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Dear Pagan Agony Auntie:
Years ago I was in a coven. It was awesome. Then after a few years, people lost interest/moved away/had babies, whatever, and it broke up. Several people from the coven (including the HP, who used to be my mentor) still live in my small town and I run into them fairly frequently in public. HP puts on pagan-related events in town, which is something apparently no other pagans around here do and she is kind of the "mover and shaker" one with all the connections, so if anything pagan goes down in town, I'm seeing her there. I am still on good terms (roughly speaking) with HP and she is the sort of person I would presumably still like to be friends with, were it an option. I was also fairly close with HP's craft parent back in the day when we had a mutual activity going. However. There is the HP's SO, who....well, the HP started her own coven again with her SO and another friend of theirs, and supposedly they were taking new members. When I asked about this, I was told the group was closed, and that SO was "...done" with the folks in the old group. Oh yeah, and supposedly none of us would be allowed in their new home, per SO's wishes. I have slowly come to the conclusion that HP was being polite and that really translates into "My SO now hates your guts." Yes, mine personally, as the other ex-covenfolks remaining in town are apparently not getting this behavior. I haven't the faintest idea what the hell I did to tick SO off (we were generally friendly, but SO is kind of a naturally cranky person as far as I can tell and for all I know SO just turned on me), I've racked my brains and am at a loss...but then again, I'm used to having people hate my guts at first sight or start to unexpectedly, so I guess that happened again. Or maybe I'm just a generally awful person and killed her pets and raped her couch for all I know.
What this boils down to is: if I run into HP or her craft parent alone, they are perfectly friendly and it's like old times, I'm sometimes even encouraged to talk to them privately. Which I don't do, because... If I run into HP and/or her craft family with SO there (let's say in public and in such a way that I can't just "pretend I didn't see you", which I do when I can), everyone BARELY ACKNOWLEDGES that I said hi, and then they literally move as far away from me as they can get in public. It's like I have the cooties. I get the feeling that they all wish I'd creep away in shame or "pretend I didn't see them" even though they were standing right in front of a door when I walked in. For the record, HP and her craft parent will not say anything to me about what's gone on, I can only assume that SO told them not to tell me. Craft parent said they would ask what the problem was, and then I never heard anything again, so you get the drift. Craft parent also dropped the mutual activity we did together to do something with SO that I was specifically not wanted at and I rarely even talk to them any more.... so the evidence is pretty good that SO just wants them all to avoid me like the the plague.
I'm aware that SO is considered "family" and despite the whole "coven = family" bullshit, I am now NOT family, and they clearly had to pick sides and everyone is picking the one that is going to be the life partner/in the family forever. I get that. I'm just confused as to how I should behave here. Should I just publicly snub the shit out of all of them as per SO's apparent wishes, "pretend I didn't see you," etc? I miss my friends, and when I'm around them alone they don't seem to hate my guts, which just fucks with my head and confuses me. Every time I'm at pagan events that HP is at (SO rarely attends), everything is like the old days. I just don't know what the hell I am supposed to be doing here. I've tried to find other pagan folks interested in coven-ing (without HP) here, but so far there haven't been takers/lots of solitaries. Or maybe I just suck, that could be the case as well. But for the long term, I have to reasonably assume that I'll be running into these folks, with and without SO, for the foreseeable future. And I still haven't figured out how I should handle the snub.
Thanks--
I Guess I'm Just Horrible?