Accused

My friend T seems to have fallen out with me and stopped talking to me because I told her I probably couldn't go to a concert with her. I haven't heard from her since Monday and I don't know what to do about it.

The full story is this. It goes on a bit so feel free to ignore, I just feel a need to write it all down. T and I go to a lot of gigs together. It's what we "do" and what we are known for among my friends and hers. We went to a concert a few weeks ago and had a brilliant time, so much so that we booked to see the same artist later this year at a venue a flight away from where we live. We also booked the flight.

We have quite few concerts arranged for the coming months. We (in our separate homes) watched something on TV over the weekend about one of the bands we're due to see and it really whetted our appetites. After watching, T tried to track down tickets for another venue for this band and thought she found some good ones, I asked where she'd found them.

Next day she emailed me sounded pretty excited to say she'd found some really good tickets on an ebay type site, more than face value but not extortionately priced, and said she was thinking how great it would be to go.

I had overnight thought about whether I would want to go and whether I could go, and realised I have hardly any free weekends between now and August. I need to fit in meeting up with an old friend (actually my longest standing friend - I've know her since we were 5) sometime in one of those weekends, and the weekend of this new concert was one that Oldest Friend had mentioned she was probably free.

I replied to T saying I didn't think I could commit at the moment to another weekend away, as I needed to organise seeing Oldest Friend and that weekend was a possible date for the meet up. I did say if I ended up being free that weekend I would let her know (the concert tickets are not likely to sell out over the next couple of weeks). I went off to a meeting at work and returned to find an email from T telling me not to bother and saying that I have no idea how I appear to use people. She also made a comment that she was sure it would have been a different story if it was one of my favourite bands.

I felt sick and almost burst into tears at my desk. It really hurt that she would be that cold, short and angry with me. I replied immediately saying I had no idea I came across that way and asking her why she thought that. I apologised that my email may have seemed a bit abrupt (I was not having the best of days at work and was in a hurry to get to a meeting when I wrote it). She didn't reply.

Next day I texted her to tell her I'd put a cheque in the post to pay my half of our latest concert booking. Her reply just said OK, and that I could have the recently bought tickets and to let me know what name to change her plane ticket to (she knows my other friends aren't really into concerts so I don't know who she thought I might get to go with me). I texted that I didn't want to go with anyone but her and that I was still confused about what she'd said about using people, and asked if we could at least talk. I have heard nothing from her since.

I have told my Best Friend and another friend the story and both have said to just leave her, not contact her and she will forget this and get back in touch. This isn't the first time she has stopped talking to me and on previous occasions she has indeed got back in touch eventually. The other times however she hasn't accused me of using people. It hurts to be accused of that and I spent most of the day she said it trying to work out what I'd done. Best Friend however reassured me that I am not using T and that she is overreacting. She pointed out that I am entitled to say no to invitations and that T doesn't own me.

T does have very low self esteem and I wonder if it was me saying I needed to arrange seeing Oldest Friend before I could commit to the concert is what angered her. Did she feel like she was second best? I do know that none of my other friends would have reacted like that to what I said.

If she does get back in touch I am not sure a simple sorry will be enough this time, I think we would need to talk about why she said what she did. And if she doesn't get back in touch then we have the practical problem of a whole lot of concerts booked together and we will need to sort out what will happen to the tickets.

I have to confess that there is a part of me which wants to email her to tell her exactly how this has made me feel and to remind her that someone who was using her would not have given her the support I have given her over the past year or two.

If I don't hear from her in the next week I will need to decide what to do as our next concert is soon. Do I continue to ignore her and just accept missing the concert (which we've both really been looking forward to)? Do I contact her to ask if she wants to go to the concert? Do I ask her to please just talk to me? And what if she continues to ignore me?