Okay, y’all. This time it’s me asking for feedback. Or maybe a kick in the pants. At the very least, I think I need an attitude adjustment.
It’s been more than two years since I talked with a former BFF I’ll call Annie. We have been friends since I first moved to New York some 15 years ago, and I was a bridesmaid at her wedding four years ago (wore an expensive, ugly Vera Wang bridesmaid dress and spent way too much money on all the shower and bachelorette b.s. too, I might add). There was no real falling-out, per se. Annie was always the type of friend who was never great at staying in regular contact, but we were very close in our twenties, especially when she went through a two-year bout of debilitating illness that left her only barely able to make it to work. Since she was too exhausted do much socializing, I made sure to call her frequently and we’d catch up by phone, or I’d visit her at home on weekends. She was definitely one of those friends who was always current on what was happening in my life.
Then, in our early thirties, she got married and moved to Philly, so we saw each other less, but still kept in touch. Then her baby was born. We still managed to keep in touch, but it was often only when she needed emotional support—when things weren’t going well with her husband’s job and she was worried she’d be fired, when her daughter was sick.
Mind you, I’m not complaining. This is what a friend does. But then months started to go by and I didn’t hear from her. And then things took a bad turn in my own life. A beloved relative suffered a nervous breakdown, brought on by years of addiction and depression. Suicide attempts. Institutionalization. My family was in a very, very bad way for some time (things have stabilized now, thank God.) I was too worn out emotionally to reach out to Annie—I had other friends, including the Harpies, who helped me get through that mess—and I resented that after all our years of friendship, I was going to have to be the one to reach out to Annie if I wanted her emotional support. The resentment, I realize, is somewhat unfair. She always reached out when she needed help, and she was used to me always being the one to make contact, so I assume she thought I would have done that if things were dire. But I felt that a true friend is in your life enough to know when things are dire without me having to specifically call her up and throw myself on her mercy.
I ran into Annie’s husband at business event last year and wound up telling him, briefly, about what had happened. He was very sympathetic, and I assume he went home and told Annie. But I never heard from her. She sent a nice, anodyne Christmas card that was all “oh hey, it’s been ages!” So I sent a long e-mail about what was going on in my life. No response. I saw her husband again a few months ago, gave him an update, but still, heard nothing from Annie.
Every time I think of my former best friend, I’m eaten up with resentment—that she didn’t bother to keep in touch, that it was always my job, that she didn’t call when she heard what was going on. I realize she has a toddler and a husband, but that doesn’t stop other friends from making the time and the effort. I’m sure that if I called her and arranged a visit, we’d have a great catch-up and it would be like no time has passed, etc. We’ve always had a very easy friendship that way. But I resent—boy, I’m using that word a lot—that the onus is apparently on me to reach out if I want a relationship. And I’m fairly sure that after that nice catching-up session, things would probably go right back to radio silence until the next time I reached out. I’m also not sure that I could have a cheery catch-up without venting some of my resentment about how long it’s been and how I never heard from her. Her husband recently said they’d be in town for a couple weeks this summer and proposed getting together. I need to have my attitude adjusted by then.
So help me, Harpies. Am I wrong to feel so bitter? If I am—or even if I’m not—how can I overcome it? Is it even worth trying? Or is this relationship too cold and stiff to be revived? Your advice, please!
Why are friendships so difficult sometimes!? I wish I could answer this question! I want to hear what everyone has to say! When you wrote the email to Annie telling her about your situation, was there any intimation that you wanted her support? Is it possible she could think that you don’t need her? Do you think she still thinks about you and loves you and is spacey and feeling guilty about being a bad friend, or do you think she just doesn’t care enough to reach out? Obviously, different courses of action depending on the answer!
I have a friend who I felt that way about and thought I’d never be close to again. Then one day she called me out of the blue to tell me she had cancer. She said she didn’t want me to hear it from anyone else. She was going in for the operations and starting treatment and didn’t have any time to nurture the relationship, obviously, but it meant so much to me that I was in that pantheon of people in her circle. When it dawned on me that no matter how little she reaches out, she is still really interested in me, my resentment faded.
Good luck!
@Lise: Do you think she still thinks about you and loves you and is spacey and feeling guilty about being a bad friend,
Probably that one. But not enough to reach out, apparently, and that’s what I’m getting hung up on, y’know? Your example about your friend is making me think, though. Thanks.
Wrong? There is no right or wrong. It just is. Please don’t try to guilt yourself for something that you think might be wrong, just feel how it is without trying to push it away or hold onto it (I know, HARD).
