DEAR BEL
Last week was my 30th birthday. I had a meal with my closest friends and then we went out. On the surface it was a lot of fun but in reality it stung like an unpleasant bee.
While I only invited my closest friends for the meal, I invited a wider, varied group of friends for drinks afterwards. I didn’t want to make a big thing of it, so I invited the people I really wanted.
Many said: ‘Yes, ok, fine’ — though a few said they couldn’t make it in spite of the advance notice. Then one by one, all the people I’d expected messaged with apologies and excuses the day before. If it had happened just this once I could put it down to bad luck, but it isn’t.
Since I was young I’ve had crappy birthdays, invited people out and then have them not turn up. It’s infuriating.
Last year it was literally just me and my best friend.
It’s not as if it’s the same people. People come in and out of your life all the time yet behave in the same way. It’s not like I’m disorganised — I let people know it’s coming up.
Obviously, I could look on the bright side and say at least I spent it with my closest friends, but I do count the others as good friends, see them plenty, they’re part of my life.
It just makes me feel worthless. They don’t care enough to make an effort and flimsy excuses reveal I’m not a priority. It makes me feel like I don’t matter to people, even though I’m in their lives as much as they are in mine.
The fact that only three people care enough to celebrate with me is gut-wrenching.
I’d love to have a proper birthday one year with a DJ playing cheesy tunes — but I don’t because, subconsciously, I know no one will turn up and I’d be humiliated.
Part of me wants to have a big rant on Facebook and shame them. Or to cut everyone from my life and start again somewhere else. Another part never wants to celebrate another birthday because I’ve been let down and disappointed so many times over the years.
Part of me thinks that if I died tomorrow, no one would come to my funeral because they had better things to do. Why does this happen? And what should I do about it?
ROB
This week Bel advises a reader who feels hurt by his ‘friends’ who bailed out on his birthday
Poor old Polonius, the fussy courtier in Shakespeare’s Hamlet gave his departing son Laertes plenty of good advice, including some words on friendship. They’ll do for you too:
Those friends thou hast, and
their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with
hoops of steel;
But do not dull the palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
In other words, once you’ve tested out your friends and found them trustworthy, hold onto them. But don’t waste your time shaking hands with every new, immature friend you meet. Do you see? So you’re wise to rejoice that you did share your birthday with three really good friends.
At the same time, I can’t blame you for this deep hurt at the casual behaviour of the others. Your sense of being excluded and neglected is (I suspect) just how I’d feel, too.
In fact, I confess (just between you and me) that I haven’t had a book launch since 1993 because I cannot bear the thought of being disappointed by no-shows.
I absolutely detest people who accept invitations then don’t show or cry off at the last minute with a flimsy excuse. Does that make us both (you still young, me at the other end of life) a bit feeble? Well, so be it. I no longer need to hide my vulnerable humanity.
Ah, but perhaps you need to hide it. Whatever you do, never ever show your vulnerability on social media, because it will just rebound and possible destroy you.
I have just read about yet another version of online brutality called ‘sadfishing’. This is when a young person shares details about personal problems on social media only to be mocked.
More from Bel Mooney for the Daily Mail…
They are sad and vulnerable, ‘fishing’ for sympathy, only to be met with ridicule that makes them feel even worse. So beware. Never reveal, in sorrow or anger, your neediness online, because it might receive a serious kicking.
I wonder if much of the problem is associated with what I call your generation’s FOCA — no, not a variety of bread but a fear of committing to arrangements.
Me, I invite people on email and then write things down in a real diary. But when everything is clicked through casually in phone messages there is no reality. It’s a virtual arrangement — not really existing in the real world and therefore easily broken.
I bet if a friend had arranged a 30th at a smart place and sent real invitations people might have shown up — because they thought it special.
Of course, they might not. I once gave a very smart drinks party in London, at a lovely venue, to celebrate a big birthday and even though I had to pay for canapés in advance, about six or seven people who had accepted just didn’t show.
It was rude and cost me money as well as feelings. Never again!
Have you ever seen the movie, Little Man Tate? That terrible scene where mother and son have the room ready for his party and nobody shows. What can you do? Get a bit tough. Grow a shell. Realise that new friends do come and go and won’t count until they prove their worth, just as Polonius said.
