> > > I have been severely, utterly shunned. A girl who I was good friends with for the past 5 years - until this year, when she went to another school, but we're still friends - is having a post-Halloween party tonight. Everyone's invited - all kinds of people at school (even people who claim they hardly knew her), a lot of our junior high group even though she hardly sees them - it's giong to be an awesome group of people.
> > >
> > > Except I wasn't invited. She called everyone else over the past week, but she never called me. It's as much of a dis whether she didn't call me on purpose or just forgot about me. People are saying I should go anyway, but I'm not going to do that... There's really nothing I CAN do. My feelings are just hurt.
> > >
> > > Ki"thanks for letting me pout"ki
> >
> > Dear Kiki, I'm hoping you're not directly Mennonite ;) To take a Howardian Practical Approach™ to this... Why don't you just call your friend and ask why you weren't invited?
> >
> > Wolf "And then you'll know for sure if you've been Actively Shunned™, and the RW paramedic team will be coming your way Stat with the appropriate first-aid measures...*sniffle*" spirit
>
> I, um, I don't know. It's, erm, the principle of the thing? I guess really it's that we DON'T really ever talk anymore, and calling her and saying "Why wasn't I invited?" could honestly sound really catty. So I didn't call. And, um, well, yeah. I guess if it was a friendship I was horribly worried about maintaining, I would... but I'm not... I know that in a year we'll be off at college and probably never talk again.
>
> Ki"that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt"ki

Ah. Ah. Ouch. I know it's too late to do anything about the party (heh), but you still seemed to be a bit upset, at least, when you wrote this. Well... er... Look at it this way. You don't care enough ABOUT HER to call and ask why you were snubbed; yet you DO care when it appears that SHE didn't care enough ABOUT YOU (to invite you)? No it doesn't matter whether you or she actually thinks you're "good friends" anymore -- whatever the case may be, you've still got an emotional attachment with her at stake.

Perhaps you see what I'm getting at.

My view on this is that it's better to receive a quick stab to the gut (i.e., an outright rejection), than to endure a slow festering bleed of hard feelings because you feel you've been betrayed. With rejection, everything's all up front on the table. Whereas with holding a grudge -- i.e. you said "from the principle of the thing" -- you'll never know, for sure, whether your 'hurt' from the other person is due to something she actually *did* (or didn't) do to you, or instead from something you *perceived* that she did/didn't do for you. Many times the person on the receiving end of a grudge isn't even aware that she had 'hurt' you. That may not be true here, of course... but my point is that having hard feelings towards her could hurt *you* much more than it will hurt her.

Really, I don't know if I've described this properly; or whether it even applies to your situation adequately. But I did want to say the stuff that first popped into mind, when you got the 'cold-shoulder' from a once-closer friend.