Loss of close friendship
December 29, 2020 5:42 AM Subscribe
This past year, I’ve been forced to acknowledge that a once close friendship that was very, very important to me is over. I’m not dealing well and looking for help. This is long. Sorry.
I (31F) met Kendra when she was 27 and I was 25 when we had the same job in the human rights field. We clicked instantly and had everything in common. I’m an only child so it was the closest to a sister I’d ever felt like I had. We’d have long conversations about political issues, like the TRC in South Africa and the Euromaidan Crisis. I’ve found it hard to find people who care about these topics to the point of in-depth discussion, and I valued the analytical nature of our friendship.
We were both staunchly feminist. As someone from a small, conservative community, it was empowering for me to meet someone so secure in their views. We both strongly rejected the idea of anything traditionally “female”, and specifically bonded over our childfree stance. In a world where everything is about babies and so many people I knew had been having kids since they were 20, it was great to have the reassurance that I wasn’t crazy.
We’d stay up late at her house chatting into the night, never getting bored of each other, always more to say. We texted each other constantly, multiple times a day. There was nothing we couldn’t say to one another, nothing we couldn’t share. I had many other friends before her, have made new friends since, but none of these connections have ever felt the same.
We were both really unhappy in the job that we shared and experienced significant mental health impacts due to it. It didn’t seem like it at the time or I didn’t notice, but one of the central pillars of our friendship became emotionally supporting each other through Crappy Job. I loved and valued that there was more than enough room between us to vent and express wide ranging negative emotions without feeling judged. She told me she’d always be there for me and be a safe space where I could share anything.
We were close friends like this for about 5 years. In that time, I got engaged and asked her to be a bridesmaid and even considered making her maid of honour. In some ways, I was closer to her than I was to my husband. We were there for each other when both of our dads got really sick. But then, things...started to change. She got a new job, which I actually provided a reference for. I was so happy for her to have a new beginning.
At her new job, she was happier. Which was great until...everything in her world became about Being Positive. I am not kidding. If something wasn’t literally puking rainbows, she wouldn’t engage with it anymore because it “stressed her out” and “made her feel shitty”. The things that made her feel “stressed out” included the Rohingya refugee crisis and the closure of abortion clinics in the US. I think it was likely more stressful for the refugees, but okay... She didn’t want to talk about those things anymore; they were too negative. Increasingly, the only things she wanted to talk about were her dogs, because they made her happy, or superficial things like shopping or gardening or positive life updates. I am not really a very sunny person by nature. I’m sarcastic and cynical and had a hard time fitting into her new worldview. She used to be these things too! It was like dealing with a whole new person.
I eventually got a new job too, but my experience was the opposite of hers. My new job was actually worse than our old job where we’d both been unhappy. I’m talking “I made one mistake and had a bad day and now my boss is threatening actual legal action against me, what is happening”. (I have since gotten yet another new job, am happier there than I’ve ever been anywhere, and this situation is resolved for me).
While I guess (?) she was supportive, it wasn’t the same quality of support she provided before. While we once would have stayed up late analyzing everything my boss said and discussing the various ways in which she was a horrible person, Kendra’s comments basically extended to “I’m sorry you’re going through that, it seems stressful”. She would often change the topic back to something she found more acceptable. I was at my very lowest point and for a while was suicidal, which she knew and had also been through before so should have been able to relate to. One day when I was venting about Boss, she ended up telling me that the way I expressed myself when I was upset made her uncomfortable and she asked me not to use certain language around her anymore. As someone who had supported her at her lowest point, brought her food when she was in bed for days, listened to her through literally breaking with reality and never judging her, this comment broke my heart and made me feel profoundly rejected.
During this same time, I was also going through a lot of stress with my MIL. My FIL had received a cancer diagnosis and we were all trying to do as much as we could to support her, but we lived in a different city from them and it was hard to always meet her expectations. When I would vent about my MIL and how hard things had gotten, Kendra would side with her and say “These people are going to be your family now too and you need to focus on caring for them and seeing things their way”. This was a thoroughly heteronormative perspective (“you’re the woman in this situation and you need to make this work in a way that makes everyone happy”) that I did not agree with on any level. Yes, obviously we needed to help and were being caring, but I didn’t agree that my husband and I needed to sacrifice our entire emotional and psychological well-being all the time in the process.
Then Kendra started trying to get pregnant. I was like “What, you don’t like kids, we’re both childfree???” but nevertheless was happy for her and gushed over what an incredible mother she’d be. During her pregnancy, I had my wedding. She was too sick to attend the combination shower/bachelorette. I was disappointed but understood. She showed up an hour before the rehearsal and neither her nor her husband offered to help with anything while several of my other friends had been there since the day before, which they had OFFERED to do. After the wedding, we had problems with our decorator and were running around try to solve them. My other friend’s partner, Bert, ended up having to scale a ladder and take everything down. I had met Bert one other time before our wedding but he still offered to do this. While all this was happening, Kendra took me aside and was like “Well, got a long drive, we’re going to go...” Didn’t offer to help with a single thing again. I was like, “All right, bye”.
The gulf between us widened after that. We stopped talking nearly as much because there was nothing to talk about anymore. I was doing all the heavy lifting to maintain the friendship and suddenly, we didn’t agree on absolutely everything anymore. I sent her a photo of someone’s child in a stay at home mom Halloween costume with the comment, “Why are they socializing this young girl into this role!?” She laughed and said she actually thought it was “cute”. I was like, “...what??” She continued to not really want to hear about my life unless it was positive. After a while, I stopped initiating contact for about 6 weeks because I was tired of how exhausting the friendship had become. It was so much work now.
My father in law died on Christmas Eve 2019. This was during the period where Kendra and I weren’t speaking. I reached out to tell her and all she said was, “Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that”. No follow-up questions on the funeral. No offer of help. No offer to reach out to my husband, whom she also knows. No card. No flowers. Nothing.
In a fit of “life is so short, make amends with everybody” after the funeral, I sent her a long message detailing how important our friendship was to me, how I missed her, how I was sorry for my part in what happened between us. I did mention that I found it hurtful she wasn’t more supportive about FIL’s death. I eventually got a response saying her baby was born two days after the funeral and it was a hard delivery with complications. I immediately apologized and said I had no idea. Her response focused mostly on her baby and how she thought it was strange I hadn’t been there for her more during her hard pregnancy. While she returned the desire to remain friends, she didn’t return my apology and still didn’t say much about FIL’s death. A while later, she did ask how my husband was doing, but after initially asking, she wouldn’t say much in response to my reply. It was like she had ticked off a box in asking the question and she had done her Friendship Duty.
After her baby was born a year ago, things eroded further. I sent a gift but my heart already wasn’t in it anymore. I didn’t know how to relate to her new world and I missed who she used to be. She talks constantly about how motherhood is the best experience she’s ever had, and I don’t know what to say because it’s not one we share. While she’ll sometimes tell me she still sees a childfree life as valid, I’m now left with the impression that this was a phase for her and she thinks her new life is far, far superior.
I don’t remember the last substantial conversation we had that wasn’t about her dogs or her kid. I’ve had other friend break-ups before where I cut the person out and I patted myself on the back for being Mature and not doing that this time. I tried to be happy with the downgraded version of our friendship, telling myself it was normal for people to change and I needed to accept it at least she was still in my life.