Now, for the rest of it, you are feeling resentment that she has not done what you have done for her in the past when you really needed her to do it. But if you have not communicated that that is what you need at any point, how is she to know? And now you have resentment which is building up, but the only way to really release it will be by communicating how you feel and what you want. That looks like it will require you to do what you don’t want to do: be the one to make contact.
But, once you do make contact, I urge you to communicate all of this, with emphasis on you wanting to have a closer bond with your friend where *she* is the one to initiate contact, especially if she finds out that you’re having a hard time. This doesn’t mean that she *has* to agree on your terms, or at all.
She has her stuff and you have your stuff. All of it is valid.
You seem to understand this situation perfectly when you say the onus is apparently on me to reach out if I want a relationship. And I’m fairly sure that after that nice catching-up session, things would probably go right back to radio silence until the next time I reached out.
So that’s the choice for you to make, and I haven’t got any good advice, just competing aphorisms:
You can never make new old friends, and, people who aren’t in your life are not there for a reason.
From the outside, it sounds like your eyes-wide-open summary means that you could call her.
Man, let me know how this one works out? I wish I had some solid advice or insight, but the tone and emotions in your post echo mine perfectly — I won’t go into details, but this one saw communication with a very good male friend peter off when he went abroad for a year, then end entirely about four months ago. He now owes me three emails, and responses to several Important News Items in my life.
I definitely get the resentment, Becky, because I feel it too. It sucks to feel this way about the behaviour of another person, over which you have no control. For me, it boils down to feeling hurt that he doesn’t seem to think our friendship is at all important, while I did… do… did.
Anyway, good luck. If you come across any magic resentment-erasing potions, send me a link, will you?
I totally hear you on this…. and as Holly said above, there is no right or wrong. There is no “should”, there’s just the fact that you want her in your life. There’s kind of a contradiction in saying that you’ve fallen out of touch, but you still think she should know enough about your life to know she should reach out.
I don’t have a spouse or kids, but I have tons of friends I like more than I talk to, if that makes sense. My BFF in the world and I can go months without talking, then take a 5 day trip together, then go months without talking again, because that is how we work.
When she was ill, and you were so present to call her and visit, that was a gift you were able to give her of your time. She doesn’t have that kind of time to give you – she’s in another state, with a dependent person to feed, bathe and raise, and a partner to build a life with.
So if you want her insight and her specific brand of support, yep, you’ll need to reach out and ask for it, no strings attached. Maybe give her a chance to show you what shape this friendship can have right now, and maybe there’s a way for the two of you to find some time to reconnect once the baby’s old enough to be left with Dad for a few days at a time.
My only cure for resentment is recognizing my part in something and trying to let go of the “shoulds” I’m assigning the other person. I don’t get to arrange my friends schedules, and they don’t get to arrange mine. The best I can do is ask for what I need, and if I don’t get it, seek it else where without being mad I didn’t get it the first place I looked.
Good luck, and please let us know how ti goes.
Oh, this is so hard. I have recently gone through something similar (with two friends!) and for my own sanity just decided that I simply can’t be the one who makes all the calls and plans all the time. I need some mutuality there or I feel resentful. I think resentment is an understandable response if these things are important to you. Also, it sounds like in your case you are being sensitive to the issues of distance and new family matters.
Some people just aren’t by nature callers or planners – and that’s OK – but it’s also OK to need mutuality in calling and planning.
With my two friends, we’ve talked about it, and one has pretty much stepped up to the plate and has gotten better about calling/texting and planning and one hasn’t. The one who hasn’t still brings other things that are important to me to the table, and I won’t drop him or anything, but the nature of our relationship has changed a bit. I’m not happy that we hang out a bit less, but there’s just less resentment overall and I am happy that I feel like I’m sticking up for things that matter to me, and have told him repeatedly that they matter to me.
I’ve written and re-written this response several times now and I’m still not sure that it’s quite right. But here goes:
I’ve been on the opposite end of similar situations. I am very hands-off when it comes to relationships. Mostly, that works out because most of my friends and partners tend to be similar – intense and present when we’re together, but quite happy to go off and do their own thing the rest of the time. When partners and friends have different expectations, things can get messy. I expect people to tell me what’s going on, what they want, what they expect, etc. and then I see if I can work something out. If I can, great; if not, too bad.
I have been accused of not caring, not keeping in touch, not giving a shit, being cold, being aloof, all of it. I, obviously, disagree. I am none of those things if I really care about someone.
And that, I think, is what I’m getting at.
While I don’t think it’s entirely reasonable to expect someone who doesn’t know what’s going on in your life [even if that ignorance is due to her not calling] to be there for you, I DO think it is reasonable to expect some sort of response if you’ve told her about it. And repeatedly, at that.
