DEAR MISS MANNERS: We were scheduled to have dinner with two friends at the tail end of a fun week -- several days of entertainments, parties, drinking and late nights. When the day of our dinner date came up, my wife and I were so miserable that we had to cancel our dinner plans. Eating another bite of food was the last thing we wanted to -- or could -- do. We were burned out, and it was self-inflicted.
We felt horrible for canceling on our friends, and we apologized profusely, but nothing prepared us for the onslaught of guilt and anger spewing from them, to the point that this might end our friendship. We’ve known them for more than 30 years, yet it turned on a dime.
My wife thinks I should have lied and told them we were sick, but instead I told them the truth. Now they feel like trash thrown out the window.
This happened more than a month ago and they are still very angry with us. I managed to have a chat with the husband the other day, and he expressed the bitterness and hurt they still feel.
We’ve apologized a half-dozen times, written notes, offered rain checks for dinner, basically done everything we can think of to make things right. Nothing is working.
What am I missing? Do you have any advice on what we can say or do to mend this relationship, or is it time to move on?
GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is keenly aware that many of her Gentle Readers believe that anything other than “total honesty” is wrong. These are your friends, after all, you tell yourself -- they will understand.
Except they do not. Telling people with whom you had longstanding plans that you had too much fun with other people the rest of the week to muster up the energy to be with them at the end of it is insulting. And if you were truly as miserable as you say, telling them you were not feeling well would have been accurate. You simply did not need to tell them the source of the misery.
While a month of anger and hurt is a lot, Miss Manners has sympathy for your friends for not rushing to make plans with you again. Perhaps time and a solid future of kept plans will eventually soften them.
But next time Miss Manners gets chastised for telling her readers not to “just be honest,” she may well point to your example with its obvious collateral damage.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’m 75 and in reasonably good shape, physically and mentally. Recently in my water aerobics class, someone who is one month younger asked me, in a crowded area, “How does it feel to be the oldest one in the group? Ha ha.”
Then my brother-in-law, who is six months younger, said at a family gathering, “How does it feel to be the oldest one here? Ha ha.”
I would love to have a snappy/sassy response ready if this happens again. Any suggestions?
GENTLE READER: “It feels good to have outgrown the need to answer silly questions. I guess that’s what you have to look forward to. Ha ha.”