Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi All,
I seem to get extremely upset when I believe I have upset a friend. This is, luckily, quite rare I think as I am such a massive people pleaser to ensure this doesn't happen. But this weekend, my friend and housemate said that he would be visiting his dads to help him with something around the house. I said I would go along and help if he wanted. The next morning, no time had been set as to when we would leave and my friend was still in bed. I got a text from another friend asking if I wanted to go for a quick coffee. As I hadn't heard what time we would be leaving, I stupidly agreed to go for a coffee. Unfortunately my other friend then left without me as he said he couldn't wait around for me. I phoned him to apologise for not going with him and he put the phone down on me and then ignored me. I sent him a message apologising and I was genuinely really sorry. I thought I could go for a coffee and would be back in time to go to his dads. Normally I wouldn't say anything but I did tell him that him putting the phone down on me upset me. He has said that this made him extremely angry and lonely and that he was looking forward to spending the day with me. He has since been ignoring me, won't talk to me and giving me the silent treatment. He has said that he didn't want to come home.
I am absolutely devastated. I can't stop crying. I had to leave work early yesterday as I just couldn't focus. I know this is an extreme reaction. Has anyone got any advice on what I can do to further apologise to my friend? I also go through stages of thinking that he is overreacting and not being fair to me, but then I feel like it is just my autism telling me that and that I am not seeing things how others without autism do.
NAS89345 said:my friend and housemate said that he would be visiting his dads to help him with something around the house. I said I would go along and help if he wanted.
There is a learning experience to take from this. Look at the situation from your friends perspective if you can (not always easy for us as we tend to be rubbish with empathy) - he is helping his dad move and needs you there for some extra muscle power, probably because his dad isn't able to do much himself.
That makes you an essential part of him being able to help his closest relative who is depending on him. By you not being there he would have had to struggle with the heavy stuff or expect their dad to pitch in and maybe hurt himself in the process.
I'm assuming you didn't check with your initial friend that they could pick you up from the coffee shop - this would have seemed the logical thing to do. I'm also assuming the coffee shop is accessable by car/van fo them here.
Your initial friend was probably really tense as house moving is a real pressure for those doing it, especially when a frail family member is involved as you want to take extra care to make sure it is as easy for them as possible.
I suspect it is a combination of this pressure they were under and your lack of communication that led them to be so abrupt. This is a failing on their side for not being able to adapt to a minor change of plans.
The friend isn't autistic by any chance? Some of us really struggle with plans changing.
The lesson to learn after all that is - communicate clearly before actually making that change of plans. If you need to leave a message with clear instructions on where to pick you up if they were arriving before the time you would back.
For what its worth I have been guilty of similar mess ups plenty of times in my lfe - the lack of empathy of how important a situation was to the other party is normally the root cause so i've learned to analyse things more before changing plans.