Dear Adri,
I’ve been friends with this woman for several years now and our friendship was really strong through the pandemic. So, when she expressed interest in getting involved in my career (I’m a successful fashion influencer who travels for work) I had no hesitation about inviting her on a work trip. Unfortunately, once on the trip, she behaved really strangely, drinking a lot and berating people I needed to maintain good contacts with! When I reminded her I was here for work, she sulked and then later blew up at me.
We didn’t speak for over a year following this incident, but she eventually called and gave me a true heartfelt apology. Since then, she’s been doing some fashion things — posting outfits, etc. And she recently asked me to collaborate with her on some international fashion content. I feel quite torn because in my mind, I had told myself the only way we could preserve the friendship was to not combine work or travel. Now she wants to do both. Should I go ahead and see if it works? Should I politely decline but not say why? Or should I be honest and tell her I don’t think our friendship can survive another work merger?
Dear My Influence!,
Honesty IS the best policy, but people always forget to add the caveat that it is the hardest, most conflict filled policy as well. Still, I don’t think this is something you can just brush off if she has more than a passing interest in your line of work — it will likely present itself over and over until you either tell her the truth (whatever that is) or agree to collaborate.
I don’t believe in very many hard and fast rules — some say don’t mix work or money with friendship, and I think thats just too antithetical to community building for my liking. But your hesitations aren’t tied to some old platitude — you are drawing on a very real and very bad experience with this woman.
What isn’t clear from your question is (beyond apprehensive) how you feel about a potential collaboration? If you see some potential there, I think it’s important to say that while you are open to working together, the two of you would need to discuss some boundaries so you can avoid a repeat of the experience you had before.
If you aren’t interested in working together, I think you can be a bit gentler and simply say that the proposed collaboration won’t work right now because…because it doesn’t align well with your current professional trajectory, because you generally avoid working with close friends, because insert reason here. This makes it about you, not her work or past behavior (although, that doesn’t mean she wont take it personally.)
Either way, her response will be telling. We all deserve relationships that are safe and stable enough to tolerate discomfort and to survive the word “no.”
Best,
Adri