Fired Maid of Honor (Part 2)
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This week: Today we continue reading about a bride who fired her maid of honor, and how it doesn’t always go as planned.
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🔥Fired MOH (Part 2)
Last week I told you about my phone call with Britney.
She had just been fired as a maid of honor and her friendship with the bride was unraveling, fast.
Britney was in tears as she told me about how the bride yelled at her in Starbucks, embarrassed her in front of all the other bridesmaids (multiple times), and even texted her that she was shocked Britney was so high up at her company because she couldn't even handle simple bridal party tasks.
Before this, Britney shared that her and the bride had a decade-long friendship with minimal fights.
But I asked a question that perhaps nobody ever thinks about when they hold onto a friendship so tightly:
Has the relationship been stress-tested before?
A lot of friendships survive because the relationship is chilling out on a pool raft. It's kept above water because of commonalities, proximity, and overall ease.
But the second something big pokes a hole in the raft (moving across the country, a personal tragedy, a stressful life event) the friendship either sinks or swims.
I realized this myself when I was 29. My best friend of 11-years started to pull away from me. I was going through something horrible in my personal life.
I told my best friend what I was going through. I tried to let her help me, I tried to open up. But she didn't want to stick around and be there for me.
Maybe it was because she couldn't handle what I was going through or maybe it was because I wasn't the same person anymore.
I didn't smile as much, I didn't want to go out to bars with her as much, and I was finding it hard to pretend everything was okay. I cried a lot and that made her uncomfortable.
She didn't want a sad-girl summer. She missed her party girl best friend. She wanted a good-time girl, not someone who made life real for her too.
Eventually, this friendship ended. Because even if one person tries really hard to bring the relationship back to the surface, if the other person weighs it down, it will sink.
The same thing happened with Britney.
The stress of the bride planning this wedding and wanting everything to be so perfect caused the raft that was supporting this friendship to completely deflate.
Britney tried to pump air into the relationship as much as she could, even when the bride continued to poke holes in the raft with her actions and comments.
When the bride told Britney that she wasn't her maid of honor anymore, Britney let go. She swam away.
When she called me, I told her to write down her two options.
Option one was to go to the wedding, put on a smile, and hope the friendship patches up later on.
Option two is to take a break, not attend the wedding, and maybe repair the friendship later on, or maybe not.
I told Britney to sit with both options for a week, play each out in your head, and see which one feels right.
A lot of you emailed me last week rooting for Britney. You understood what she was going through, some of you had even been through it before, others just wanted what was best for her. I did too.
Oftentimes in my job, I don't tell people what they should do. I help them decide what they want to do and I support them in that decision.
So when Britney called me back and told me she wasn't going to the wedding, I asked her why she decided to go that route:
She told me that she believed friendship didn't have to be so complicated.
People didn't have to be so mean.
The bride didn't once apologize for anything she said or did.
Britney didn't feel like using every ounce of strength and energy to show up and support someone who kept knocking her down.
So she didn't go to the wedding and the friendship is no longer lounging on a pink flamingo raft in a backyard pool.
It's stuffed in a shed. The door is locked. It's dark inside, I imagine.
But Britney has moved on. She doesn't plan to reach out to the bride anytime soon.
And if the bride reaches out to her, she will let her speak, she will listen, but she doesn't think she'll be eager to say:
I forgive you, let's be friends.
Because Britney is right.
Friendship shouldn't be so complicated.
Because people shouldn't be so mean.
All my love,
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