Just before Christmas, I met up with a group of girlfriends for our annual Christmas Night Out. We are a group of five successful women in our forties. I was late and flustered (got held up in traffic) but within five minutes of my arriving, it turned into the female equivalent of a pissing contest. One woman (I'll call her TopDog) had to be better/a bigger martyre/a saint/more successful/bigger-spender than the rest of us. Whatever it was about TopDog had to win the comparison contest. My favourite episode from that evening was not long after I arrived, when the others were commisserating with me about my journey: TopDog announced that she'd had the furthest to travel to get to the restaurant, which was blatently untrue. "No you haven't", I responded, "I've just driven in from Reading, which is 40 miles away. You've only come 20 miles". If looks could kill, I'd be pushing up daisies.
The evening deteriorated from that point onwards, with TopDog demanding admiration and to be the centre of attention at every turn, making more and more outlandish comments just to get a rise out of people. (Seriously? Why else declare that your latest, uncircumcised partner was so much more sexually stimulating than your previous circumcised one simply because he has a foreskin? Who cares?) At one point, late in the evening, she even started a sentence irrelevantly with "Well, speaking as the only mother here....", which was designed to be a dig at me (several rounds of infertility treatment) and at another friend (I'll call her Placator) who is also not childless by choice. I demanded to know "And that means what exactly? What are you really saying?" and got no answer.
The worst part of the evening, though, was the half an hour TopDog laid into Placator bullying her, criticising her for her lack of love-life and for not wanting to date anything in sight. The rest of us sat there speachless. It was a horrible, nasty thing to do. We tried to change the subject and it kept coming back, time and again. I couldn't think of a thing to say to stop her. Eventually, one of the others said, "Friends don't try to "fix" friends," to which we all agreed and that finally changed the subject. (Honestly, I nearly accosted a total stranger in the Ladies Toilet to ask her what to do. I was at my wits end.)
I drove home that night fuming with anger. Still feel it now. In the morning, I sent Placator a text message apologising that I hadn't stood up to TopDog on her behalf. When TopDog sent out an email saying "That was fun! Must do it again!", I replied that I hadn't enjoyed the evening and that I though she owed Placator an apology for laying into her for half an hour. My exact words were:
Personally, I didn't have a good night. I didn't enjoy what I witnessed. You obviously have no idea how hurtful you were being last night. You laid into xxxx for nearly half an hour. In that entire time, I'm surprised she only came back at you with one snarky remark. And she immediately apologised for it. Sorry, but I think you owe her an apology. You need to learn when to stop.The response can be summarised as: "F.... Off. And don't bother to contact me again.". At which point I congratulated myself for saving myself a Christmas card. When I talked to the others, the response I got was largely positive. It needed to be said. And I'm glad I won't have her in my life any longer. You know when someone is a good person and a good friend when go to their wedding/birthday/family celebrations and see how many of the people there have known them for years - looking back at the time I've known TopDog, she has virtually no long term friends other than the girls who were at that meal. Says a lot really.
My only regret is that I didn't tell TopDog to stop. I was brought up to believe that I should stand up for the defenceless and shouldn't stand by when someone-else is in trouble. And that includes standing up to bullies like TopDog.
Life is too short to worry about the TopDogs unless one is unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of their attentions. I hope you have managed to escape such nastiness.
- Pam
4 comments:
Oh, Pam. I'm sorry, not just that it happened but that it's still eating at you. And I'm also sorry about the several rounds of infertility treatments. That's not something I previously knew about you and I'm sorry such a sensitive issue was exploited.
xo
Thanks Sweetie.
It's not "eating me" per se, although it did for a few weeks afterwards. Something that happened yesterday reminded me about it and I thought sufficient time had elapsed that if TopDog was stalking me to see a response, she'd have got bored and given up. I actually wrote most of that post in December but decided that discretion was the better part of valour and didn't publish it back then. (I couldn't remember if I'd sent TopDog a link to the blog at some stage so decided to wait.)
oh, UGH. I despise things like that. Why on earth do people feel the need to BE like that?!
Congratulations on the Christmas card savings, though. Sounds like an excellent person to not keep in touch with. (Oooo, HARSH! - but, turnabout IS fair play, right?!)
it's such a shame that some women can't play nice when together with others.
As you were all adults it wasn't really your responsibility to defend your friend although I can understand why you felt you should have stepped in but emailing both women was a good way of having closure over a unpleasant evening.
Perhaps you ladies should arrange another evening out but not inviting 'Topdog' but making sure she knows about it?
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