Snapped at friend-ish for standing me up--am I verbally abusive?

November 7, 2015 4:50 PM

A guy I dated briefly canceled literally a minute before we were supposed to meet for dinner. He asked for a raincheck. I said some choice words that I now regret.

We dated, I thought I liked him but am now firmly in the "I want to be friends with benefits" camp. I thought we were trying to negotiate it, hence meeting up, having not seen each other for a few weeks.

The explanation was that a friend he hadn't seen in months dropped in two hours before and they were still hanging out. He said it was really shitty and wanted a raincheck. I said I was pissed that I was left hanging and that it was "uncool" since I was literally a block away when I got the text.

This was all over text and happened last night. He hasn't texted back or called yet.

Normally, I know that I should just forget about this, but I've been worrying that I am a verbally abusive person when I'm upset. I also think that this tendency drives relationships away and that I am too uptight/have too high expectations of behavior. It might be because I still like this guy in that I want to sleep with him. Recently, I learned I had this issue because an ex made me very angry and I surprised myself with how much I'm able to vent at people, over communicate in an effort to feel like they see my point of view, and say brutal things that I think are true, but may come off as unnecessary and abusive.

Thoughts? Should I just have said "okay" and then let him contact me? Should I make the move to call now since I like closure?

posted by minoraltercation to Human Relations (27 answers total)

You said you were pissed and that it was uncool in a text when he stood you up for a really lame reason? Nothing about that sounds abusive; you were legitimately angry and let him know. Good for you!
posted by amro at 4:54 PM on November 7, 2015 [55 favorites]

I don't see your reaction here as out of line. I would be pissed too! And it's kind of hard to "snap" at someone via text. I think of snapping as kind of an instant vocal reaction.

However, if you are concerned about being a reactionary person in general, there are lots of things you can do to work on that. Not sure if that's what you're wasking here though...
posted by Brittanie at 4:58 PM on November 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

You were a block away and he had two hours to tell you? And all you said is you were pissed and he was uncool? You are SO not verbally abusive. If we were friends and you told me you just said "okay" and went home, I'd be irked with you. What you did was let him know he was being a tool, which is something he deserved to hear.
posted by cecic at 4:58 PM on November 7, 2015 [29 favorites]

Your reaction seems completely reasonable to me. He did an uncool thing that pissed you off, and you told him so. There's nothing wrong with that. If he's a decent guy and interested in continuing to be friends (with benefits or without), he'll understand that he's in the wrong and will contact you first to try to make up somehow- hopefully with an apology and a plan for your raincheck date.
posted by MadamM at 4:59 PM on November 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

1. You were justified to be angry.
2. It is hard tell from your description if you vented your anger in way that was appropriate or cross the line into abusive. Generally, if you were talking about yourself ("I'm pissed. I think it is uncool. I don't like it when people wait until the last minute to tell me they changed plans.") you are probably on the right side of the line. If you started attacking him, calling him names, etc. you were probably on the wrong side.
3. Even if you got it wrong, it doesn't make you an abusive person. If someone is verbally abusive then there is pattern to attacking, not just a single incident.

So, stop beating yourself up for your response.

Furthermore, you definitely should not have just said "Okay" when you are not okay with what was happening. You might have been able to say to better or stayed calmer while saying it or decided to talk about it later but that's not what happened.

So, what do you want to happen next? That guy was bit of a jerk. You already know that you don't want him for a boyfriend. Do you even want him for a friend? At this point, you decide that this is a turning point and figure out how to finish your exit. Or you could decide that he has other virtues we don't see in this post and you want to see if this could work as a friendship. Let us know which way you want to go and I'm sure everyone will chime in with specific responses to help you go there. But it is your choice to set the direction!
posted by metahawk at 4:59 PM on November 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

Just quick: had he seen your relationship as important, he would kept the date with you and invited the old friend along. He would have been so happy the two of you could meet, even if you're "just" FWB! But he cancelled at the last minute like a jerk, which is pardonable in some circumstances but certainly not here. You may have gotten pissed and expressed things strongly over text: I mean, heck, the guy didn't even bother to CALL you, grr! Clearly, something wasn't right because otherwise you wouldn't have been so bothered. Frankly, I'm wondering if this "old friend" was another hook up. I'm sorry it was so frustrating and disappointing but at least you now know he's not worth your time and can move on to better people.
posted by smorgasbord at 5:07 PM on November 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

Your reaction was fine and appropriate to the situation. His behavior was rude.