We recently went another 2 months without talking. I stopped reaching out to her constantly one day, and didn’t hear from her. She didn’t acknowledge the one year anniversary of FIL’s death or message me on Christmas. I had a moment of clarity this week where I was like, “She’s never going back to the person she was before”. Yesterday, I deleted her off social media and blocked her number on my phone. I think in the long run, this is the best decision for me.
This has completely broken my heart and I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel rejected and left behind and unlovable and used. Used because I now feel that she used me for emotional support at Old Job when she was sad, but then her life improved and she got happy again, and she moved on.
Someone that I saw as giving and caring with a huge generosity of spirit about humanity and rights has now basically shut herself up in the suburbs where she goes to mommy and me classes and doesn’t give a crap about anything else anymore. Her job is in helping people experiencing addiction, houselessness, and mental health crisis access emergency services. She told me recently that she would prefer to stay home with her daughter but her husband wants her to go back to work. I don’t think this is the type of job you should be in if your mind is elsewhere and you’re not fully invested. She interfaces directly with clients and I feel that’s a role where you have to be all in.
I don’t understand how someone can change so drastically and become so self-focused. I need tips on how to move on with my life without this person I once considered a sister. I miss her so much that it’s like I’m missing a limb. But on the other hand, I see objectively that she’s gone. I’m already starting therapy today. Any responses or suggestions appreciated. Thank you.
I (31F) met Kendra when she was 27 and I was 25 when we had the same job in the human rights field. We clicked instantly and had everything in common. I’m an only child so it was the closest to a sister I’d ever felt like I had. We’d have long conversations about political issues, like the TRC in South Africa and the Euromaidan Crisis. I’ve found it hard to find people who care about these topics to the point of in-depth discussion, and I valued the analytical nature of our friendship.
We were both staunchly feminist. As someone from a small, conservative community, it was empowering for me to meet someone so secure in their views. We both strongly rejected the idea of anything traditionally “female”, and specifically bonded over our childfree stance. In a world where everything is about babies and so many people I knew had been having kids since they were 20, it was great to have the reassurance that I wasn’t crazy.
We’d stay up late at her house chatting into the night, never getting bored of each other, always more to say. We texted each other constantly, multiple times a day. There was nothing we couldn’t say to one another, nothing we couldn’t share. I had many other friends before her, have made new friends since, but none of these connections have ever felt the same.
We were both really unhappy in the job that we shared and experienced significant mental health impacts due to it. It didn’t seem like it at the time or I didn’t notice, but one of the central pillars of our friendship became emotionally supporting each other through Crappy Job. I loved and valued that there was more than enough room between us to vent and express wide ranging negative emotions without feeling judged. She told me she’d always be there for me and be a safe space where I could share anything.
We were close friends like this for about 5 years. In that time, I got engaged and asked her to be a bridesmaid and even considered making her maid of honour. In some ways, I was closer to her than I was to my husband. We were there for each other when both of our dads got really sick. But then, things...started to change. She got a new job, which I actually provided a reference for. I was so happy for her to have a new beginning.
At her new job, she was happier. Which was great until...everything in her world became about Being Positive. I am not kidding. If something wasn’t literally puking rainbows, she wouldn’t engage with it anymore because it “stressed her out” and “made her feel shitty”. The things that made her feel “stressed out” included the Rohingya refugee crisis and the closure of abortion clinics in the US. I think it was likely more stressful for the refugees, but okay... She didn’t want to talk about those things anymore; they were too negative. Increasingly, the only things she wanted to talk about were her dogs, because they made her happy, or superficial things like shopping or gardening or positive life updates. I am not really a very sunny person by nature. I’m sarcastic and cynical and had a hard time fitting into her new worldview. She used to be these things too! It was like dealing with a whole new person.
I eventually got a new job too, but my experience was the opposite of hers. My new job was actually worse than our old job where we’d both been unhappy. I’m talking “I made one mistake and had a bad day and now my boss is threatening actual legal action against me, what is happening”. (I have since gotten yet another new job, am happier there than I’ve ever been anywhere, and this situation is resolved for me).
While I guess (?) she was supportive, it wasn’t the same quality of support she provided before. While we once would have stayed up late analyzing everything my boss said and discussing the various ways in which she was a horrible person, Kendra’s comments basically extended to “I’m sorry you’re going through that, it seems stressful”. She would often change the topic back to something she found more acceptable. I was at my very lowest point and for a while was suicidal, which she knew and had also been through before so should have been able to relate to. One day when I was venting about Boss, she ended up telling me that the way I expressed myself when I was upset made her uncomfortable and she asked me not to use certain language around her anymore. As someone who had supported her at her lowest point, brought her food when she was in bed for days, listened to her through literally breaking with reality and never judging her, this comment broke my heart and made me feel profoundly rejected.
During this same time, I was also going through a lot of stress with my MIL. My FIL had received a cancer diagnosis and we were all trying to do as much as we could to support her, but we lived in a different city from them and it was hard to always meet her expectations. When I would vent about my MIL and how hard things had gotten, Kendra would side with her and say “These people are going to be your family now too and you need to focus on caring for them and seeing things their way”. This was a thoroughly heteronormative perspective (“you’re the woman in this situation and you need to make this work in a way that makes everyone happy”) that I did not agree with on any level. Yes, obviously we needed to help and were being caring, but I didn’t agree that my husband and I needed to sacrifice our entire emotional and psychological well-being all the time in the process.
Then Kendra started trying to get pregnant. I was like “What, you don’t like kids, we’re both childfree???” but nevertheless was happy for her and gushed over what an incredible mother she’d be. During her pregnancy, I had my wedding. She was too sick to attend the combination shower/bachelorette. I was disappointed but understood. She showed up an hour before the rehearsal and neither her nor her husband offered to help with anything while several of my other friends had been there since the day before, which they had OFFERED to do. After the wedding, we had problems with our decorator and were running around try to solve them. My other friend’s partner, Bert, ended up having to scale a ladder and take everything down. I had met Bert one other time before our wedding but he still offered to do this. While all this was happening, Kendra took me aside and was like “Well, got a long drive, we’re going to go...” Didn’t offer to help with a single thing again. I was like, “All right, bye”.
The gulf between us widened after that. We stopped talking nearly as much because there was nothing to talk about anymore. I was doing all the heavy lifting to maintain the friendship and suddenly, we didn’t agree on absolutely everything anymore. I sent her a photo of someone’s child in a stay at home mom Halloween costume with the comment, “Why are they socializing this young girl into this role!?” She laughed and said she actually thought it was “cute”. I was like, “...what??” She continued to not really want to hear about my life unless it was positive. After a while, I stopped initiating contact for about 6 weeks because I was tired of how exhausting the friendship had become. It was so much work now.
My father in law died on Christmas Eve 2019. This was during the period where Kendra and I weren’t speaking. I reached out to tell her and all she said was, “Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that”. No follow-up questions on the funeral. No offer of help. No offer to reach out to my husband, whom she also knows. No card. No flowers. Nothing.
