Dear Poppyxo:

You asked how people see this situation. I just re-read a bit from your previous threads as well as reading your new thread. This is how I see this situation and I will get right to the point:

You are angry at your friend and have been angry at her for quite some time. The expressions of your anger are: “it’s not sitting well with me”, “which is fine. But”, “which again is understandable, but”. You wrote that you understand that there is some validity to her not coming to see you in the facts that she has a two year old and doesn’t drive, but… In that but I read: but I am pissed off she doesn’t take the bus to see me!

When you gave her “not one, but a few (cards), as a funny gesture back”-  I think it was anger that motivated you, not humor. In that gesture I hear something like: you complained that I don’t send you cards, well, HERE, have two, have three cards, satisfied???!

Here is another piece of anger: you wrote that she told you that she forgot to get you a card and you added “(she works in a card shop)”- underneath this funny piece in parenthesis is something like this: what a liar she is! She didn’t forget to get me a card, she works in a card shop! What a lying, lousy friend!

Later in your post you wrote: “I text her… (I made a bit of a joke…) she …asked if I’m not too angry, so I replied & said… I’m a bit sad.”

Again, you joke, using humor as a vehicle to your anger.

Notice in the above quote she didn’t ask you if you were angry, she knew that you were angry. She asked if you were too angry.

You acknowledged to her that you were sad, but didn’t acknowledge the anger because you feel comfortable with sadness but not with anger.

In the past you wrote that your  mother bottled in her anger until she exploded, do I remember correctly? I think that you decided to not be like her, so instead of raising your voice, saying abusive words to a person and such, you try to hurt them with jokes and humor.

You wrote in your previous thread that teasing or bantering, the words you used(the joking and humor I wrote about here) work well with your father and “with everyone else”-

well, it doesn’t. Aggression is aggression whether it is expressed in volume of voice, name calling, and so on or quietly, through humor.

anita