December 18, 2008Reader Question ~ Holiday Conversation
Meryl,
My forgetfulness gets me in trouble. One of my friends invited me over a month ago to her home for Christmas Eve. My new boyfriend invited me to a family gathering for Christmas Day. Then my girlfriend mentioned something about Christmas Day, and I said I made plans with my boyfriend. She was insulted because she said I agreed to be at her house for both days. I told her how sorry I was, but I only remembered accepting an invitation for Christmas Eve. She said she was very disappointed, and I felt like a jerk.
Do you have any suggestions as to how I could have handled this differently?
Meryl responds
It sounds like you handled it fine, and like you have a good friendship where she was willing and able to tell you when she was offended.
However, there are a couple of conversations I suggest you initiate.
1) Are you sure the issue is your memory? Could it be you heard her invitation differently? When my husband and I have this kind of misunderstanding, we debrief the conversation to find out where we lost each other. Not so fun, but useful. We often find it wasn’t that I forgot or he forgot – the issue was we had different understandings about what we were saying.
2) It’s common for women to disappear and abandon their friends when a new man comes along (or an old one returns). Perhaps she’s afraid that will happen to her. Of course friends need to adjust to changes in each other’s lives, and it helps to initiate conversations about changes and how they will and won’t affect your friendship.
The fact that she was disappointed doesn’t make you a jerk. It’s one of those things that happens. Holidays force us to play favorites, and feelings get hurt in the process. If the friendship is strong, she’ll get over it – if she hasn’t already.
Have a fabulous holiday.
More conversations
One of my favorite features of my new book is the audio CD that describes conversations that people need to initiate at work. There are conversations for supervisors, for team leaders, for performance managers and for entrepreneurial employees. Read more about it here.
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