In a fit of “life is so short, make amends with everybody” after the funeral, I sent her a long message detailing how important our friendship was to me, how I missed her, how I was sorry for my part in what happened between us. I did mention that I found it hurtful she wasn’t more supportive about FIL’s death. I eventually got a response saying her baby was born two days after the funeral and it was a hard delivery with complications. I immediately apologized and said I had no idea. Her response focused mostly on her baby and how she thought it was strange I hadn’t been there for her more during her hard pregnancy. While she returned the desire to remain friends, she didn’t return my apology and still didn’t say much about FIL’s death. A while later, she did ask how my husband was doing, but after initially asking, she wouldn’t say much in response to my reply. It was like she had ticked off a box in asking the question and she had done her Friendship Duty.
After her baby was born a year ago, things eroded further. I sent a gift but my heart already wasn’t in it anymore. I didn’t know how to relate to her new world and I missed who she used to be. She talks constantly about how motherhood is the best experience she’s ever had, and I don’t know what to say because it’s not one we share. While she’ll sometimes tell me she still sees a childfree life as valid, I’m now left with the impression that this was a phase for her and she thinks her new life is far, far superior.
I don’t remember the last substantial conversation we had that wasn’t about her dogs or her kid. I’ve had other friend break-ups before where I cut the person out and I patted myself on the back for being Mature and not doing that this time. I tried to be happy with the downgraded version of our friendship, telling myself it was normal for people to change and I needed to accept it at least she was still in my life.
We recently went another 2 months without talking. I stopped reaching out to her constantly one day, and didn’t hear from her. She didn’t acknowledge the one year anniversary of FIL’s death or message me on Christmas. I had a moment of clarity this week where I was like, “She’s never going back to the person she was before”. Yesterday, I deleted her off social media and blocked her number on my phone. I think in the long run, this is the best decision for me.
This has completely broken my heart and I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel rejected and left behind and unlovable and used. Used because I now feel that she used me for emotional support at Old Job when she was sad, but then her life improved and she got happy again, and she moved on.
Someone that I saw as giving and caring with a huge generosity of spirit about humanity and rights has now basically shut herself up in the suburbs where she goes to mommy and me classes and doesn’t give a crap about anything else anymore. Her job is in helping people experiencing addiction, houselessness, and mental health crisis access emergency services. She told me recently that she would prefer to stay home with her daughter but her husband wants her to go back to work. I don’t think this is the type of job you should be in if your mind is elsewhere and you’re not fully invested. She interfaces directly with clients and I feel that’s a role where you have to be all in.
I don’t understand how someone can change so drastically and become so self-focused. I need tips on how to move on with my life without this person I once considered a sister. I miss her so much that it’s like I’m missing a limb. But on the other hand, I see objectively that she’s gone. I’m already starting therapy today. Any responses or suggestions appreciated. Thank you.
This post was deleted for the following reason: poster's request -- cortex
I don’t understand how someone can change so drastically and become so self-focused
You might want to re-read what you've written here, then, and ask yourself when she started saying the same thing about you. You're describing a friend who's grown in a different direction from you, struggling with their physical and mental health in the process, and in response to that you've listed all the expectations you have of them, in their personal and professional lives, for your friendship to work, and all the ways they've failed to meet those expectations.
People change, sure, and sometimes drift apart, but the relationship you're describing here isn't something I'd recognize as a friendship. Talking to a therapist about where these expectations come from might be a good idea.
posted by mhoye at 6:09 AM on December 29, 2020 [100 favorites]
You might want to re-read what you've written here, then, and ask yourself when she started saying the same thing about you. You're describing a friend who's grown in a different direction from you, struggling with their physical and mental health in the process, and in response to that you've listed all the expectations you have of them, in their personal and professional lives, for your friendship to work, and all the ways they've failed to meet those expectations.
People change, sure, and sometimes drift apart, but the relationship you're describing here isn't something I'd recognize as a friendship. Talking to a therapist about where these expectations come from might be a good idea.
posted by mhoye at 6:09 AM on December 29, 2020 [100 favorites]
I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but it seems like you would prefer your friend be so miserable and unwell she dissociates/"breaks with reality" as long as she cares about the right things in the right way, to having better mental health but living a more normie lifestyle. I'm not sure she's the only one being self-focused here. In the interest of kindness and sticking to answering the question, I won't go into detail about where you might want to look at your own actions.
I know the question is about how to get over the loss of the friendship, but the fact that you outlined all the things she's done wrong says something. You're not just mourning the loss of the friendship but you're holding a lot of resentment and keeping score about the ways that she changed to survive. It may be necessary for you to get over the loss to also forgive her for these perceived transgressions. I hope you work on that with your new therapist.
posted by misskaz at 6:12 AM on December 29, 2020 [49 favorites]
I know the question is about how to get over the loss of the friendship, but the fact that you outlined all the things she's done wrong says something. You're not just mourning the loss of the friendship but you're holding a lot of resentment and keeping score about the ways that she changed to survive. It may be necessary for you to get over the loss to also forgive her for these perceived transgressions. I hope you work on that with your new therapist.
posted by misskaz at 6:12 AM on December 29, 2020 [49 favorites]
First of all - I feel this; this year I also faced the fact that a once close friendship is probably over.
I honestly and sincerely don't think your friend was using you in the past. I think, if I went back in time to her back then and took her aside and asked her, "okay, real talk, are you kind of using thatsaskatchewangirl?" she would be horrified and shocked and immediately say no, and would probably be extremely pissed off at me for suggesting it. I promise you that at the time, who she was then sincerely and truly valued the friendship as it was then.
The thing is that that was then. She has changed - but so have you. You have both had different things happen to you since you worked in that same job - and those different things pushed you in two different directions and turned you into different people. You're struggling to understand how, and from where you're sitting it looks like a drastic change - but maybe, for her, it isn't that drastic a change from where you were then. It's drastically different from you where you are now, but YOU'VE also changed from the person you were then. I can confidently say that because ALL OF US change, constantly.
The hell of it is, you could drive yourself crazy trying to find out the "why" behind her changing - was it because her new job, was it because she was deep-down selfish and you just never knew it, was it because she met a new friend who just stole her or something - but you will never know. I went through a similar "but why did this happen" phase when I had my love-of-my-life ex dump me suddenly (I even posted an AskMe about it), and ultimately realized that I would never really find out the true answer, and also that it didn't matter anyway - why it happened really didn't alter the fact that it did happen, and the fact that it did happen was ultimately more important. This person was in love with me then - but for whatever reason, he'd decided that was over, and he wasn't there now.
She was right for you then. But she is not a good person for you now - for the person you are in your life right now, she doesn't fit. Even if you did finally unlock the mystery of why it happened, it still wouldn't affect the fact that it did happen. I know this hurts - but she hasn't been right for you for a while now.
But I promise you that this doesn't change who she was then, and how important that was for you both. I promise you also that she did value you then.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:18 AM on December 29, 2020 [38 favorites]
I honestly and sincerely don't think your friend was using you in the past. I think, if I went back in time to her back then and took her aside and asked her, "okay, real talk, are you kind of using thatsaskatchewangirl?" she would be horrified and shocked and immediately say no, and would probably be extremely pissed off at me for suggesting it. I promise you that at the time, who she was then sincerely and truly valued the friendship as it was then.
