Member-only story
Fights can make a friendship stronger
Just don’t throw things…
I recently had a fight with a friend.
It started off innocently enough. She sent a text to 4 friends, myself included, asking to celebrate her birthday. Since my birthday is the same month, I asked if we could celebrate mine the same day.
I didn’t think it would be a problem since, 2 years ago, we’d combined our birthdays. That time, I had been the one who originally planned a celebration, and my friend asked if she could join. I thought it made sense — it’s a lot easier to coordinate one party instead of two at a busy time of the year. Everyone had a good time, so I thought — why not do it again?
Apparently she wasn’t willing to return the favor, though, because I received a separate text from her a couple of days later asking that I allow her to be the focus of her party because she had suffered so much loss in the last two years.
This made me see red.
The problem was not what she wanted, but how she asked for it. If she had said, “Would it be possible for us to do two separate parties this year?” I would have responded with a “sure, that’s fine.” But instead, her text hit me in an emotional place because of the losses I had suffered myself.
