I have a friend who keeps trying to one-up me on names. It’s absolutely ruining our friendship. She has no regard for my feelings and now it seems it’s become deliberate to anger me. I am not usually one to “mark” my names, as I usually don’t share but we’ve had intimate conversations about baby names and I thought I could trust her. I just had another baby and had she been a boy, she would have been named x (a family name for us). Now she is expecting a boy and has chosen x as the name. It’s NOT a common name and does NOT match her other two names.
My last pregnancy, she emailed me when I was past my due date, waiting for baby, and told me that she hoped I wasn’t using name Y because she had chosen it for her baby (she was about 3 mo. behind me). She “marked” her territory and that Y name had been our top choice. Once she “peed” on it, it was kind of ruined for me (and it was my Grandpa’s name, which made it even harder to part with). Anyway, then she named her 2nd born the female variation of my Grandpa’s first name.
Seriously, it’s so unbelievable at this point and I honestly am not sure I can continue a friendship with this woman. Mind you, we’ve been friends for 25 years!
[name]Do[/name] any of you have any coping mechanisms for a situation such as this? I find it baffling and hurtful.
I can completely understand you frustration. Naming babies is a very stressful and personal process and it hurts to feel like the people we care about most are making it harder, and sometimes even painful.
I would say that if you have been friends for 25 years then there must be many things that you have in common or connect with. This is one issue (albeit an important one) that you are rubbing against about and not, in my opinion, worth throwing away such a long friendship over without trying to get round it first.
The simplest way is to say to your friend that you don’t want to talk about names with her because you and your SO have decided to keep it between yourselves. That way, when either of you has a baby in the future, you each won’t know the name before the baby has arrived and you will have the peace of mind of knowing for sure that their has been no deliberate poaching.
My best friend and I had this conversation and it was the best thing. Whenever we would be watching TV or reading magazines I would inevitably start talking about this name or that with “of course the problem with this name is…” general type comments (I’m a name-nerd - I can’t help it! :? ), not realising that inadvertently I was putting her off names that she liked or was considering.
She asked me, quite frankly, not to discuss names with her, and at first I was a little hurt but I respected it and now its not an issue.
The harder way of getting around the issue is to “have the conversation” and explain to her exactly how the situation has made you feel. This option is the more painful and much more ‘make-or-break’. Either it will clear the air between you completely and you will both be able to more forward with the issue completely removed, or it will flag up other issues between you damage your relationship.
Whether you do this last ‘drastic’ option will depend on how seriously you are considering breaking off the friendship and whether you truly believe she has poached your names deliberately and consciously (as opposed to it being an unconscious accident).