The thing is that that was then. She has changed - but so have you. You have both had different things happen to you since you worked in that same job - and those different things pushed you in two different directions and turned you into different people. You're struggling to understand how, and from where you're sitting it looks like a drastic change - but maybe, for her, it isn't that drastic a change from where you were then. It's drastically different from you where you are now, but YOU'VE also changed from the person you were then. I can confidently say that because ALL OF US change, constantly.
The hell of it is, you could drive yourself crazy trying to find out the "why" behind her changing - was it because her new job, was it because she was deep-down selfish and you just never knew it, was it because she met a new friend who just stole her or something - but you will never know. I went through a similar "but why did this happen" phase when I had my love-of-my-life ex dump me suddenly (I even posted an AskMe about it), and ultimately realized that I would never really find out the true answer, and also that it didn't matter anyway - why it happened really didn't alter the fact that it did happen, and the fact that it did happen was ultimately more important. This person was in love with me then - but for whatever reason, he'd decided that was over, and he wasn't there now.
She was right for you then. But she is not a good person for you now - for the person you are in your life right now, she doesn't fit. Even if you did finally unlock the mystery of why it happened, it still wouldn't affect the fact that it did happen. I know this hurts - but she hasn't been right for you for a while now.
But I promise you that this doesn't change who she was then, and how important that was for you both. I promise you also that she did value you then.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:18 AM on December 29, 2020 [38 favorites]
This happened to me in the last few years. A friend of mine got very distant and it really hurt. It turned out to be real moment of growth for me. Since my mind couldn't let it go and my default is to wonder where I went wrong in any situation I pondered and pondered and eventually things came into focus for me.
This might not be the whole picture, definitely she had her own things going on as well, but eventually I was able to see many moments where I was very judgmental of her. Because of stuff in my own personal history I had a real chip on my shoulder about both her profession and her spiritual path. Even though I probably never said anything explicit, I'm sure she could pick up on my subliminal contempt. Who would want to hang out with someone who seemed contemptuous of them? Not her! It was actually very healthy for her to step back from me!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the contempt for your friend in your post is far from subliminal, and I'm sure many people will be along shortly to point out specific examples out to you.
Grieve this friendship, but also be open to growing. Be willing to become more generous of spirit. Be willing to see your role in what went wrong. Be gentle with yourself, but also be honest. You will become more of your best self from wrestling with this loss.
posted by Jenny'sCricket at 6:22 AM on December 29, 2020 [36 favorites]
This might not be the whole picture, definitely she had her own things going on as well, but eventually I was able to see many moments where I was very judgmental of her. Because of stuff in my own personal history I had a real chip on my shoulder about both her profession and her spiritual path. Even though I probably never said anything explicit, I'm sure she could pick up on my subliminal contempt. Who would want to hang out with someone who seemed contemptuous of them? Not her! It was actually very healthy for her to step back from me!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the contempt for your friend in your post is far from subliminal, and I'm sure many people will be along shortly to point out specific examples out to you.
Grieve this friendship, but also be open to growing. Be willing to become more generous of spirit. Be willing to see your role in what went wrong. Be gentle with yourself, but also be honest. You will become more of your best self from wrestling with this loss.
posted by Jenny'sCricket at 6:22 AM on December 29, 2020 [36 favorites]
1. In modern Western society, friendships are treated as second-class relationships. If you dated someone for six months and then grieved the breakup, people would understand and console you. If you had a distant cousin who passed away, people would express sympathy. If your pet ran away, people would understand your need to mourn. But if a long-term deep friendship ends, we're supposed to just get over it. There are no sympathy cards from friends, no one dropping off a casserole, no one sending texts to check whether we're doing okay. If we talk about our grief over the lost friendship for more than a few days, people start to think we're dysfunctional, and they start criticizing us. The lack of accepted mourning process makes the grieving more difficult.
When other types of interpersonal relationships end, there's a conversation that provides some closure. If you date someone for 3 months and then break up, it's expected that you'll have a real-time (usually face-to-face) conversation about the relationship ending. If you work at a company for any length of time, and one side decides it's not working out, you have a conversation about how it needs to end. We call people jerks if they dump someone over email or text message, even if they only dated for a short time. We say that bosses are assholes if they fire someone without clear communication, even if they only worked at the company for a few weeks. But somehow we consider it acceptable for a close friendship to end without any conversation. We tell people "It happens. Get over it already."
Since you have insights about other cultures, you might find it helpful to look at how friendships are valued in other societies, and during historical times. There are other cultures where friendships are treated as more similar to sibling relationships, and it would be normal to grieve a lost friendship for months / years.
In Western society, it's strange how a person would receive sympathy if they say, "My cat ran away a year ago, and I'm still grieving." Yet somehow if a person says "I had a best friend for 5 years but she changed, and I'm still sad after months", they'll get a lot of criticism.
2. Your message really resonated with me. It is so hard to find people who share these non-normative beliefs! When you finally find someone like that, and then they get "absorbed" back into societal conditioning, it feels like such a loss.
An analogy might be like a gay person in a conservative town who finally meets another gay person, and it helps them come out of the closet and accept themselves, but then the gay friend announces that they're now heterosexual and is getting married and doesn't want to discuss anything to do with being gay any more. It's really painful to lose that ally.
3. Having a narrative of her "using" you is likely to create more pain for you, and it's not the most likely possibility. Reading what you wrote, I think it's more likely that she wanted to aspire to the beliefs you shared. But it takes constant resistance to keep that up, and eventually she took another path that meets with greater societal approval.
4. My suggestion is to let yourself grieve. What would you be doing if you had a sibling that passed away recently? Or a beloved pet of 20 years? What would you do if you had an ideal job for 10 years and then your employer was forced to let you go in a layoff? Be kind to yourself. Let yourself grieve. It will take time to heal this wound. Expect that you'll go through all the stages of grief.
posted by cheesecake at 6:30 AM on December 29, 2020 [31 favorites]
When other types of interpersonal relationships end, there's a conversation that provides some closure. If you date someone for 3 months and then break up, it's expected that you'll have a real-time (usually face-to-face) conversation about the relationship ending. If you work at a company for any length of time, and one side decides it's not working out, you have a conversation about how it needs to end. We call people jerks if they dump someone over email or text message, even if they only dated for a short time. We say that bosses are assholes if they fire someone without clear communication, even if they only worked at the company for a few weeks. But somehow we consider it acceptable for a close friendship to end without any conversation. We tell people "It happens. Get over it already."
Since you have insights about other cultures, you might find it helpful to look at how friendships are valued in other societies, and during historical times. There are other cultures where friendships are treated as more similar to sibling relationships, and it would be normal to grieve a lost friendship for months / years.
In Western society, it's strange how a person would receive sympathy if they say, "My cat ran away a year ago, and I'm still grieving." Yet somehow if a person says "I had a best friend for 5 years but she changed, and I'm still sad after months", they'll get a lot of criticism.
2. Your message really resonated with me. It is so hard to find people who share these non-normative beliefs! When you finally find someone like that, and then they get "absorbed" back into societal conditioning, it feels like such a loss.
An analogy might be like a gay person in a conservative town who finally meets another gay person, and it helps them come out of the closet and accept themselves, but then the gay friend announces that they're now heterosexual and is getting married and doesn't want to discuss anything to do with being gay any more. It's really painful to lose that ally.
