My DH is an amazing friend. Kind, caring, works his tail off to stay in contact, just really, really great about being a good friend. One of his good friends from Uni had kind of disappeared after our wedding (which he flew out to CA for). DH had been phoning, emailing, Facebooking etc to try and make sure he was okay, but we hadn't heard anything (for about a year!), and none of the friends in the group had heard anything either.
Today, I guess the friend suddenly got in contact and he told my husband that:
1) He had been engaged before he came to our wedding (engaged for a few months!), but hadn't told anyone as they both came from very traditional Indian families and hadn't told their parents yet.
2) Shortly before the wedding, the parents met and HATED each other, to the point that they forced the engage couple to call it off. Now, this was not an arranged marriage, they had gotten engaged together w/o the parents, but they still called it off after being pressured. So, at our wedding (where he volunteered for, and gave, one of the speeches), he was just coming out of a broken engagement that he had told no one about.
3) Apparently, sometime during the 1000 mile trip DH made some sort of sarcastic joke to the group at large about weddings, the friend took it personally and decided not to speak to us OR anyone else in the group--which is what he had been doing for the past 16 months or so, until he called DH. To tell him that, somehow, this was all DH's fault.
4) I feel really badly for the friend (who is now in a new relationship that he is NOT telling his parents about) but DH took it really hard that he could ever, ever be mean enough (or just uncaring enough) to have someone decide not to talk to him (or anyone else in an entire group of friends!), and I wish this friend had just TOLD someone or, at least, not blamed what seems to be a horrible set of circumstances entirely on DH.
I don't know; it just feels like there must have been a lot more going on for him to decide that not talking to a good friend of over a decade was the solution to the problem. He and DH spoke for over an hour, so I am hopeful they may be mending fences, but gosh, it seems weird--and it's very, very tough hearing DH feel so terrible for not knowing that his friend was in pain.