Stick to the oldies but goodies. Cultivate that ‘surface’ you mention — and stay cool, leaving no chink for that nasty little bee to find a way through and sting you.
None of this means you become a nastier person. It just means you learn to protect your soft underbelly from a careless world — which is always good counsel.
Help! My daughter’s are at war
Dear Bel,
My husband died of cancer more than a year ago. I have two daughters — one has three children and the other was pregnant while her father was ill. He wasn’t an easy man, I worked hard, we were not perfect, but the family was the one thing he and I both cared about.
My eldest lives quite near. During my husband’s illness, she fell out with her sister as she believed she should have visited him more often. When my youngest grandchild was born, they continued not to speak. He’s now one and she still hasn’t seen her nephew. Family life has been torn apart. I’ve been racked by illness and most days don’t want to be here.
Some days I just want to forget them for bringing me grief upon grief.
Now I need an operation and just hope I do not come out of hospital.
LINDA
Reading about such family conflicts is the worst aspect of my job. Often they’re made worse by hasty, terse texts that can never be recalled.
I wonder if that happened between your daughters? Reading between the lines (and knowing things from your longer letter), I suspect there were family problems before these sad events.
It sounds as if you were no stranger to conflict over the years, admitting that your late husband was ‘difficult’. Young people will pick up on these character traits and possibly learn to ‘communicate’ in similar ways.
Did your daughters squabble a lot when they were young? Being honest about your memories might help you to consider why they are like this now.
Whatever the deeper truths, reading of your despair I feel frustrated by your daughters, especially the elder. You are grateful that she is helpful to you, yet she made your agony over your husband’s illness and death so much worse because of ‘falling’ out with her sister over a perceived lack of visits. There must be more to this.
But the question is, how will you go forward with your own life? I feel very sorry for you, ill as you are and caught in the middle.
You express a wish to be dead, so I urge you to call the Samaritans (116 123 at any time) if this mood threatens to overwhelm you. You can also use email (jo@samaritans.org), if it would help you to write things out.
Then, do you know anyone who could mediate between your daughters: a family friend or relative? Or what about their respective partners? Something has to be done to break this impasse, and in your state of health you cannot be the one to do it. Try to find someone . . . a little job which shouldn’t tax you too much.
I would like that family friend to show each of your daughters a photograph of them together when young and then ask them if they would speak to each other at their mother’s funeral.
Would you, warring ladies? And would you be able to explain to your respective children why they do not know their cousins?
You, older sister, do you ever wonder what gave you the right to judge your sister?
You, younger sister, have you ever put your mother before your quarrel and your pride? Enough of this stupidity!
And finally… Why this old gal is still so merry!
When you’re getting older, birthdays are like notches on a gun belt . . . another one — pow! That’s how I’ll feel on Tuesday when I sit in a restaurant in Bath with my family and just one friend this time. Bring on the vodka and wine!
The quotation I’ve picked this week is about accepting who you are, for better for worse. That doesn’t mean you can’t change or shouldn’t try to, because our lives should be a continuous process of evolution. And that’s glorious, even if change often involves pain.
But it does mean that looking back and regretting is a waste of the precious time we have left. Recently, a colleague asked me if I’d have done things differently. No, I said, why would I?
Last week, I went to a party in London to launch a reprint of an elegant glossy book about NOVA Magazine, an unrepeatable publishing icon of 1965-75. It was my first staff job when I was 24.
So, there at the bash, were six or seven former colleagues, retired and rather grey now (not me — I colour my hair!) but all celebrating our shared special ‘moment’.
The years just seemed to fall away. I can picture that Nova office as it was; relive the raucous Christmas parties; visualise us all piling over to the Coal Hole (a pub on the Strand) for a ‘meeting’; hear the relentless clack of our typewriters; remember one lunch I had with the star journalist Irma Kurtz that consisted of four double Bloody Marys each, followed by wine — and no food.
I remember the flirting, the brainstorming, the helpless laughter, the camaraderie — and always the cigarette smoke curling up to the ceiling.
No one judged anyone else; our broadmindedness was a million miles away from today’s culture of offence and disapproval. Why, a vicar once groped my thigh . . . but that’s another story.
Those were the days, my friend, and boy, did we live ’em. And that’s why this old gal is still so merry.