3. Having a narrative of her "using" you is likely to create more pain for you, and it's not the most likely possibility. Reading what you wrote, I think it's more likely that she wanted to aspire to the beliefs you shared. But it takes constant resistance to keep that up, and eventually she took another path that meets with greater societal approval.
4. My suggestion is to let yourself grieve. What would you be doing if you had a sibling that passed away recently? Or a beloved pet of 20 years? What would you do if you had an ideal job for 10 years and then your employer was forced to let you go in a layoff? Be kind to yourself. Let yourself grieve. It will take time to heal this wound. Expect that you'll go through all the stages of grief.
posted by cheesecake at 6:30 AM on December 29, 2020 [31 favorites]
In my experience, it's a pretty common experience for folks in their mid-20s through early 30s to go through radical changes in priorities like you're describing. I know it stings, but try not to think of it like she was using you. Rather, you were together through an intense and difficult period in both of your lives and the care that you provided to each other was genuine and necessary.
Sometimes the people you imagine are going to be your forever people don't come with you through all of your big life transitions. As a healing practice, you can try to honor what you shared and be grateful for the ways that you helped each other survive, even though the friendship itself won't come with you into the next stage.
posted by merriment at 6:34 AM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]
Sometimes the people you imagine are going to be your forever people don't come with you through all of your big life transitions. As a healing practice, you can try to honor what you shared and be grateful for the ways that you helped each other survive, even though the friendship itself won't come with you into the next stage.
posted by merriment at 6:34 AM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]
It's happened to me several times in a long life. Sometimes it was by attrition. Sometimes it was because I broke it off when they stopped listening to me. Sometimes it was because they broke it off, I don't know exactly why. Most of the time it was by attrition--I moved, they moved, we didn't keep up, we're not on Facebook any more. It made me sad every time and I still grieve some of them; this was the first year I decided not to send a Christmas card to the person who stopped being my close friend ten years ago or more.
I have traveled with these people, shared my most intimate worries and joys with them, told them secrets I wouldn't tell my husband, and loved them very much, and now they're not in my life.
Let me put it this way: It's like a marriage or a close relative, but there's no official ties to keep you together when you change and drift apart. Grief is the appropriate response, and grief takes time (on preview, what cheesecake said). There will be a time when, though you still feel loss and sadness, it will be occasional and not as intense. Grief is powerful and we walk with it all our lives in one form or another. That's one of the reasons people write poetry.
posted by Peach at 6:37 AM on December 29, 2020 [5 favorites]
I have traveled with these people, shared my most intimate worries and joys with them, told them secrets I wouldn't tell my husband, and loved them very much, and now they're not in my life.
Let me put it this way: It's like a marriage or a close relative, but there's no official ties to keep you together when you change and drift apart. Grief is the appropriate response, and grief takes time (on preview, what cheesecake said). There will be a time when, though you still feel loss and sadness, it will be occasional and not as intense. Grief is powerful and we walk with it all our lives in one form or another. That's one of the reasons people write poetry.
posted by Peach at 6:37 AM on December 29, 2020 [5 favorites]
You talk a lot in your question about the way in which your friend didn't meet your expectations for your friendship but I could easily write these from your friend's perspective as ways in which you were not supportive of her.
If something wasn’t literally puking rainbows, she wouldn’t engage with it anymore because it “stressed her out” and “made her feel shitty”. The things that made her feel “stressed out” included the Rohingya refugee crisis and the closure of abortion clinics in the US.
Sometimes as we grow older, we decide that we'll do what we can to help with the problems of the world, but that dwelling on them doesn't help anyone and only serves to make ourselves miserable. It sounds like your friend is doing something to make the world a better place:
Her job is in helping people experiencing addiction, houselessness, and mental health crisis access emergency services.
I'm sure she's hearing plenty about the hard parts of life through her job. Is it so crazy that she might want to focus on lighter and more optimistic things in her free time? I think that's an impulse many of us are familiar with in 2020.
She was too sick to attend the combination shower/bachelorette. I was disappointed but understood. She showed up an hour before the rehearsal and neither her nor her husband offered to help with anything while several of my other friends had been there since the day before, which they had OFFERED to do.
It sounds like she had a really tough pregnancy based both on this and what you mention her saying later. If she was sick enough to not be able to attend your bachelorette but still made it to your rehearsal dinner that actually sounds like she really cares for you. I think your expectation that she attend all of the side events for your wedding and actually help out is likely unreasonable here. Do you actually know what was going on with her here? What does too sick to attend mean? My guess would be terrible morning sickness. Look up hyperemesis gravidarum to know how bad it can get. If she was vomiting several times a day, showing up for a short while for your dinner, not offering to help, and leaving might itself be quite an effort on her part. Were you there for her at all during her pregnancy or were you completely focused on your wedding?
After a while, I stopped initiating contact for about 6 weeks because I was tired of how exhausting the friendship had become. It was so much work now.
Based on the timeline you've outlined this was probably towards the end of her pregnancy which was probably a pretty hurtful time for a longtime friend to decide their friendship had become too much work.
I did mention that I found it hurtful she wasn’t more supportive about FIL’s death. I eventually got a response saying her baby was born two days after the funeral and it was a hard delivery with complications. I immediately apologized and said I had no idea. Her response focused mostly on her baby and how she thought it was strange I hadn’t been there for her more during her hard pregnancy.
Yeah... yeah. Why didn't you know her baby was born two days after your FIL’s death? You obviously were not keeping track of her due date and were not even in contact. Honestly if someone berated me for not being there for them while I literally went through one of the toughest experiences of my life, one that that friend should have realized was happening, I wouldn't be super keen to continue the friendship either.
At the end of the day you have grown apart and made different life decisions. But throughout this question you've asked why your friend has not supported you more without apparently reflecting on the ways you've not supported your friend. Both have contributed to the dissolution of your friendship.
posted by peacheater at 6:43 AM on December 29, 2020 [112 favorites]
If something wasn’t literally puking rainbows, she wouldn’t engage with it anymore because it “stressed her out” and “made her feel shitty”. The things that made her feel “stressed out” included the Rohingya refugee crisis and the closure of abortion clinics in the US.
Sometimes as we grow older, we decide that we'll do what we can to help with the problems of the world, but that dwelling on them doesn't help anyone and only serves to make ourselves miserable. It sounds like your friend is doing something to make the world a better place:
Her job is in helping people experiencing addiction, houselessness, and mental health crisis access emergency services.
I'm sure she's hearing plenty about the hard parts of life through her job. Is it so crazy that she might want to focus on lighter and more optimistic things in her free time? I think that's an impulse many of us are familiar with in 2020.
She was too sick to attend the combination shower/bachelorette. I was disappointed but understood. She showed up an hour before the rehearsal and neither her nor her husband offered to help with anything while several of my other friends had been there since the day before, which they had OFFERED to do.
