Gym "friend" drama, need opinions

Cutaway_Collar wrote: »

Motorsheen wrote: »

AllOutof_Bubblegum wrote: »

Ok, so I don't usually do this dirty-laundry-online thing, (truly! I swear, lol) but I really want to know what others would do in this situation. Sorry if it gets long, I want to make sure I include everything that might sway an opinion one way or the other.


I met a lady, let's call her Anna, who works out at my gym, and we hit it off almost immediately. Same sharp wit, biting sarcasm, snarky sense of humor, both married and mothers of young kids, we both love the gym life and being bad@$$ girls in the weightroom, etc. We became super close friends, we traded off on babysitting each other's kids, texted and Facebooked and Snapchatted each other constantly, planned out gym schedules so we'd show up at the same time, all the makings of a best friend.

Here's a little backstory so y'all can understand what was going on.

We had this love-each-other-to-death relationship going on for about 6 months. Around a year ago, Anna told me she started drinking and selling weight loss shakes for a popular direct-supply "health food" company. Now...I HATE MLMs. They truly infuriate me. I think they are predatory and vampiric and shady as hell, and I feel that sales and profits of weight loss shakes in particular depend on the ignorance and desperation of overweight people who just don't know any better. Being a college nutrition major, seeing these shakes take the place of real food just gets under my skin in a way that I can't even articulate. R e g a r d l e s s, she was my friend, and after telling her I didn't really agree with it at all, I just sort of rolled my eyes at it and let her do her thing.

Fast forward a few more months, and Anna just can't seem to stop raving about her shakes on Facebook and Instagram, and to contact her if you're ready to make a change! Ughhhh, SMH. So whatever, I did my best to not let it annoy me, because what harm was it doing, really? It truly made her happy, so I shelved my irritation as best I could, knowing it was my problem, not hers.

On of Anna's online posts said something about how eating "junk food" was now a thing of her past, and instead of eating "processed, chemical-laden garbage", she reached for her [insert company name] shakes! I commented on it and was like, "Wait, how "processed" is that shake mix you drink every day? It certainly didn't grow from a tree, so why is that so much better than like a box of Goldfish crackers?" My whole point being that "processed" =/= "bad". Well, if I'd had any idea of the sort of sh!tstorm about to take place, I never would have bothered making any comment at all. Anna immediately deleted my post from her feed, and sent me a direct message, demanding that I "NEVER talk *kitten* about her shakes online, EVER again."

I was extremely taken aback, but I apologized anyway for having apparently crossed a line and said I'd stop. I guess that wasn't enough for Anna, though, because the next thing I knew she'd deleted me from her social media accounts. Over the next few months I'd sent a message or two to her, asking if she wanted to meet for playdates, etc, and she would say, "sure, let me check my schedule!" and would never follow through. Just being really passive-aggressive. I texted her a few months later, and asked her to put everything out on the table, because not knowing where we stood was worse than pretending to still be friends.

Our paraphrased convo went something like this:

"You are acting really distant. Are we still friends?"

"I think you're really cool, but I don't think I can hang out with you, because I just can't trust you to not disparage my business."

"I'm sorry for making you feel like I was disrespecting you. It wasn't intentional. I was only trying to offer perspective, but if you don't like it, I won't do it anymore. But pretending like nothing was wrong and letting me think we were still friends was really hurtful."

"Honestly, I thought you'd get over it. I figured you'd be like 'Fine, **** that *****!' and forget about it."

Me: 'Um, No? I loved you, I would never do that to a friend."

She didn't answer. A number of hours later I said,

"Ok, well, I have my answer. I have enough self-respect than to go chasing after people who clearly don't want me in their lives, so I guess this is it. No hard feelings, and my door's always open if you change your mind and want to talk."

That was almost a year ago. Since then we've seen each other at the gym, but she pretty much looks through me and pretends I'm not there. Which I've learned to be ok with. Sometimes friendships just don't work out, and I get that.

Well, this morning we ended up walking to the gym door together with our kids, who were very happy to see each other. Anna and I made polite small talk, and we went our separate ways once inside.

NOW I got a Facebook friend request from her later this afternoon.

I seriously feel like I'm being screwed with. I want to keep my word that if she ever changed her mind I'd be open to patching things up, but after months of being treated like I'm nothing, I don't know if I feel that way anymore. She dumped me so fast, it was astounding. No remorse, no deep thought, just straight to the chopping block and *axe*. I loved her face to freakin death. But shame on me, I'm just not feeling up to getting my feelings jerked around again like a marionette the next time I might say something that threatens her. But I feel like if I ignore or deny the request it will make things even more awkward when we see each other at the gym.

What's the high road to be taken, here? I don't want to play into anybody's games, 8th grade was such a long time ago. I'm not looking to go back.

Thanks for reading.

When will this be made into a feature film?

Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt

There will be plenty of locker room and steam room scenes. Cutaway productions Inc.