Someone who cares about you would get in touch. Even if it’s ages too late, even if it’s embarassing, even if they have a toddler, even if they live in another state. I have used the ‘oh but I no longer live there’ excuse so many times to justify my own not getting in touch that it’s not even funny. And, to be brutally honest, it’s because I don’t want to get in touch. Oh I *care* alright. I feel bad. I feel a bit guilty. I feel sheepish if I run into that person again. But none of that is enough to motivate me to get in touch.
I don’t think your friend is a bad person. She’s just moved on. And if you were to reconnect at some stage, I’m sure you’re right that you’d hit it off again. I have a rather large group of friends like that – our lives have simply gone in such different directions that any meaningful connection is no longer viable. We were great friends once, and we’d have a ball if we caught up again, but it’ll never be the way it was because WE aren’t the way we were. I don’t expect anything from them and they don’t expect anything from me.
Getting to that point is painful though. Owning your anger and resentment – and your grief if this is the end of this particular friendship – is important. It’s the only way to let go of it in the long run. Because while I started this response by saying I’ve been on your friend’s end of the situation, I’ve been on yours too – I’m sure most of us reading this have, really. It sucks to feel discounted, unheard and uncared for, particularly after you’ve actually indicated that you need support (you didn’t say whether you told her you’d like to hear from her/needed her support, but at the same time I think not getting in touch with someone who tells you they’ve had it rough simply because they didn’t formally request it is disingenuous at best.). I would let it go. The friendship, that is. And eventually the resentment too.
I’ve noticed that when people have kids, they go in one of two directions. Either they become focused on their family to the exclusion of anything they consider unrelated to their kids, or they work to make sure that their world doesn’t shrink to include only those with kids the same age.
You shouldn’t have to tell your friend that you need her, especially since you’ve communicated what’s going on with you not once but several times. Friendships have a life cycle, and it sounds like this one has come to its end, or else it’s in a vegetative state. If it were me, I’d spend my time with people who are more rewarding than this woman is.
And I’m very glad to hear that things have settled down in your family. I send my wishes for continued stability and healing for all.
I think this may be an occasion for The African Violet of Broken Friendship, as Captain Awkward puts it (though the link goes to a situation that’s opposite to yours). In fact, I’d skip the violet, but that sense of letting the friend and the resentment go is what I think is important.
I mean, you could let it all pour out and tell her how you feel and what you need and why you’re mad and all that, and she quite likely could sit looking at you with an entirely blank WTF expression, and then go back to her life and occasionally say to her husband, “Gosh, remember that woman I had in my wedding party who threw the shitfit at me when you were nice enough to suggest getting together when we were in town?”
I just don’t think you can have what you need from this friendship. That is not to say that giving reciprocal support is not a perfectly legitimate and important criterion for friendship, because I agree with you there. But if your old friend does not agree or has moved on, then I think you are stuck just grieving the friendship and moving on yourself.
I think I’m reading in the comments that this is the minority opinion, but I wanted to get it out there.
It’s definitely a hard call, but to me she doesn’t sound like a great friend, if it’s always up to you to make the calls and keep the relationship going; I’m not very good at telling people when things are going pear-shaped, and my close friends are the ones who notice when I’ve gone AWOL for a while and call to see what the hell is wrong with me, so I might be a tad biased here. But I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong, there’s just what you’re ready to accept, really.
I recently cut off my “best friend” of sixteen years, for various reasons that included her acting like shit towards me, so it was a lot more clear-cut, but it’s never easy, that’s for sure.
I feel exactly the same way as you do about a former friend, and I can’t forgive this girl.
She was a very close friend of mine at university and we lost contact for a while then I moved to New York where she lives (she’s American) and she was having a terrible time and was basically alone with her daughter and we spent a lot of time together.
Then she was very busy and we didn’t see each other for a while but I wasn’t bothered because I can be quite hands off with friends and we always got on whenever we did catch up so it didn’t seem like a big deal.
Until, this January when something really awful happened to me and another friend of ours contacted this girl and told her and all she said was ‘that’s a shame’ She never contacted me and never has done since.
Now you’ll have to believe me that ‘that’s a shame’ was a wildly inappropriate response to this circumstance but essentially it’s the reason why while I think Nadia’s response is the best one (and I can also be quite hands off with friends and reconnect at different stages) from a personal level I’m all forget her, and never bother speaking to her again, because I honestly will never forgive my former friend no matter how much I try and pretend otherwise.
@emilyanne: I’ve been wondering where you’ve been. I hope things are better now. *hugs*
Thanks so much, y’all. All of your responses are validating my feelings in different ways. I do love Jane’s “African Violet of Broken Friendship” though.