It sounds like she had a really tough pregnancy based both on this and what you mention her saying later. If she was sick enough to not be able to attend your bachelorette but still made it to your rehearsal dinner that actually sounds like she really cares for you. I think your expectation that she attend all of the side events for your wedding and actually help out is likely unreasonable here. Do you actually know what was going on with her here? What does too sick to attend mean? My guess would be terrible morning sickness. Look up hyperemesis gravidarum to know how bad it can get. If she was vomiting several times a day, showing up for a short while for your dinner, not offering to help, and leaving might itself be quite an effort on her part. Were you there for her at all during her pregnancy or were you completely focused on your wedding?
After a while, I stopped initiating contact for about 6 weeks because I was tired of how exhausting the friendship had become. It was so much work now.
Based on the timeline you've outlined this was probably towards the end of her pregnancy which was probably a pretty hurtful time for a longtime friend to decide their friendship had become too much work.
I did mention that I found it hurtful she wasn’t more supportive about FIL’s death. I eventually got a response saying her baby was born two days after the funeral and it was a hard delivery with complications. I immediately apologized and said I had no idea. Her response focused mostly on her baby and how she thought it was strange I hadn’t been there for her more during her hard pregnancy.
Yeah... yeah. Why didn't you know her baby was born two days after your FIL’s death? You obviously were not keeping track of her due date and were not even in contact. Honestly if someone berated me for not being there for them while I literally went through one of the toughest experiences of my life, one that that friend should have realized was happening, I wouldn't be super keen to continue the friendship either.
At the end of the day you have grown apart and made different life decisions. But throughout this question you've asked why your friend has not supported you more without apparently reflecting on the ways you've not supported your friend. Both have contributed to the dissolution of your friendship.
posted by peacheater at 6:43 AM on December 29, 2020 [112 favorites]
It's so hard to lose a friendship; as someone says above, it's a kind of relationship pain that isn't supported well in our society even though it hurts as any loss of intimate connection hurts.
I agree strongly with peacheater's take on the wedding. A sick, pregnant woman is not going to be getting up on ladders. It was just not as hard to do a(or as dangerous) for the friend who offered to help.
The only thing I add and hope it helps: If you decide you would like a connection with Kendra after all, you are going to have to develop sincere interest in her baby as a little person. The baby is not just a different life choice to Kendra, they are the most important person in the world to her. After I had a baby, my friendships changed radically with several childfree friends who seemed unable to see motherhood as anything but a limitation, whereas childfree friends who really cared about and delighted in my baby as a specific little person became deeper friendships. It's OK if you don't want to do that, but if you really want to care about Kendra in a deep and intimate way, you'll have to care about her child more than you do now.
posted by nantucket at 7:11 AM on December 29, 2020 [14 favorites]
I agree strongly with peacheater's take on the wedding. A sick, pregnant woman is not going to be getting up on ladders. It was just not as hard to do a(or as dangerous) for the friend who offered to help.
The only thing I add and hope it helps: If you decide you would like a connection with Kendra after all, you are going to have to develop sincere interest in her baby as a little person. The baby is not just a different life choice to Kendra, they are the most important person in the world to her. After I had a baby, my friendships changed radically with several childfree friends who seemed unable to see motherhood as anything but a limitation, whereas childfree friends who really cared about and delighted in my baby as a specific little person became deeper friendships. It's OK if you don't want to do that, but if you really want to care about Kendra in a deep and intimate way, you'll have to care about her child more than you do now.
posted by nantucket at 7:11 AM on December 29, 2020 [14 favorites]
The person you are at 25 isn't the person you are at 35 or 45. Some friendships & relationships work because people change in the same ways, sometimes it's because we respect each others differences and work with them. Sometimes we say goodbye, be thankful for the time we had then take the time to grieve, heal and move on with a more nuanced understanding of ourselves & what we want from our friendships and what we bring to those friendships.
The part where you say you were an only child and thought of her like a sister stood out to me. I think you expected her to fill that role as you have it in your mind of some sort of perfect older sister, to be focused on you & your growth and fulfilling your needs. A role that so exceeds reality that I think few real life siblings would be willing to fill it no matter how much they loved you.
Now your friendship might not have started that way, but as it was ending your need for her to "prove" her friendship over & over again, and your perception of anything less than your expectations is a rejection just leaps off the page. This is a common response when we feel people drifting away from us, trust me, we've all done it, but it's a terrible way to fix a relationship or to reframe a relationship to allow for changes. I'd seriously consider maybe some therapy, not because I think there is anything wrong with you, but to learn some tools to help you in future relationships and to grieve the changes in this friendship in a healthy way.
posted by wwax at 7:17 AM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
The part where you say you were an only child and thought of her like a sister stood out to me. I think you expected her to fill that role as you have it in your mind of some sort of perfect older sister, to be focused on you & your growth and fulfilling your needs. A role that so exceeds reality that I think few real life siblings would be willing to fill it no matter how much they loved you.
Now your friendship might not have started that way, but as it was ending your need for her to "prove" her friendship over & over again, and your perception of anything less than your expectations is a rejection just leaps off the page. This is a common response when we feel people drifting away from us, trust me, we've all done it, but it's a terrible way to fix a relationship or to reframe a relationship to allow for changes. I'd seriously consider maybe some therapy, not because I think there is anything wrong with you, but to learn some tools to help you in future relationships and to grieve the changes in this friendship in a healthy way.
posted by wwax at 7:17 AM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
A few of the elements you're describing here really resonate with me.
I was once at a job for 7 years that was really rough for a lot of them. When I eventually left and reached out to a coworker to say hi, she said, "Yeah, it's gotten a lot easier since you left, I think because there's less negativity." (I only hold it against her a little; she was NOT good with people.) But she was right; I was so unhappy that conversation often revolved around how little support we got as a team and how hard it was to work there, but the dwelling was making it emotionally harder.
Many years later, I had another job in which I noticed that work was a lot easier on the days when one of my best work friends was out sick. And it's because she was really unhappy there. This was someone I *liked* and I agreed with a lot of her complaints. But the tension and reminding of her complaining did make the hours harder to get through. (She and I are still friends; we have a great time when we're not at work.)
Which is to say, yes, the problems of the world are real. I give as much money and time to them as I can. But then when I go home, thinking about them does not help the person on the other end of the problem, and it materially harms me. So I try to leave it behind. It doesn't mean I don't care, but it means I have to protect my mental health, because I'm no good to the world if I'm angry all the time, and I am actually doing some damage to the people around me.
There's a lot more going on here, but I really hope you're able to see that it's not callous to realize that you can be healthier if you don't dwell on things you can't change, as long as you are also doing your part to fight the good fight. I have a friend who's a social worker who has lately politely bowed out of Zoom meetups when we talk about our (real) struggles, because she does this all day and just can't. It's okay; the rest of us support each other through ailing parents and impossible work situations, and she meets up with us to talk about TV and pets, because she is giving all her emotional energy to the refugees she works with during the day.
I'm sorry you're missing your friendship; that's hard and sad either way. But her not being the same person she was before doesn't make her less of a person, and it's not something she's doing at you. It sucks to lose a friend like that, even for a non-awful reason. I hope you can take care of yourself.
posted by gideonfrog at 7:21 AM on December 29, 2020 [30 favorites]
I was once at a job for 7 years that was really rough for a lot of them. When I eventually left and reached out to a coworker to say hi, she said, "Yeah, it's gotten a lot easier since you left, I think because there's less negativity." (I only hold it against her a little; she was NOT good with people.) But she was right; I was so unhappy that conversation often revolved around how little support we got as a team and how hard it was to work there, but the dwelling was making it emotionally harder.
