I have a cousin who works at a big biotech company. She's frequently texting me "Oh you have to come work here" and "My company is doing some amazing science." I've found these messages annoying because I have my own scientific job and feel like she's just assuming what her company is doing MUST be better than whatever I'm doing. But whatever, I always let it go.

Today though, she wrote me again "Come to my company!", and I wrote her back that my SO might be needing a new job and was looking at summer internships at her company, would she be willing to provide an internal reference? I also told her that she could Skype with my SO just to verify she's recommending someone reasonable, that my SO has a 4.0 GPA, etc. My SO has PhD and a good job already, it's just not a great fit.

SILENCE. My cousin just evaporated. I'm really, really pissed. I've been with my SO for 5+ years. My cousin knows this. So it's not that I'm asking her to recommend someone I met last week. What's more, we're talking about an INTERNSHIP! Not even a full job. The reference would just (maybe!) help my SO get an interview. I'm imagining my cousin will argue, "Oh well but I don't feel comfortable because I never met your SO." But it's like in that case, this is a chance for her to meet someone really important to me. When I think how much time and money I wasted at my cousin's wedding, I feel really angry that she isn't willing to skype with my SO for an hour and help out.

I also am really annoyed that instead of simply saying she's not comfortable with it and maybe having some kind of dialogue, my cousin is trying to pretend that my request never happened.