Keep in mind, though, that you don't get to decide alone to be "friends with benefits". He may not be wanting to do that and that may be manifesting in his lack of interest in not being rude about meeting up.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:08 PM on November 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

Keep holding out for someone who does not do shitty things (casual or not it is not cool), your expectations as far as you describe are not too high.
posted by lafemma at 5:09 PM on November 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's normal and not per se abusive to lash out when you are angry.

You might be justified in worrying if

1) this happens all the time, or
2) you frequently have trouble stopping expressing your anger. The difference might be between sending 1 text and sending 6 texts, for example.
posted by grobstein at 5:23 PM on November 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: @grobstein yes I definitely have this problem where I feel like I have so much to say but it all ends up sounding repetitive to the other person. Advice for stopping?

Thank you for all the responses so far!
posted by minoraltercation at 5:25 PM on November 7, 2015

Why are you repeating yourself? Is it possible that you have a habit of being connected with people who don't listen and apologize when you say things like "I feel pissed that you left me hanging like this"? Because if you state something like that, and the other person makes an excuse or questions your tone or whatever else they might do other than say, "I'm sorry I hurt you," it's kind of natural to think to yourself, clearly I'm not getting through to them. Right? Because, you might think, if you were adequately expressing your hurt feelings, they'd get it and apologize.

You should only have to say, "I feel X when you do Y, because..." once before the person either says, "I'm sorry I did Y," or "I understand you feel X, and at the same time, I don't feel it's reasonable for you to expect me not to do Y. How can we go forward?" And maybe it's complicated, and maybe the relationship can't continue, but you each listen to the other. (And maybe there are a few incidents of the same type of thing before you both sort this out.)

So, I don't know what this exchange was like last night, but I do wonder whether you're dealing with disrespectful people (and thus the repeating yourself is an attempt to get through to them) or whether you're dealing with healthy people but feel insecure in your ability to communicate (and thus the repeating yourself is an attempt to reassure yourself that you're being clear). And it may be one or the other with different people in your life. But either way, I think you need to practice making one statement about how you're feeling, and then only elaborating if the other person asks you to clarify. Do this with low-stakes situations first in order to get practice so that it becomes easier to do it when you're feeling more heated.
posted by Meg_Murry at 5:39 PM on November 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

You strike me as a model of restraint! You haven't ripped him a new one for throwing you over for some last-minute 'bro.
Don't give it another thought.
posted by BostonTerrier at 5:43 PM on November 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

So if your question is just 'was I out of line in this specific situation?' I think it's pretty clear that you were justified in being angry and it really is okay to tell someone you're upset (and I agree with everyone saying this guy's actions were lame and uncool). If you're more concerned about how you've acted in other situations, maybe you could give us an example where you feel you were saying too much or being "brutal"?

Again, though, your reaction in this specific situation really does seem fine.
posted by DingoMutt at 5:58 PM on November 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

You had an emotion and expressed it. You're perfectly allowed to do that, in most cases, and also to feel something different later and then express that (important if you would like to be any kind of friend with this person going forward.)
posted by amtho at 6:04 PM on November 7, 2015

I think that the word "abusive" gets thrown around a lot in certain kinds of internet advice circles and because it carries so much weight, tends to obscure more than it clarifies. What tends to happen, as far as I can tell, is that people define a certain mental state or set of habits as the thing that underpins "abuse", and then start finding that mental state everywhere, ergo abuse is everywhere. So something like "lack of sympathy for the other person" or "disregard for the wishes of others", which are present in abuse, get turned into "I was mad instead of sympathetic when the airline screwed up my ticket even though it wasn't the other person's fault, I must be abusive" or "sometimes I get self-centered and need to check my reactions, I must be abusive".

So we end up saying that behavior which may be either totally average though imperfect or else moderately undesirable is "abusive", and the focus gets off the behavior and onto someone's understandable dread of being abusive. Unless there is a LOT more to your interactions (yelling when no one else is; using slurs or hateful language; dramatically escalating conflict; incidents where you think you really hurt someone or made them afraid; and with all these things, a pattern rather than just one time when something was really fucked up) I urge you not to use the "abuse" framework.