Many years later, I had another job in which I noticed that work was a lot easier on the days when one of my best work friends was out sick. And it's because she was really unhappy there. This was someone I *liked* and I agreed with a lot of her complaints. But the tension and reminding of her complaining did make the hours harder to get through. (She and I are still friends; we have a great time when we're not at work.)
Which is to say, yes, the problems of the world are real. I give as much money and time to them as I can. But then when I go home, thinking about them does not help the person on the other end of the problem, and it materially harms me. So I try to leave it behind. It doesn't mean I don't care, but it means I have to protect my mental health, because I'm no good to the world if I'm angry all the time, and I am actually doing some damage to the people around me.
There's a lot more going on here, but I really hope you're able to see that it's not callous to realize that you can be healthier if you don't dwell on things you can't change, as long as you are also doing your part to fight the good fight. I have a friend who's a social worker who has lately politely bowed out of Zoom meetups when we talk about our (real) struggles, because she does this all day and just can't. It's okay; the rest of us support each other through ailing parents and impossible work situations, and she meets up with us to talk about TV and pets, because she is giving all her emotional energy to the refugees she works with during the day.
I'm sorry you're missing your friendship; that's hard and sad either way. But her not being the same person she was before doesn't make her less of a person, and it's not something she's doing at you. It sucks to lose a friend like that, even for a non-awful reason. I hope you can take care of yourself.
posted by gideonfrog at 7:21 AM on December 29, 2020 [30 favorites]
"I've always cared deeply about human rights. I met someone at a job in that field who became my best friend. It was a terrible job that took a truly heavy toll on both of us, but we supported each other through it and it was a relief to have found someone who I had so many things and views in common with.
But over time I found that the intense emotional investment I had in human suffering and the state of the world took such a heavy toll on me that I was breaking apart. I just couldn't keep it up. Something had to give. I got a better job, found someone I loved enough to marry, and even found myself wanting to have kids after previously having been fairly adamantly child-free. I was feeling better, but it was a fragile kind of better. I realized that engaging with all the issues that I used to spend so much emotional energy on kept bringing me back to that broken place, and eventually I started to even have a kind of PTSD-type of reaction to anything not light and fluffy. I'm not super happy about this, and I do still care about things and wish I could keep engaging with them in the way that I used to. But I'd gotten to a place where I was literally dissociating from reality and I just can't go back there again.
My friend, who was so supportive during all that time, has not supported my need to salvage my mental health. She loves to talk about difficult, depressing things, to wallow in them, for hours, and I get it - but I've been telling her, asking her, reminding her for years that I just can't do it anymore, and she doesn't respect that. I get that maybe I'm just not the person she needs anymore, but it's also really frustrating - like, she'll randomly send me pictures of things that make her mad, like a girl in a housewife costume, and it's just this incoming stream of negativity that I can't deal with anymore. Sometimes I feel like maybe she was just using me in those early years - like, as long as I was an echo chamber I was worth supporting, but now that I need something that doesn't come as naturally to her she reacts with anger and judgement. She judges me so much, the person I've become, and it hurts. I've been trying to keep my distance, and I miss her, but I don't miss the negativity that our friendship had become wrapped up in."
Obviously that's just one possibility. But like others have said, I don't think it's worth hanging on to the "she used me" narrative, or even the "she's become a stupid plastic person" narrative. Lives have arcs and yours converged for a while, and you helped each other and validated each other through hard times. Part of who you are today is because of the person that she was, and vice versa. And now you're on different paths, and that's okay too. I hope both of you find close friends for the next stages of your lives, and that one day you can look back on this friendship with fondness.
posted by trig at 7:26 AM on December 29, 2020 [71 favorites]
But over time I found that the intense emotional investment I had in human suffering and the state of the world took such a heavy toll on me that I was breaking apart. I just couldn't keep it up. Something had to give. I got a better job, found someone I loved enough to marry, and even found myself wanting to have kids after previously having been fairly adamantly child-free. I was feeling better, but it was a fragile kind of better. I realized that engaging with all the issues that I used to spend so much emotional energy on kept bringing me back to that broken place, and eventually I started to even have a kind of PTSD-type of reaction to anything not light and fluffy. I'm not super happy about this, and I do still care about things and wish I could keep engaging with them in the way that I used to. But I'd gotten to a place where I was literally dissociating from reality and I just can't go back there again.
My friend, who was so supportive during all that time, has not supported my need to salvage my mental health. She loves to talk about difficult, depressing things, to wallow in them, for hours, and I get it - but I've been telling her, asking her, reminding her for years that I just can't do it anymore, and she doesn't respect that. I get that maybe I'm just not the person she needs anymore, but it's also really frustrating - like, she'll randomly send me pictures of things that make her mad, like a girl in a housewife costume, and it's just this incoming stream of negativity that I can't deal with anymore. Sometimes I feel like maybe she was just using me in those early years - like, as long as I was an echo chamber I was worth supporting, but now that I need something that doesn't come as naturally to her she reacts with anger and judgement. She judges me so much, the person I've become, and it hurts. I've been trying to keep my distance, and I miss her, but I don't miss the negativity that our friendship had become wrapped up in."
Obviously that's just one possibility. But like others have said, I don't think it's worth hanging on to the "she used me" narrative, or even the "she's become a stupid plastic person" narrative. Lives have arcs and yours converged for a while, and you helped each other and validated each other through hard times. Part of who you are today is because of the person that she was, and vice versa. And now you're on different paths, and that's okay too. I hope both of you find close friends for the next stages of your lives, and that one day you can look back on this friendship with fondness.
posted by trig at 7:26 AM on December 29, 2020 [71 favorites]
Most people change drastically from who they were at 25. Very few people have the energy and undiluted passion of a very young person for their entire adult lives. Plus, you had a situation of constant, regular, close, and emotionally rich contact. That leads to a very deep and emotional bond but it cannot be sustained without that kind of daily, sustained contact. Basically once one of you got another job things were going to be different.
And, seconding what others have pointed out, that it sounds like your contempt for her choices prevented you from truly supporting her. That doesn't mean you are wrong to have contempt for those choices--your values are your values, and if you feel like her life represents bad values, there's no reason for you to support them--but nobody wants to be friends with someone who thinks they're a boring self-centered sellout. Why would she share her difficult pregnancy and delivery with someone whose contempt for parenting comes through loud and clear?
None of this makes the loss any easier, but can be valuable data going forward. Can you learn to truly, actually support people in choices you might not understand? What is the difference between a choice you can't understand and a choice you can't respect? For a friendship to last a lifetime, this skill is going to be necessary. At some point, everyone is going to make a choice you can't understand. (Your husband is not exempt from this.)
