So I’m having a hard time figuring out what is a reasonable and appropriate response to a situation in my life. This is a request for advice. 🙂
There are two couples we have been dealing with lately. Couple A involves a chick Noah has been friends with since college. Couple B involves a chick I have known since high school. The husbands in both couples are folks neither of us know as well.
Basically the first time chick in Couple A impacted my life was when she asked Noah to buy her $75 worth of vitamins a few years ago and then mail them to her. I thought this was rather bizarre and inappropriate. She was married and making ends meet–this was crossing a boundary. Noah and I went round and round about this but she never had any idea I was upset. I figured that she was across the country so I sorta let it go but if the topic came up I got pissy again.
Then Couple A moved to the bay area. Our interactions with them have been kind of weird. They both have geek social issues but they have them in a more extreme way than almost anyone I’ve ever met. They just don’t seem to be able to interact with people who are not geeks. Most of the meetups haven’t been fun for me but they haven’t really done anything wrong. But they keep doing things that set me off.
They have no respect for other peoples time. They asked us to babysit quite a while ago so they could go to a time share presentation. They said it would be a couple of hours. It turned into six hours.
I went to the museum with the moms from Couple A and Couple B and the mom from Couple A didn’t show up for 3.5 hours after she said she would be there. There was a weird amount of communication between the mom in Couple B and the dad in Couple A but no one talked to me. I wasn’t thrilled by this but I let it go. Then both members of Couple A showed up but the mom stayed in the museum and the dad was just there to pick up the mom in Couple B and they left the museum to go shopping. The only reason this was a big deal is mom from Couple B had come to the museum in my car and didn’t tell me she wasn’t leaving with me. She just up and disappeared while I was off doing a diaper change. She said, “I couldn’t find you and I had to leave.” I felt like this was pretty rude and I told her so when I talked to her later. I feel like I get to be mad when someone does that kind of thing to me. The guy in Couple A (so not the husband of the chick I am mad at) writes Noah an email asking him how is best to approach me so that he can explain that I shouldn’t be mad at my friend but instead him because she did nothing wrong and it was his fault. Noah being the smart fellow he is forwarded me the email and I took it from there. I emailed this guy and told him that when my friend is rude I get to be upset about it. He doesn’t get to get in the middle of that. But if he wants I can think he is rude too.
Couple A has asked Noah to come help them move with almost no notice and he showed up and they hadn’t packed. They expected him to basically come do all of the work for them regardless of the fact that he has a family he really ought to be spending his weekends with.
Couple A have both started talking to Noah about stuff in their lives that really aren’t that big of a deal but they make a big production about how he shouldn’t tell me anything about them. They are essentially telling him to lie to me. They are doing this about stuff that there is no way to really keep it from me forever and they really don’t matter.
We have been ostensibly going to exchange babysitting back and forth between the three families (both couples have kids) but at this point I don’t think I have any interest in doing that. If they are telling my husband to lie to me I would put money on it that they wouldn’t hesitate to tell my kid to lie to me. Granted she isn’t yet at that level of speech but it’s not far away.
I feel like the amount of drama these people have generated is pretty ridiculous given how rarely we actually interact with them. I’m feeling pretty done. But I know it isn’t exactly polite for me to tell Noah to ditch them. Can I have some advice about this? I’m really frustrated and angry.
I don’t know. That’s a whole lot of crazy.
My general attempted way to deal with SO’s friends I don’t like so much is to define how *I* am willing to interact (in your case, I’d say you also get to define who your kid spends time around) but if my SO wants to go do what I feel is a waste of time on a waste of people I try to separate whether I’m upset about him being not around or what he’s doing. If I just want more partner-time, that’s reasonable. If I feel like if he was off doing something I “approved” of it would be fine but I just don’t like the people, I try to suck it up.
Also, I think it is both reasonable and important that you both clearly define internally and externally that NO ONE gets to ask one of you to lie to the other. Whenever someone says to me “oh, and don’t repeat this to anyone” I respond with “sorry, I’ll still be telling Almus.” (well, obviously, unless it’s a birthday present for him or something. Surprises for later are different.)
