitation. I welcome your cards, letters and visits, though it's not possible to know what condition I'll be in. As soon as I can, I hope to resume writing the daily column.
Dear Cary,
I was asked by a dear friend to be her maid of honor. I was immediately a little worried. I'm not into traditional wedding fanfare. I'm kind of like the stereotypical guy in that respect: Tell me where to go and what to do, and I'll do it. Plus, the wedding has been on a rushed schedule at a time when I have a lot going on in my life too. Add to that the fact that the bride and I have been drifting ever since she met her fiancé, about a year ago. The two are inseparable and not that social; I've just naturally spent more time with other company. Maybe my biggest mistake was not expressing my concerns when I was first asked. But I've been a maid of honor before and it's gone fine, and I imagined this would be the same.
You can see the train wreck coming. Fast-forward to a month before the wedding: I get a scathing e-mail from the groom without the knowledge of my friend (I'm certain she did not know), stating that it's time to "talk to me about my role as maid of honor" and maligning me for my many failures in the role. The e-mail was snide and contemptuous, questioned my values, and accused me of being "irresponsible," "unaccountable," "selfish," of "not caring" and not being true to my "compassionate progressive values." He said I misunderstood or underestimated the role, and that he couldn't understand my lack of involvement or inquiries about the wedding planning. He ended by saying he had no faith that I'd show up for rehearsal and that he didn't care anyway.
It felt like having the wind knocked out of me. So, I responded immediately, cc'ing my friend, basically saying "WTF?" (probably should have waited until I had a cooler head, admittedly). A few more e-mails ensue, I try to defend myself and point out that the groom's e-mail was totally inappropriate and graceless, and my albeit defensive response is construed as a statement that I feel like the wedding is a burden, or that it's all about me, and my friend's whole family and the rest of the wedding party are royally pissed at me because of my response to the groom's e-mail. So, my friend boots me from the wedding party because "others" don't want me in the wedding anymore but says I can still come as a guest. I tried after my initial defensive response to be as apologetic and deferential as possible just to try to salvage things (trying to take the high road), but to no avail.
If the bride and groom's actions sound irrational and extreme, it's because that's exactly how I experienced them.
After all the drama, honestly, my first reaction to being ousted was relief. A couple weeks have gone by, and now I feel totally pissed off. The truth is, I tried. I participated in planning and throwing a shower, and a bachelorette party, I got gifts, tried on dresses, etc., rearranged work responsibilities to make all the events ... by no stretch was I the model maid of honor, but frankly I can't imagine treating anyone close to me the way I'm being treated, especially someone who'd been doing things for me all summer -- even if I found those efforts disappointing. And maybe this sounds like a lame excuse, but she never once expressed any hopes or expectations for what I would do. The missive from the groom was the first word ever uttered to me. I feel totally hung out to dry.
I was gracious when she dumped me, and we both tried to spin this as not an indictment of our friendship, but more and more it feels like one. Neither of us have reached out to the other since the "break," and yesterday I reaffirmed my commitment to go to the wedding in an e-mail to see if I'm still welcome (still trying to take the high road) and received no response. It took her three days to write a tepid response that I can still come.
Our mutual friends agree I've been treated badly but think I should suck it up, and for the sake of the friendship put on a smile and go to the wedding. They think she's stressed and under the influence of an overzealous fiancé and family, and that I'll earn respect by showing up for her.
I have valued this friend. But the more I reflect on this situation I feel so angry and misunderstood. I feel I am owed an apology. It deeply offends me that my friend hasn't stuck up for me, hasn't acknowledged anything I actually did do for her, and doesn't empathize with my point of view at all. Even though she blames the discord on the feelings of her family, I believe that they take their cues from her, and she could have stuck up for me as her friend.
How do I go to the wedding in these circumstances? But how do I not go, if I want to preserve a chance to salvage the friendship? Is there anything worth salvaging?
Maid of Honor Never Again
Dear Never Again,
I have long labored under the illusion that when a bride chooses a maid of honor she is expressing her esteem and love for that person, declaring her to be part of her intimate circle of friends and family and pledging, symbolically, to include her in the new life that begins with the ceremony and will continue for years afterward.
