Mini14
03-28-2008, 12:57 AM
I've had a weird friend experience recently that I thought I'd share...
About 5 weeks ago, my friend was talking about an overseas trip she'd always wanted to do, and asked if I'd like to come with her. Since I'm a bit directionless career-wise at the moment, I thought it sounded like a great idea. We planned to leave at the end of May and travel together for 2 weeks, and then I would continue on and do a working holiday afterwards, while she would go on to another country.
The trip involved hiring a car and camping, so it's really not the sort of thing that can be done very easily on your own, and also needed a bit of pre-planning. So we got together and outlined what we wanted to do, then I didn't see her again for a couple of weeks because she had to go out of town for work. When I saw her next, she suggested a major change to the plans (i.e. a different country), and I first I wasn't sure, but after talking about it I realised that the second option was a lot cheaper than the first and she was a bit short on money, but it still sounded fun so I was still happy to go.
Anyway we got together last weekend to nut out the details, or at least enough to book some plane tickets. We'd basically agreed on places we'd both like to go, and then she brought up the question of how we'd get along travelling together. Fair question, but since we'd done a 2-week road trip and some shorter camping trips together before (a few years ago though), and it's always been fine, I said I wasn't worried because we always worked things out.
This is when it started getting very weird..
(**not sure how it comes across in text but the following conversation wasn't an argument, it was a calm discussion**)...
She said "well I will just warn you, I can't guarantee that I won't leave you alone in a pub somewhere"..
I said that I thought there was no good reason to do that, and if she did I would be upset about it, especially in a foreign country! I told her I couldn't think of any good reason that should happen, even if she chose to go home with a random stranger, there was no reason they couldn't e.g. drop me home in the taxi on the way, or check that there were some other people we knew around first - and that that's what I'd do if I had to leave for some reason. She said it wasn't in her personality to avoid doing this (i.e. leaving a friend alone somewhere) and that it would be my choice whether I came out to any pubs with her on our trip, because I knew that she might do it.
Then she said that if we'd planned activities (that we'd discussed beforehand and both wanted to do), but then she didn't feel like doing them on the day, she wouldn't - even if it meant I had to miss out. She knows that I wouldn't do that to her, unless I had a very good reason (e.g. if I was really sick) so I thought this seemed like a very selfish thing to say.
At this point I was wondering whether she really wanted to go on her own and was trying to put me off, but when I eventually did tell her that I thought us travelling together would be a bad idea, she tried to convince me that I should come because it would be great fun!! (??)
She also said that it's not in her personality to compromise with people and doesn't care if it looks selfish, and that she's very happy with the way she is, and wouldn't change for anyone.
I appreciated her honesty about all this, better to know now than after we've spent all the money and are in the middle of another country, but I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect that anyone would be happy to be treated this way, and very unfair to expect things to be so one-sided. So there's no way I will be going anywhere with her.
I have been (close) friends with her for almost 7 years, but we haven't seen a lot of each other in the previous 2-2.5 years because she lived overseas for a year and then interstate until a couple of months ago. But we've kept in contact through phone calls and emails the whole time, and visited every few months when she was interstate. When we first became friends she was very generous, and caring towards other people, always very independent and a real individual, but just a really nice person and not caught up in some of the crap that a lot of other people were at that age (20).
But I don't know where all this has come from... to me it seems ridiculous to behave this way. I don't get how someone could change that much. I had no idea how much until we had the travel discussion. Has anyone else experienced a similar situation, i.e. known someone who's changed personality this much?
Or any other thoughts on this?
Thanks for reading
About 5 weeks ago, my friend was talking about an overseas trip she'd always wanted to do, and asked if I'd like to come with her. Since I'm a bit directionless career-wise at the moment, I thought it sounded like a great idea. We planned to leave at the end of May and travel together for 2 weeks, and then I would continue on and do a working holiday afterwards, while she would go on to another country.
The trip involved hiring a car and camping, so it's really not the sort of thing that can be done very easily on your own, and also needed a bit of pre-planning. So we got together and outlined what we wanted to do, then I didn't see her again for a couple of weeks because she had to go out of town for work. When I saw her next, she suggested a major change to the plans (i.e. a different country), and I first I wasn't sure, but after talking about it I realised that the second option was a lot cheaper than the first and she was a bit short on money, but it still sounded fun so I was still happy to go.
Anyway we got together last weekend to nut out the details, or at least enough to book some plane tickets. We'd basically agreed on places we'd both like to go, and then she brought up the question of how we'd get along travelling together. Fair question, but since we'd done a 2-week road trip and some shorter camping trips together before (a few years ago though), and it's always been fine, I said I wasn't worried because we always worked things out.
This is when it started getting very weird..
(**not sure how it comes across in text but the following conversation wasn't an argument, it was a calm discussion**)...
She said "well I will just warn you, I can't guarantee that I won't leave you alone in a pub somewhere"..
I said that I thought there was no good reason to do that, and if she did I would be upset about it, especially in a foreign country! I told her I couldn't think of any good reason that should happen, even if she chose to go home with a random stranger, there was no reason they couldn't e.g. drop me home in the taxi on the way, or check that there were some other people we knew around first - and that that's what I'd do if I had to leave for some reason. She said it wasn't in her personality to avoid doing this (i.e. leaving a friend alone somewhere) and that it would be my choice whether I came out to any pubs with her on our trip, because I knew that she might do it.
Then she said that if we'd planned activities (that we'd discussed beforehand and both wanted to do), but then she didn't feel like doing them on the day, she wouldn't - even if it meant I had to miss out. She knows that I wouldn't do that to her, unless I had a very good reason (e.g. if I was really sick) so I thought this seemed like a very selfish thing to say.
At this point I was wondering whether she really wanted to go on her own and was trying to put me off, but when I eventually did tell her that I thought us travelling together would be a bad idea, she tried to convince me that I should come because it would be great fun!! (??)
She also said that it's not in her personality to compromise with people and doesn't care if it looks selfish, and that she's very happy with the way she is, and wouldn't change for anyone.
I appreciated her honesty about all this, better to know now than after we've spent all the money and are in the middle of another country, but I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect that anyone would be happy to be treated this way, and very unfair to expect things to be so one-sided. So there's no way I will be going anywhere with her.
I have been (close) friends with her for almost 7 years, but we haven't seen a lot of each other in the previous 2-2.5 years because she lived overseas for a year and then interstate until a couple of months ago. But we've kept in contact through phone calls and emails the whole time, and visited every few months when she was interstate. When we first became friends she was very generous, and caring towards other people, always very independent and a real individual, but just a really nice person and not caught up in some of the crap that a lot of other people were at that age (20).
But I don't know where all this has come from... to me it seems ridiculous to behave this way. I don't get how someone could change that much. I had no idea how much until we had the travel discussion. Has anyone else experienced a similar situation, i.e. known someone who's changed personality this much?
Or any other thoughts on this?
Thanks for reading