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I reached out to a friend I hadn't spoken to in a couple of years after she did this. Sent her a private message. She said she's divorced and when I asked if she's OK and how the kids are getting on, I got ghosted.
Also got another guy friend who I offered support when he was going through a real rough patch with his wife. He told his wife to tell my wife to tell me that he doesn't want to talk.
I guess people don't want to talk about it.
In the first case it comes across like you were hitting on them.
In the second case you got him and his wife talking! That's real progress.
Basic friendliness isn't hitting on someone.
I heard about your divorce. How you're doing?
Yeah but at the same time "hey we haven't spoken in a while but I saw you're going through something famously alienating, how are you"
I'm not saying she didn't read it that way or even that she's wrong to, but I do wish we could be a society where it wasn't assumed flirtation
That's one of the big drawbacks of sexualizing all media and making our sexuality one of the most important aspects of our individual identity. We forget that's only a small part of what it means to be human.
Maybe if he knew about the divorce going into it? It sounds like he found out about the divorce while just asking how she was. I'd hope we don't assume an ulterior motive over such a mundane approach.
Though we don't know what she has been through. If she felt like she was getting undesired attention since the divorce, then its perfectly understandable.
Either these folk weren't in a mental space to talk about what was happening or OP is not the type of person people want to get into those things with. Especially based on the second scenario which is pretty hilarious.
Yeah I didn't know about the divorce for the first friend. My wife had seen no pictures of the husband on Instagram (I'm not on Instagram) for awhile though. But I reached out saying "I was remembering some of her quoted wisdom with my wife and hope she is well and the kids are well". She mentioned she had divorced. There was no flirting intended and I would be amazed if my messages were interpreted as such.
The second friend is someone I know because our wives are best friends and we visited them fairly frequently. The friend's wife visited us and told us details about their relationship difficulties to vent. I messaged the husband offering an ear whenever needed. He took it poorly and felt (possibly) ashamed about "not having his house in order". He asked his wife not to talk about relationship issues to anyone (didn't work, my wife is first to hear all the details of things happening between them) and asked her to say that he doesn't want to talk about it. Since the wives are besties, the message came back through my wife. I thought it was even more sad that the wife had emotional support, and the husband just balled up everything inside and felt like sharing difficulties was somehow a sign of weakness. Seemed like some shitty idea of masculinity to me. I wished him the best and left it at that. Since then, the wife has left him with their son, moved out to a flat that she uses for hooking up, kept promising this is for getting some space to get her thoughts straight with the promise of reconciliation, continually cheated with a coworker he always expressed concerns about her becoming too intimate with (coworker also married with a newborn baby at home). Complete shitshow. Now he's blocked all of us in an attempt to break ties with the wife's side of the social group.
I honestly don't see an issue with the first one. She may just not have been in a good place mentally to respond. But I also don't feel like your message absolutely warranted a response. It would have been the polite thing for her to do but if she's struggling then I think it'd reasonable to be content that you shared some positivity / support, which she likely read and appreciated. Is this friend closer to you or your wife?
The second situation sounds like an absolute shit show and its probably to your benefit he didn't engage lol. Honestly I get where he's coming from though. You're absolutely right about our broken concept of masculinity. Ever since humans moved from hunter gatherers (mobile) to agrarian and industrial (sedentary) with the ability to produce surplus, masculinity has been defined by productivity and controlling capital with emotional labor seen as a distraction or weakness. I despise the dominant worldview towards masculinity.
But, you basically made it obvious to him that their 'dirty laundry' was being aired out. That's bound to not be received well.
If you haven't spoken in years, it seems suspicious.
This is a normal transition to marriage. Couples will enter a social media cocoon as their accounts and associated content are liquefied and reconstituted into a final mature state of matrimonial bliss.
Please witness their emergence as a single, beautiful, contiguous organism, at 5pm Saturday on Magnolia Terrace Landing Events Center and Disco-tech. Formal dress. Cash bar. Parking in lot adjacent to building.
No flash photography, as it can startle the newly conjoined marital couple.
Immediately followed up by:
"So...like...is she single now?"
If this were a comment on my social media to answer...well first of all I would have to clarify with them "you must mean my second broken engagement, right? The first one happened before Facebook, back in 2005, but we had MySpace then I think, but still, you mean 2024?".
"Well, see what happened in 2024 was, August 17th we were supposed to be wed. I picked the anniversary of my best friend's death for our wedding date as a way of making her a part of it, and also as a way to bring some joy to what used to be the worst day of the year. Now it'll be our wedding anniversary ever year! We can party!
Come August 13th though, my fiancés struggle with meth addiction/psychosis took the wheel again, and drove him off into outer space.
He dumped me on his way off the planet though, because apparently (and I quote), "we can't be together because there is a woman waiting in the states for me to go breed with her, so I can pass on my super powers. I would have tried with you, but you're too old."
Haha, omg. Steal my last few years of good fetility then call me too old to have a kid like I've always wanted to, like I made sure you wanted to before i even agreed to start this relationship, that we used to always daydream about, that we made plans for including picking out a name, until you changed your mind out of nowhere one day, and now you're saying this "too old" shit to me while you're in the process of leaving me at the fucking altar, essentially? Wow.
And now, you might have expected that this cruel quote of his would be the craziest part of this story. It's not. The crazier part is this: I had just taken that motherfucker back!!
Just a month ago, we got back together. In retrospect, what would follow should not have been a surprise, but... we only got to spend like 2 weeks together as a couple before his next relapse/psychotic break would disappear him from my life again. Haven't heard a peep from him in 2 weeks now. No idea where he is or if he's ok. No idea if he's even alive.
And I was the genius who said, "sure, I'll trust you one more time".
That's what happened."