Fight or Flight?

When it comes to arguments (except with my husband), I tend to shy away. I hate confrontation. Maybe because I grew up with my sister fighting a lot of battles for me (thank you for that) or maybe it is just my personality. Unless it deals with my kid, I will flee any type of argument. I just am not a one to bring up anything confrontational and thankfully my husband is...until a few nights ago.

My husband and I both had this looming question if one of our couple friends were either one avoiding us or did we do something that offended them. For once, my husband was not up front with just asking them. Usually he doesn't care about talking to anyone about any subject. Sometimes I think he should of been a lawyer, but that is another topic for another day. We questioned this for a while because in the past weekends were usually spent with our couple friends and we always had a fantastic time. Our children are the same age. We agree on the same principals (for the most part) and we honestly love these people and their children. So when invitations were sparse and weekends would go by without phone calls, we started to wonder.

Then last weekend, my husband and I really wondered if in fact we did something. We wanted to hang out with our couple friends and we thought the plans were going to happen and then they didn't. The next day, my husband told me to just ask. Me? Ask? That was out of the question! There was NO way I could confront that without sounding like a five year old little kid asking, "why didn't you ask me to come out an play?". So I did what any non confrontational person would do, I called another friend of mine who happened to be a sister/sister in law of this couple. Wow, this sounds really high school, but seriously I thought I'd die if I confronted the topic to the actual people.

So I sat and thought about what I was going to say. I actually scripted myself so I wouldn't sound like a five year old or sound like I was being a complete b#@!h. I tend to get over emotional when confronting anyone so I scripted out in my head over and over again what I was going to say and after much contemplation, I called my friend. She was on the other line and asked to call me back! CRAP! I had to rebuild everything on what I was going to say! NOOOO!!!!! Thankfully she called back. Actually that helped because it seriously took me forever just to pick up the phone to call her.

I started off asking about a friend (who she was on the other line with). Then I let out a big breath and asked my friend the big question, "Is your sister angry with me?". I knew she would know. She is the type of friend who is wonderfully close to her sister. I knew she wouldn't rat out her sister if there was a huge dilema between us, she would give me some suggestive insight to the matter. My friend responded having no clue what I was talking about and that if her sister had a problem with me then she would know. I was thinking to myself, "THANK GOD!" We ended the call on a good note talking about other things girly that will NOT be mentioned in this post. It calmed me down to be honest and thankfully I could sleep that night.

The next day, the girl...err woman of my couple friend and I were emailing. She in her cheerful email talked about going to parks with our kids, etc., I was beaming. She didn't hate me or my husband! I emailed her back telling her how I talked to her sister and the conversation we had because I had thought she was angry with me about something. She replied with saying that she was really busy, had too much on her schedule and how she really wanted to get back into hanging out on a more consistent basis.

So that goes to show that even though my husband and I had reasonable thoughts, that sometimes a little confrontation pays off. We obviously love these friends and even though it was one of the most difficult conversations probably this year, I loved them enough to ask. Sometimes a little confrontation goes along way with making your day better and finding out that what you thought negatively, wasn't the problem at all.

I encourage anyone reading this (if you got this far), that if something is bothering you then ask. If anything the outcome at least will bring you a little sanity and at least your family or friends will know what is bothering you. Its a high school lesson on relationships, but at least today I am a little more sane.