The trick that saved my friendship after a cancel callout

My college friend group tried to cancel me over a joke I made 4 years ago, but I found that just owning it without excuses and asking them to coffee one-on-one actually worked for 3 of them. Has anyone else managed to patch things up instead of just losing everyone?

3 comments

3 Comments

danielmason18d ago

Man I'm glad that worked for you because this whole cancel culture thing has gotten OUT of hand. People are way too quick to just cut someone off forever over one dumb thing they said years ago. I've seen it happen at my shop too where guys will hold grudges over nothing and just stop talking to each other instead of hashing it out. We've all said stupid stuff we regret, especially in our early 20s, that doesn't mean you deserve to lose your whole friend group over it. Good on you for being the one to make the first move and actually talk to them face to face instead of just ghosting everyone.

caleb_stone18d ago

Yo honest question, did you have to deal with anyone who just straight up refused to meet? I had a similar thing with my old roommate after I said something dumb about his girlfriend at a party. I just sat him down, said "yeah that was a stupid thing to say and I was being an asshole," no excuses, no "but I was drunk." He still needed like two weeks to cool off before he'd even talk to me, but he came around. The ones who won't even give you five minutes? Those were never your real friends anyway.

hart.mark14d ago

The thing nobody talks about is that sometimes the apology isn't even the hard part, it's dealing with the third party who escalated it in the first place. Someone probably went back through your old messages or brought that joke up to stir drama, not because they actually cared about the joke itself. If you don't figure out who that person was and why they did it, you're just putting a bandaid on a situation that's probably going to blow up again later.