In my experience, people who have been discouraged from expressing anger and made to feel bad if they express angry feelings - often women! - second guess themselves every time they use relatively clear, moderately angry language. Could they have been nicer? Was it unfair? Was it abusive to call someone uncool for canceling to hang out with another friend moments before you met up? [It wasn't. That's the very definition of uncool, the kind of thing "uncool" was made for.]

If you're thinking that you get sudden rushes of anger, or that you can't keep from expressing your anger in moderate but still uncontrolled ways, that's a separate problem. Is it possible that you have so much trouble expressing anger that in order to express it at all it has to be a bit uncontrolled? That might be a problem where you need to express more anger more clearly, not dial yourself back. If what's happening is that people do jerky stuff to you and you pop out with uncontrolled but very mild and still appropriate reproof (like this!) that might be the case.
posted by Frowner at 6:10 PM on November 7, 2015 [22 favorites]

As far as the specific situation goes, I feel that anything short of reaching through the phone and doing physical injury would not be out of line. Your "friend" was acting like a disrespectful tool, and you have every right to be angry and tell him so. You'd be perfectly justified in cutting him out of your life -- not only don't friends behave like that, no one over the age of ten gets a pass on that kind of social failure.

As to feeling out of control and incoherent when you're angry, I find it a good policy to avoid sending messages until the initial anger has cooled. I sometimes write draft emails with a blank "to:" field and then go back and edit when I'm more together. Texts are trickier, so a quick "whatever" followed by an email or a text laying out the problem is best in my book.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:17 PM on November 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

This person was dumping you in a sucky way. Do not contact him again. Expect that he will not contact you.

I also thought he was hooking up with someone else and the "friend" thing was an excuse. Alternately, he never wanted to see you to begin with, and waited until the last minute to tell you.

Good riddance.
posted by jbenben at 8:02 PM on November 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

Whoa. What's up with everyone assuming the guy is a jerk? People do drop by unexpectedly, and from your description he sounded sufficiently apologetic. Real jerks don't bother calling.

If you didn't call him names or use inappropriate language, I think you are fine. Think of it as a filter, too. You were just being you, the way you like to be. If he is genuinely interested in staying in contact with you, he'll accept your reaction and probably try to make it up to you. If he isn't, then you probably won't hear from him again.

But .. you are one who is interested, so I don't see the point in waiting for him to make a move. If you don't hear from him within a reasonable time, you could contact him yourself. Just ask him when you are going to see each other, that's all. Again, if everything is cool, he'll get in touch. When you see each other in person you can then ask him how he took your reaction.

I react like you do, in the moment. Then I feel bad. But I've learned to make up for it by going back to the normally laid-back person that I prefer to be, instead of apologizing or doubting myself.
posted by Locochona at 8:26 PM on November 7, 2015

I am very confused at second glance and this doesn't seem so cut and dry. You have stated that for you this was a friends with benefits- you specifically wrote: We dated, I thought I liked him but am now firmly in the "I want to be friends with benefits" camp. It sounds like you were the one to downgrade this thing with him from romantic dating zone to friends-with-benefits zone. I thought we were trying to negotiate it, hence meeting up, having not seen each other Have you ever thought that he was disappointed that you didn't want anything more and didn't want to go through with "negotiating it" with you? It can be kind of soul crushing for the person who is getting/had got passed up. There is no indication this guy is a jerk. A guy I dated briefly I am not sure that is relevant here. When two people date and one of them bows out, they forfeit all of the entitlements and expectations from the other person that goes with dating.
posted by incolorinred at 8:34 PM on November 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

I think the situation is cut and dry etiquettewise. You did nothing wrong.

However, relationshipwise incolorinred has a point that there was something murky going on and he may have been conflicted enough about being fwb to sabotage the meeting, or he may be trying to show you that you're not that important to him either because his pride is hurt or whatever. It's not mature. Mature people Use Their Words. But whatever.

You did nothing wrong and ball's in his court. Don't do the emotional heavy lifting of relationship wrangling and making sure everyone's okay for him.
posted by Omnomnom at 10:58 PM on November 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

When two people date and one of them bows out, they forfeit all of the entitlements and expectations from the other person that goes with dating.

OP: Cancelling in an appropriate time frame is a social norm that has nothing to do with dating. Even if he were the world's most pissed off ex, it would still apply to him.
posted by Omnomnom at 11:03 PM on November 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I used to get mad when people treated me like this, and while all the arguments about your being in the right are true, IME telling other people they've done something wrong only makes them not want to be around you, however nicely you put it. "Assertiveness" is a pious hope in that people really don't like being on the receiving end of it, and it's reality that any time you tell someone something they don't like, there's a risk they'll go away.