I feel like given my outspoken nature, there’s not going to be any way that I can see my friend again without saying “Look, I have this resentment and I’ve been feeling really bad about our frienship (or lack thereof) and I realize it’s not exclusively your fault but it’s only fair that I tell you.” She may be upset, she may not, it may lead to a new understanding and renewal of frienship, or not.
But I also think I won’t be reaching out to set up a get-together specifically to tell her this. If she does, we can talk. If not…I think a lot of you are right on when you say that sometimes friendships fade in and out and we can grieve them and then move on. In order to do that, I have to let go of the bitterness and I’m going to work on that.
Hmmm. I’m a “bad friend”. It costs me a lot of teaspoons to reach out to people and spend time with them. If I have more than 2 things scheduled after work in a week, I feel like I’m in a whirlwind. In that regard, Facebook has been a godsend. I can keep in touch with what other people are doing and like or comment or message in whatever amounts I have energy for.
I can go months or even years without seeing people in person but to me it is like no time has gone past. I’m (almost) always there if someone reaches out to me for support; and frankly it’s pretty rare for me to reach out for support to anyone else. A few times I’ve had to put a particularly clingy person out of my life because they could never give me the space that I need. (Perspective: A friend with bi-polar disorder who expected me to pick up the pieces when she got into trouble (but chose not to take her meds), another friend who is a junkie)
But am I going to reach out to someone to offer support if they aren’t asking for it? No, probably not.
My advice would be to call and tell her how you feel. It’s easier in the long run when you make sure that there isn’t anything left unsaid, no matter what happens.
I’m the type of person that if someone doesn’t input the same effort, they’re not worth it. I think the fact that she didn’t even bother to do a quick reply to your email speaks volumes.
Maybe I’m bitter because I’ve been in the position of being a total rock for someone only to essentially feel ditched after I outlived my use. Lord knows there were a few people who I needed during my worst times who couldn’t be bothered. I get more comfort and help here than I do from those people.
I think Nadia’s response is right on. I want to echo the bit about it being unacceptable that she didn’t contact you after you told her about going though a really rough patch. That holds true whether or not you explicitly asked for her support.
A few additional thoughts. Your friend’s husband had already casually proposed getting together when they’re in town. If there is no follow-up by her on that, it’s sort of the icing on the cake of unacceptable friend behavior – move on. If she does arrange to see you, I agree with being honest about how you’re feeling about the friendship, and see what happens from there; if you continue to feel like you’re not getting what you need, let it go.
emilyanne: I hope the clouds are starting to part, and that you’re feeling better.
Hi BeckySharper and All, I’m a little late to the discussion but here’s my two cents.
I went through something similar with a former friend. Not that there was a precipitating event in my life per se, but that I really felt like I was doing all the work in the friendship and it was causing me stress.
It’s in my personality to address things like this with people because to go on without saying anything just feels wrong to me. At any rate, I brought up my feelings to this former friend and the response that I got was not one of apology or regret or a wish for things to be different but rather a this is the way it is and if you want to continue our friendship, deal. And I just couldn’t. This was one of my best friends who when things were going well brought so much to my life. But the disconnect and lack of attention was so aggravating for me that it overshadowed any joy. So, I had to let the friendship go. Because I’m finally to a point in my life where I recognize that holding on to friends who make me unhappy isn’t worth it.
I hope you find a way to handle things that brings you some peace and resolution, whatever that may be.
I totally get where you’re coming from in all of this and could say a lot, but I feel like others have sufficiently covered my contribution.
So instead, I thought I would share this quote. It’s from a commenter on one of my favourite blogs, chookooloonks, so it’s not famous or anything. Just…. really apt, I felt.
Hope it resonates with you, too:
“Don’t make someone a priority, when to them you’re only an option.”
Thanks for sharing that quote, ArisEile
Hey MischiefManager – belated thanks for the message, things are better, not brilliant but certainly better.
@mischiefmanager – I agree about people with kids. I also think that married people tend to group together. (I say this from experience.) When I got married, some of my single friends would say “Oh, you don’t want to hang out with us. We’re single!” as if it was a scarlett letter. I still wanted to hang out with them, but they slowly drifted away and I knew there was nothing I could do, but let it go. I’ve heard, from friends with children, that it gets worse when you get married so I feel as if she might have isolated herself before you isolated her. Not that you would, but I think that is always in the back of parents’ minds.
This reminds me of a quote from an old NYMag article: “Perhaps the reason friend breakups are so painful is because, unlike romances, friendships rarely begin with an understanding that they might end.” I agree that I think it’s time to move on. If she wanted to be in touch, she definitely would have by now. I’m going through the same so if you ever need to vent, I’m only an email (and train ride) away.