‘Is There a Statute of Limitations for Confronting a Friend?’

Q:

How long is too long to wait to confront a friend about something shitty she did to another friend? Is there a statute of limitation on such things? I realize it probably varies case to case but I don’t want to reveal too many details about this specific incident so as to maintain my anonymity. I’ll take a stab at describing the situation though: About three years ago, a friend of mine was rude to another friend of mine while we were all at a group event. It was worse than just a casual social faux pas but not as bad as like actual harm or abuse. It was just kind of shitty behavior that made my friend feel bad! She didn’t tell me about it for a while, and she just sort of casually stopped being friends with this mutual friend who had hurt her. When she did finally tell me about it, nearly a year after it happened, she insisted it did not need to impact my own friendship with this person. I was genuinely shocked by the reveal and had no clue my friend was capable of cruelty in that way. I wish I had known about it sooner, but I also kind of understand why my wronged friend didn’t say anything.

But now I’m weirdly stuck. In the moment when I first found out, I got really fired up and had every intention of confronting the friend about the incident. This proved a little tricky though, because we don’t actually live in the same city anymore, so it would have either had to wait to happen the next time I saw her in person or I would have had to do it over the phone, which to me felt a little awkward. Also, a year had passed!

Well now…three, nearly four, years have passed since the initial incident! And I still haven’t said anything! I haven’t fully ghosted my friend, but I have definitely pulled back significantly, in ways that I’m sure are noticeable to her. Pretending like nothing happened just feels fake, but also it has been so many years and feels a little silly to bring something up from that long ago, especially when it didn’t happen to me directly. But I still do feel upset about it all. I’m going to see the friend who did something shitty for the first time at another event for our friend group — specifically, a wedding. It’s not her wedding, and the wronged friend won’t be there. It has been three years since we’ve seen each other, so I know she’s excited to see me and keeps saying so. Meanwhile, I am feeling so much anxiety about it and would rather keep avoiding her, even though I know that isn’t healthy either. But is it wrong to bring something up from so long ago? And would doing it at someone else’s wedding be bad?

A:

This is tricky, but to start, I don’t think another person’s wedding is the right venue for hashing out interpersonal drama, regardless of how involved/not involved the people getting married are. Imagine if the conversation with your friend goes so horribly that someone ends up screaming, crying, etc. — that’s just not the kind of drama you want to invite into a person’s wedding weekend. I get it! Sometimes weddings and other big life events are the only times we get to see certain friends. That can make it hard to address real issues, because the timing is sort of never going to feel “right.”

That said, I don’t think it’s too late to talk to your friend. And I actually do think you should do the thing you’d initially been scared to do and have the conversation on the phone. I think this should maybe happen sooner rather than later — ideally before the wedding but also well before, just so you’re not feeling like you have to be fake in person but also so you can hopefully reach a place of mutual understanding before you have to interact in person.

There’s no way for me to predict how this will go. I hope for your sake that it leads to some genuine reflection and atonement from your friend. It’s definitely hard to give specific advice on what you should say or how you should frame it since I don’t know the specifics of the shitty way she was toward your mutual friend, but I think just start by acknowledging that you’ve been putting some distance between you and the friend because of something that occurred a while ago that has been weighing on you. (I’m left a little curious if your friend who was hurt ever tried to have a conversation with said friend? Like is she aware of the hurt her actions caused in any way or do you think this’ll be the first she’s hearing of it?)

I get that avoiding her has felt like the easier path, but I think you would both benefit from this latent tension being out in the open, even if it does fracture the friendship, because guess what: The friendship is already fractured. The relationship has fundamentally not been the same since your other friend confided in you. And the only way anyone is going to grow or move forward is to actually talk about, even if it’s hard, awkward, etc.

You just need to decide what exactly you want from this conversation. Rehashing the past should have a clear goal rather than just being…a circular rehashing of the past. Keep the conversation to being about you and this friend without bringing the other friend who confided in you into it too much, because that’s her own relationship to mend (if she wants to, which it sounds like she does not). Do you just want acknowledgment from your friend that what she did was wrong and a commitment to doing better? Be clear about what you hope to get from this conversation and what you want moving forward. Hear her out. There could be crucial context you’re missing. You can decide that for yourself though.

All this to say: I think you should call up your friend and talk about it, and you can even acknowledge the passing of time and the fact that you haven’t known how to bring this up for a while. It won’t be a very fun phone call, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve been having a good time in the silence either. Good luck!