My friend demoted me from MOH when I was struggling during my postpartum and has now ghosted me after telling me she's still mad for it a year later
I (25F) and my friend K (26F) had a huge falling out over my ability to help with her wedding planning as her MOH 3-6 months postpartum. K and I had become friends after a mutual friend started dating her. We hung out alot along with our husbands. After our friend Al (27 male) dated her for sometime he asked my husband and I to help pop the question. We were delighted to because we were so excited for them! important to the story I was 28 weeks pregnant with my first baby.
The day we were set to help A propose I ended up in the emergency room with bleeding. I was so worried I was not going to get discharged in time. It was a very scary experience. Eventually I did get discharged but would be late from when Al originally wanted to propose. We did tell Al what had happened and that we are on our way. The proposal went great! We got beautiful pictures of them during and a video.
Fast-forward to K starting her wedding planning. She has mentioned she was thinking about making me her MOH or her other long time friend. I told her there was no pressure because she needs to make the right decision for herself because I didnt care either way. I would be a bridesmaid and could be there on her day. In the end she ended up picking me for her MOH and I happily accepted. In hindsight because I was going to be going through my postpartum period shortly after was probably my first mistake, but she said her other friend is to flaky to be MOH.
After I gave birth to my baby I went through a roller coaster of a postpartum period. I didnt think i could ever go back to work and the postpartum anxiety was almost debilitating. I was the only friend who made the time to go with her wedding dress shopping (aside from her two mother figures), and I made the time to go with for her fitting/pick it up, bridesmaid dress shopping, she called me during work because she wanted help talking through things for her wedding, vendors, venues, etc. which after a bit I told her these should be conversations she has with her Fiance, Al. She wasnt the biggest fan of that, but we kept moving forward.
Eventually I did start to give my actual opinions when I thought she was taking on a bit more than she could chew for her wedding with all the DIYs, extras, etc. She said its her wedding she will do what she wants which is fine but I thought she would enjoy the wedding planning process if she wasnt stressing so much over small details. When Al & K were finalizing the wedding party details Al's sister pulled their kids from the wedding party as flower girl. I swear I had messaged back to K after she told me this but I must have forgotten because when I went back to see when confronted about it I couldn't find anything. I felt terrible forgetting to message back. I 6 months postpartum and my baby wasnt sleeping through the night, I was exclusively breastfeeding and me and baby had gotten really sick with influenza so the reason I'm thinking I thought I responded in my head but it just never made it to text format.
After a month or two K and Al wanted to come over to have a talk about the wedding. I honestly thought this talk was going to be K and Al asking if our daughter would be flower girl, but it actually was K asking me to step down as MOH. I was shocked and very upset. I told her I cannot do as much as she would like as MOH because of my baby and I was trying my best. I asked her if she could delegate some tasks that would have gone to me to her other bridesmaids but she said thats not the point. If they are going to do the tasks then they should be MOH. I have been MOH before for another friend's wedding so it was nothing new to me of what i thought MOH tasks should be, but she wanted so much more than what I was use to cuppled with a new baby, I was struggling. And I did try to voice what i was able to do or wasnt comfortable doing. I told her at the very beginning someone else could be MOH and I wouldn't have minded, but I'm not going to call vendors, attend venue meetings, etc. I was working full time again and she was part time so I just didnt have the time she did. In the end thats all I really know to have been the issue.
Shortly after I was asked to step down, which did not go over well, my husband, the best man, also stepped down. He was not ok with how I was being treated during my postpartum period when I was struggling but doing my best for everyone. Two months before the wedding my husband and I thought she should try to reconcile because we know Al has been a friend of ours for years and we really wanted to be there to support Al and K's day. In the end they asked my husband to be best man again and I was able to attend as a guest. I felt a little different about this because K had an issue with me and not my husband so why they were so willing to have him back. I feel like they got what they wanted without owning up to how they treated me.
The wedding came and went and i thought it went well. As the year went by my husband and I thought things were on the up and up. They came over and we hung out every couple of months. Eventually K quit her job and was searching for a new one. Shortly after she found her next job she started to go silent with texts. With fewer responses than normal and it felt hard to get much out of her. I thought she was busy adjusting to the new position because it did have long crazy hours. Her husband still came over to hang out and if K didnt come with I asked what she was up to and how she was doing. Which Al would respond shes at work. (This was a lie we found out later) Knowing she worked weekends I didnt even think twice.
Eventually I got a cryptic message from K about that she doesn't forgive me and that she will never let me get that close to her again. I responded to that message with a, is everything ok? or what is this about? which she did not respond to and I Eventually had to message Al what was up. She was apparently still upset about the wedding drama and when we met before the wedding to try and see if we could reconcile, we must have discussed that this is not a clean slate and that I would reach out later to continue the conversation to get back to a good place. I did remember that it wasnt going to be a clean slate, but not the part where i was supposed to reach out again to discuss what happend around the wedding. She continued to not answer any of my messages and Eventually Al stopped responding as well because these were conversations I needed to have with K. To say I was pissed was an understatement. How could I fix something I didnt know was an issue. And then when I finally discovered something was wrong she wouldn't respond. I thought her starting a new job and being busy with that was the reason she was short with her messages and Eventually stopped responding. I tried reaching out but I never got a anything back prior to her cryptic message.
The way she treated me during my postpartum was terrible because she thought I should be able to drop everything and help her or be willing to drag my baby around to see her or go see venues. Stuff like that is way harder than it sounds especially with the anxiety I was experiencing. Once they started to stop responding we were having a three way conversation through my husband to get to me I said you can either talk to me in the next 24 hours or we are never discussing the topic again. Obviously they never responded and about a week ago Al reached out to my husband to see if they wanted to tinker on something, which my husband responded you need to be able to talk to my wife about what happened before he was willing to meet up. Which Al replied he agreed and that we needed to have an open conversation about it.
A couple days after that I reached out to Al to see if we could start this conversation but he wouldnt open the message. So my husband recommended i text him. I did and what I got back was K and him were busy this weekend and would need to find a weekend that works for the both of us. Al has previously lied about K working so it was hard to believe she was actually working this next weekend, but in the end I followed up with we would prefer to have the conversation sooner than later and that my husband and I would be willing to come mid week if that worked best for them because we both know the next 5 weekend either of us is busy with something else. Since I sent that message its been more radio silence. and Al said he "Im not gonna be coming around without my wife by my side, been going over there more times than I care for without kat." when I asked if we could just meet with him since he offered to come just him when this huge thing first started with the cryptic message. The silent treatment after finding out there was an issue was brutal. I never got a response and this whole thing started with assuming I knew something was wrong and that I needed to reach out. They are unwilling to listen to any other perspective than their own even though they are not the only people who were wronged in this situation. Am I unreasonable to think we should be able to have an adult discussion on it without being stonewalled?