Reply to Are there things people can say or do that you can’t really come back from, even with an apology?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’d be more surprised and hurt that my friend was talking smack about me behind my back and the content of her bad mouthing wouldn’t really matter.

If they were talking about cooking and she said “Karla isn’t a very good cook but she has some recipes I’ve tried myself and liked”, and you over heard and her response was “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be unkind - what a stupid thing for me to say out loud, I’m sorry”, I’d totally forget about it and move on.

Again- the problem is your friend got angry and said a mean thing about you behind your back for the sole purpose of hurting your feelings. Doesn’t matter what the thing is she said [/quote]

My experience has been that women always do this. Every group I've been in will smack talk one of the group who isn't there. I automatically dislike the person who starts the gossip, but most women seem to go along with it and join in. Most are insecure and are happy the gossip isn't about them. If you don't join in or let them know you want no part of the trash talk, you will upset the alpha gossip mom and you will become the target. This is a pattern that repeats again and again. [/quote]

This is why I don't do big female friend groups. I've found they tend to lead to this inevitably, because there are always little conflicts between some of the people in the group, and those people will always seek to discuss their conflicts with other members of the group because, those are their friends. It's a terrible dynamic.

I have a couple very loose friend groups with mixed men and women and they don't do this, as people are not really forced into spending time with anyone they don't like and if anyone has issues they can deal with it directly themselves. It's when the group is mostly or all women, all around the same age and in the same general life phase (increasing competition), and often does things together all as a group, that there is trouble.[/quote]

I've been in multiple female friend groups (some from my activities like work, grad school, etc.; some due to my kids such as moms of their classmates; and some from our neighborhood) and I have never come across conflicts like this. Sure, not everyone loves everyone else - there are multiple people I would spend time with 1:1 and others I would not - but no one is gossiping behind anyone's back, creating drama, etc. We're all busy women with kids and jobs and don't have time for that kind of pettiness. On the flip side, we come together when someone needs something (i.e. a death in the family, job loss, divorce, etc.), and we have fun together a lot. There are side texts and smaller groups but it's never an issue. Maybe part of that is that no one is the kind who posts on social media, which seems to lead to a lot of these feelings of exclusion. I'd say we're all pretty type A and competitive (we're all pretty ambitious professionally, for example), but I don't feel competitive with any of them. I am aware of other groups who have these issues, but I've always gotten a whiff of that pretty quickly and declined to participate. [/quote]

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