Sabotage

Recently, a friend of mine told me casually during conversation that she had some long standing grievances with me, going all the way back to college. Yikes. My stomach tightened when she said this because, I have to say, I was a totally different animal in college. Insane things flew out of my mouth at the speed of light, so I was expecting her to tell me something nutty and out of line that I'd said to her that had been bothering her all this time. Instead, she told me that she feels that I actively sabotaged all of her romantic relationships.
"What? Why are you just telling me this now?" I demanded. I mean really, I was clutching my pearls!
"I don't know, I just never felt like bringing it up." Sigh. Passive people.
"So what was going to happen if you hadn't brought this up today? You would have just continued to stay mad at me for thirteen more years?"
"No," she said. "I just would have stopped being your friend eventually."
Huh?
This was amazing for me seeing that, with the exception of one guy, I liked all of her boyfriends and wanted her relationships with them to work out. I couldn't believe that she felt this way.
What was even scarier was that she could be pissed at me for so long and not say anything. It made me wonder if other close friends of mine were mad at me and just not saying anything.
Listening to her discuss all the reasons why she felt the way she does was emotional, heavy, and exhausting. So, even if there are other friends out there that feel as she does I'm sorry, I won't be asking you about it any time soon. I need to recover from this first.
This whole situation caused me to ask myself another question: at what point is someone's issue with you solely their issue with you? If a friend brings up something that you have done that upset them years after it happened, are you still responsible? Should you still apologize? Do you apologize when you suspect that a friend may be projecting personal issues on to you? How much of the bag do they have to hold for not bringing the issue up sooner?
At the end of the day, their is no expiration date on hurt, so I apologized. I also think of our friendship as more than the issues that she brought up, and I don't want us to move forward with animosity towards me.
"You should have told her to get out of her feelings," a 13-year-old I mentor told me after I shared this story with her.
Maybe. Perhaps that will be my approach in ten more years when she accuses me of something similar.