Certainly nothing you've described is abusive; it's fine to say you're insulted when someone insults you. I have never actually found that it HELPS to say these things, though.

I'm not talking about etiquette, but how people actually operate here. Bear this in mind. I'm not endorsing it, just describing my own experience about what behaviours are safe or unsafe.

Someone said something on the green recently about adults being extremely conflict-averse. IME, this is true, and those of us who have any doubts at all about our social skills have to work within that constraint whether we like it or not.

The smooth, socially desirable script is to say you understand, end the conversation pleasantly, then hang up and forget the friendship. If they actually want to remain friends/in the relationship/however you define it, they'll be back in touch soon enough, and if they then suggest any activity that's likely to put you in the same position you find a smooth way to dodge it or change the conditions rather than confront them directly. Or, if you really don't like them any more, say you're not free then but would love to do something soon, and then just fade. This script is socially desirable not only because it's nonconfrontational, but because the flip side of "if I say the wrong thing to them there's a risk they'll go away" is "if they treat me in a way I don't like, there's a risk I'll go away". It levels your status relative to theirs, and if it really is just a well-intentioned blip that doesn't signify much, things will course-correct between you soon enough.

Having said that, I think he has dumped you and this is his rude, craven way of doing it. I wouldn't pursue this any more because I think your relationship isn't good.

I do pick up the point about whether or not you are the one who decided to downgrade the relationship and are now leading it on your terms in a way you take for granted as a social norm, but makes him feel degraded as a person. If this guy perceives himself as being put in a position of low status relative to you he may have pulled this jerk move in order to assert his higher status. It is certainly rude, but high-status people can and do pull it off successfully because it's a statement that they have enough friends/dates that they can lose a few and never notice they're missing. The non-confrontational, more polite mirror image - pretending it's fine and just fading - implies the same thing about the person doing the fading, which is why it works.
posted by tel3path at 2:12 AM on November 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

You stood up for yourself, and now you feel embarrassed and uneasy. You are giving him the benefit of the doubt. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. People treat you the way you let them, you called him on shitty behavior; that's perfectly reasonable.
posted by theora55 at 5:09 AM on November 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

I think if you used foul language and/or called him names then you didn't handle it great (don't use foul language with people you desire to keep in your life) and if you use foul language and insults with people in your life then you should explore it and try to develop to the point you feel in control and assertive.

But this didn't sound like it was going to work out anyway.

In terms of repeating yourself I think being in a relationship where you feel heard and listened to in good faith is the key. I used to feel I needed to repeat myself over and over and feeling judged- but with my husband I feel secure and understood and I never have to fight to get my point across.
posted by flink at 5:47 AM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would be furious at this to and I don't think your use of "some choice words" is an overreaction at all. Hopefully the reason he hasn't contacted you is because he knows what he did was crap and is feeling sheepish, but will contact you to apologise, at which point you can say "and I am sorry that I called you a cuntwomble too" and that will be that.
posted by intensitymultiply at 6:19 AM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think as a very assertive person, you're conscious about what others might say about you're boldness. You are good. Don't ever second guess yourself. I feel we live in a society where we have to be yogis and 24/7 Christmas cards. You are not a Christmas card. You're a person with feelings. It's ok. You dealt with a little boy. Grown men can handle this and come correct.
posted by InterestedInKnowing at 9:01 AM on November 8, 2015 [6 favorites]

Response by poster: To clarify, I don't think there's a power differential. He wanted to be exclusive after two weeks but then said "he doesn't want a relationship right now" but then continued acting date-like with me and saying how he likes me. Needless to say, I wasn't falling for him either and his confusion further turned me off. He confessed to being depressed and adrift. Issues with my ex and my life in general also makes me feel like a casual thing with him is ideal. This meeting was for me to clarify that I am totally okay with a casual thing, since I was afraid that he was reading too much into how I liked him. Maybe what happened means that he's not even interested in casual anymore.

I hate "fading" type behavior!! I appreciate all the advice to just let it go, but I have half a mind to just call and be like, here's what's up. I feel like 30-something men should have this kind of shit together by now. It is frustrating.
posted by minoraltercation at 1:13 PM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]