I Don't Want to Renew Old High School Friendships?
I never attend my out-of-state class reunions but this past summer the committee sent the reunion invitation with an update letter to return, which I did. Now I am being bombarded with phone calls and emails from people I didn't even like back then let alone want to keep in touch with now. I can't even remember them.
What to do? Ignore or reply and be honest? I don't have the time or interest to keep up with these people.
Also, why do so many people want to stay in touch?! Don't they have lives?
SavvySue2014-01-30T10:43:28Z
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I am kind of in the same boat. I paid the money to go to my 50th reunion and at the last minute couldn't make myself go. My life is so different from any of those people. I think it's best to keep them in the past. You're right, some of them I couldn't stand back in the day, and they certainly haven't improved with age.
It would have been better if you had ignored the initial contact. Returning the form gave the impression that you WERE interested. Either just leave it alone now so that they'll assume you don't want to go or write and tell them you don't want to go and ask them to take you off their mailing list.
I, now aged 70, had a similar contact about ten years ago. I said that I wouldn't be going because only one person involved was I still friendly with and I meet up with her once every 2 years or so and we contact each other several time a year. Going to meet with them all would have involved a huge amount of rail fare and taxi fares and, at least, 2 nights in a hotel because I'd moved away. It wasn't worth it and I'd have hated it.
In my case, I had not seen most of these people in almost 45 years so I'd have had nothing to say to them really. For you it won't be anywhere near that long but if you don't want to go don't be badgered into doing it.
Just ignore the reaching out to touch you. You must have given them your new address when you moved out of state but if not , you didn't need to list your phone number on the up date sheet. Why did you do that? They have lives but as we age some things become more important about people we have a shared history in time. Why bother to write back and 'be honest' when you can just dump the mail from them and change your phone number? Are you looking for an excuse to be mean maybe? Only you know.
I'm confused. If you did not want to renew old friendships why did you send the up date letter? That was what it was for. So people could stay in touch. Be honest and say you are pleased that their lives have turned out well, or something polite. but the past is past and you don't want to stay in touch.
It could be they want to re-unite just to let you know they care about you after all those years of being around you in their youth. I never had a re-union since school because I didn't graduate, but I always wondered what it would be like to see some of my old friends and enemies again. I did get to see and talk to the school bully I put up with all those years of going to school a few years after he graduated. He had changed and matured so that I was glad to have had the chance to see it. If I hadn't had that last encounter with him, I would have always pictured him as the holly terror in school and associated him as a very bad memory. Sometime going back to face your demons, and learning how they have changed, can be a poultice to the soul.