I did not realize that choosing a maid of honor was equivalent to hiring an unpaid event planner on a probationary period, pending her demonstrated competency and loyalty to the company, lacking which she could be fired like a janitor from Manpower.
I guess I was wrong, and so were you. You thought you were chosen for who you were, for how she holds you in esteem. It turned out that you were hired provisionally on a trial basis and dismissed when your performance was judged subpar.
Knowing that weddings are pageants of power and status rather than declarations of loyalty and love can perhaps dull the blow. You can say to yourself it's just another bullshit social competition. Also, some of the pain we find in adult friendships and social conflicts can be traced back to childhood. But that does not make the pain go away.
So just exactly what happened here? What was it about this friend that you liked so much? Did she make you feel special in some way? Did you feel when you were with her that you were the most important person in the world to her? Did her loyalty indeed shift suddenly and completely to her husband? Certain people make us feel wonderful when we are the subject of their attention but leave us devastated when, with a guiltless, frictionless, sociopathic cool, their attention shifts to a new object of reflection. Such people do not form deep bonds and cannot empathize; their relations with others are reflections of themselves. When you are giving such a person what she needs, that is, reflecting back to her a suitable image of herself, then you are her favorite and she loves you as she loves herself (ha ha). When you express yourself, however, or deviate from the image of herself she sees in you, then she turns away to find a more suitable reflection of herself.
Perhaps that is what happened. Perhaps you were the victim of a person with narcissistic tendencies. After all, a modern American wedding is a narcissist's dream. Such a wedding ignores the great fact of all rites of passage: that while something is gained, something is lost. It only celebrates and does not mourn.
Rather than accept the reality that not all of her friends are perfect reflections of herself, and not all of her friends exist solely to support her narrow view of who she is, which would have been an adult approach, your friend retreated from reality. The loss she might have accepted she instead transferred to you. She made you lose, rather than face reality.
It is ironic that the one ritual that is supposed to usher us into adulthood is so festooned with pastel fantasies of preadolescence. It is also an indictment of our culture. Covering ourselves in the rituals and symbols of childhood, we blind ourselves to our coldest and most bloody conquering, muttering silly platitudes about God and country while blithely marauding across the planet, conquering and destroying all that is not Disney.
By acting in such a way, the bride turned away from maturity. You, on the other hand, can use this event to grow stronger and wiser.
Painful as this is personally, I hope you will examine in detail what friendship means to you. What traits do you look for in friends? What do you value? Who among your friends is truly your ally? Who would come to your aid in a crisis? Who values you for your uniqueness and cares about your feelings? And who seems to be hanging around you only for what they can get? Who steps forward and offers help when you are in a jam or feeling bad? And who seems to be around only during the good times? Did any of your friends tell the bride what they thought of this action?
As for your own character: Each of us must know our strengths and weaknesses. Next time someone asks you something like this, you have a chance to say, Sorry, I'm not sure that's for me. There's no shame in that.
Lesson: Beware the narcissistic bride. If you displease her, she will inscribe the scarlet F for Fired on your forehead.
Since it's been a few weeks since you wrote me, I include your addendum here:
UPDATE: Dear Cary -- So, I did go to the wedding, sat with our mutual friends, and was basically ignored. This was a few weeks ago, and she and I have had no contact since. I have mulled whether there is anything else I can do, but I think now the ball is in her court, and I fear that this friendship is over.
My friend and her husband are decent, reasonable people. I honestly do not know how they justify between themselves this sustained anger at me. My only suspicion is that the groom is very possessive, and as my friend's closest girlfriend, I wonder if that was threatening to him (subconsciously, as he would never admit that to himself). He does not like her doing things without him. She accommodates this, realizing it's an insecurity but also flattered by the depth of his love and need. I feel that he set this whole thing in motion with his explosive e-mail, and that my friend lacks the perspective right now to look objectively at what he did. I believe she sees his letter as an act of loyalty and love.
I have two rival impulses at this point: I still want to express to my friend my point of view, which I never did for fear of "ruining" her wedding. It also makes me sad to lose her as a friend. But I think this is out of my hands. I actually think the person who holds our fate in his hands at this point is the husband. And that pisses me off and makes me want to walk away. I don't know that anything good would come of trying to talk honestly with my friend. But it feels bad, too, to walk away without an honest conversation.
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