You already know what kind of social delinquents these guys are. The extra information just confirms it.
“Noah, I don’t like how these people treat me, or you. They’re flaky, uncommunicative, and frankly disrespectful and boundary-blind. I know they’re your friends, but dang, they encourage lying, they don’t take things seriously… it’s not awesome. You’re your own person, and I don’t want to tell you who to be friends with and who to stay away from. Please understand how I feel about these guys. They cause me no end of frustration and don’t seem to be willing to make accommodations for anyone but themselves. If I have to have discussions with them to make basic social interaction possible, so be it, but I’m not sure they are worth that kind of investment, given that they are this old now and still haven’t figured it out. luuuuuuuuurve”
Seriously, if they don’t get that they should let excursion-partners know where they’re going, it’s a lost damn cause. That’s shit you learn in preschool.
That being said, I can say nothing about the not-packed thing yet (not all my fault, he-who-deserves-no-name) other than it’s not a great way to start a long day. 😉
My short answer/advise is: Friendships shouldn’t be so complicated and filled with so much drama.
I think you just tell Noah, i’m not comfortable hanging out with these folks. A babysitting exchange is certainly not going to work. If he wants to hang out with them, that’s fine.
Sounds exhausting.
BTW, keep meaning to ping you so we can get together. As soon as the Jewish holidays are over, i’ll see if you are free.
I’m free at least sometimes. 🙂 Other times I’m very expensive. 😛
boundaries boundaries boundaries
Since you’re not going to be able to change these other couples’ behaviors, this seems to me to boil down to an exercise in realizing/selecting your boundaries and standing up for them. I think you need to decide how you are willing to interact with these people, how you are willing to put up with Noah interacting with these people, then set it out there, and then stick to it. You have done a lot of work on yourself over the years to develop the skills to do this kind of thing, and you have gotten good at it; time to use it here.
I agree with what folks have suggested so far.
Some observations:
The vitamin thing? Weird, unless she’d offered to pay or had already made arrangements to pay, or both her and Noah knew that he owed her at least that much money.
The time-share thing? They may have been told 2 hours. But dude, going to a time-share presentation? The rest of the wasting other people’s time you’ve mentioned doesn’t seem to have any good excuses. Especially not being packed when asking for moving help.
The museum thing: did she actually tell someone else to tell you what happened? Granted, it’s rude to not wait for you for a couple of minutes, but it’s not nearly so bad if they made a real attempt to get the message to you, so that you didn’t spend 10 minutes wondering where the hell she was. Unless this ended up dumping someone else in your car for the ride home, without pre-clearing it.
There’s a difference between asking Noah to not tell you something and asking Noah to not lie to you, though asking Noah to not tell you stuff is also pretty skeezy. Especially since while they might not tell Shanna to lie to you, I can easily see them saying “let’s not tell your mommy about that”, which is not something a babysitter should be telling a small child.
So, you’re over-reacting, but your basic reaction is sensible. I wouldn’t want to participate in a babysitting exchange with Couple A, either.
Couple B doesn’t seem to be, from what you’ve said here, nearly so bad, unless they end up being a package deal with couple A, or there’s more you’re not telling.
I also think has a point worth considering when she says “If I just want more partner-time, that’s reasonable. If I feel like if he was off doing something I “approved” of it would be fine but I just don’t like the people, I try to suck it up.” The caveat there is that puts the burden of setting time boundaries with them on Noah, which takes it of your direct control.
yup. what everyone else said. And, really, you get to choose who you want in your lives for whatever reason you want. It doesn’t even have to be concrete. I mean… you gave a lot of concrete examples here of oddness. But, just saying that even if they made you feel uncomfortable for no known reason, you have no obligation to hang with them anymore.
I just think they are users ( of peeps, not drugs). They may not be aware of it. But a lot of users are not aware because they are so self focused.
You don’t want them teaching that to your kid.