There is every chance that at some point, when her life changes again, she may reach out to you. It happens a lot when you start getting all middle-aged and shit--you want to hear from people who remember you when you were young and different. You could rebuild something very special, but only if you don't spend the intervening years painting her as an amoral mommy-and-me monster.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:32 AM on December 29, 2020 [18 favorites]
And, seconding what others have pointed out, that it sounds like your contempt for her choices prevented you from truly supporting her. That doesn't mean you are wrong to have contempt for those choices--your values are your values, and if you feel like her life represents bad values, there's no reason for you to support them--but nobody wants to be friends with someone who thinks they're a boring self-centered sellout. Why would she share her difficult pregnancy and delivery with someone whose contempt for parenting comes through loud and clear?
None of this makes the loss any easier, but can be valuable data going forward. Can you learn to truly, actually support people in choices you might not understand? What is the difference between a choice you can't understand and a choice you can't respect? For a friendship to last a lifetime, this skill is going to be necessary. At some point, everyone is going to make a choice you can't understand. (Your husband is not exempt from this.)
There is every chance that at some point, when her life changes again, she may reach out to you. It happens a lot when you start getting all middle-aged and shit--you want to hear from people who remember you when you were young and different. You could rebuild something very special, but only if you don't spend the intervening years painting her as an amoral mommy-and-me monster.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:32 AM on December 29, 2020 [18 favorites]
I don’t understand how someone can change so drastically and become so self-focused
She became baby-focused.
I don’t think this is the type of job you should be in if your mind is elsewhere and you’re not fully invested. She interfaces directly with clients and I feel that’s a role where you have to be all in.
This is an unfair and weird expectation of how one should be engaged in her job. Just because you perceive her as not being "fully invested" doesn't mean she's not doing a good job or helping her clients.
posted by saturdaymornings at 7:51 AM on December 29, 2020 [29 favorites]
She became baby-focused.
I don’t think this is the type of job you should be in if your mind is elsewhere and you’re not fully invested. She interfaces directly with clients and I feel that’s a role where you have to be all in.
This is an unfair and weird expectation of how one should be engaged in her job. Just because you perceive her as not being "fully invested" doesn't mean she's not doing a good job or helping her clients.
posted by saturdaymornings at 7:51 AM on December 29, 2020 [29 favorites]
It sounds like your relationship with Kendra was very codependent; she broke free of codependence with you (perhaps with some help, like therapy, for her concurrent depression?) and now lives a very fulfilling life without you in it. Do you miss her, or do you miss the codependency you had with her, where you were the sole focus of her life and she of yours? The way you describe how she changed fundamentally as a person when she stopped her codependent behaviors with you makes me think it's the latter.
When I see you write, "I don’t understand how someone can change so drastically and become so self-focused." I cannot understand this. She got married and has a child, and a job where she is happy. She is not self-focused, she's just not focused on you. The fact that you're mixing these up is why I think there is a codependency issue here that you might want to consider unpacking.
She changed; you didn't. Your narrative that she became a person who pukes rainbows and abandoned you is not only not helpful, but it's almost guaranteed to be objectively untrue. Do you think she doesn't have problems now, or didn't when she was separating herself from you? She does and she did, I promise, but she choses to handle them in ways that are not harmfully codependent. These are pretty hard truths to hear and I'm sorry that you're in a position to hear them but hopefully they inspire some thought and self-reflection. There are a lot of resources in therapy (particularly group therapy which is being conducted via Zoom these days) on codependence that you might benefit from to process this loss.
posted by juniperesque at 7:52 AM on December 29, 2020 [35 favorites]
When I see you write, "I don’t understand how someone can change so drastically and become so self-focused." I cannot understand this. She got married and has a child, and a job where she is happy. She is not self-focused, she's just not focused on you. The fact that you're mixing these up is why I think there is a codependency issue here that you might want to consider unpacking.
She changed; you didn't. Your narrative that she became a person who pukes rainbows and abandoned you is not only not helpful, but it's almost guaranteed to be objectively untrue. Do you think she doesn't have problems now, or didn't when she was separating herself from you? She does and she did, I promise, but she choses to handle them in ways that are not harmfully codependent. These are pretty hard truths to hear and I'm sorry that you're in a position to hear them but hopefully they inspire some thought and self-reflection. There are a lot of resources in therapy (particularly group therapy which is being conducted via Zoom these days) on codependence that you might benefit from to process this loss.
posted by juniperesque at 7:52 AM on December 29, 2020 [35 favorites]
Tldr you’re coming across as extremely judgy and sometimes downright dismissive, and you’re expecting an awful lot from this person without really acknowledging anything she’s going through.
This really stood out to me: “ While she’ll sometimes tell me she still sees a childfree life as valid, I’m now left with the impression that this was a phase for her and she thinks her new life is far, far superior.”
Yes, and? If I had a dollar for every 25 year old “proudly childfree” woman I’ve known who eventually settled down and had kids, well, I’d only have like $7, but still. Not zero is the point. The reality is that, for a non-trivial number of people, childfree is a phase they go through and grow out of. This isn’t specific to childfree though. Pretty much anything you’re doing in your early to mid 20s is a phase. You could say the same thing about touring with Phish or playing professional sports. Those things are essential to identity when you’re 25, but much less important when you’re 35. Some people stick with it, but most don’t. That’s normal. What’s not normal is expecting someone to pick a permanent identity at like 23. (Incidentally, I think the opposite of childfree - i.e., having kids really young - is also a phase, and many of those young moms start going out and partying around 35 to make up for what they missed out on in their 20s.)
The reality is that it’s really hard to maintain friendships with co-workers. There’s a whole shelf of books about this. Friendships at work tend to be dependent on that job; once someone leaves the job, the associated friendships wither. You gradually talk less and less until you’re just one day... not friends anymore. I left a job in March of this year, and it was the first job I got after moving to a new state. I literally don’t have any other friends within 1000 miles and yet, I only text two or three of my old co-workers maybe once every couple of months. I’ve been really close with co-workers at past jobs, hanging out several times a week with them, inviting them to my wedding, etc., but now I only interact with them by liking a Facebook post every once in a while. I would suggest reframing your thinking: while it sucks that this friendship has faded, it’s also pretty impressive that it lasted as long as it did. Give yourself some credit for that.
Another thing that stood out to me is this: “ She didn’t acknowledge the one year anniversary of FIL’s death”. I have friends who have lost parents, siblings, and other loved ones, but I have absolutely no idea when these people died. It has literally never occurred to me that I should mark the anniversaries of my friends’ loved ones’ deaths. It’s hard enough for me to keep track of my actual friends; keeping track of their families on top of that would be incredibly difficult. And this isn’t even a blood relative! Even if you were my absolute best friend in the world, I still would not have messaged you about the anniversary of your FIL’s death. Sorry. Just not a thing that happens.
Even if your friend were the type to do this, though, she could be forgiven because she has a pretty good excuse: she’s elbows deep in planning her kid’s first birthday. You may not have kids, but that doesn’t excuse you from understanding that kids exist and have needs. I’m not a doctor, but I realize surgery is difficult. The first birthday is a pretty significant milestone for a kid, and parents take it seriously. I don’t see how you can expect your friends to remember the anniversaries of your in-laws’ deaths while you don’t have to remember their children’s birthdays. A little one-sided, that.
The last thing I want to point out is this: “ I don’t think this is the type of job you should be in if your mind is elsewhere and you’re not fully invested” This is insidious in two ways: First, does anybody really want to work? I sure as hell don’t. Kids or not, if you gave people the choice of working or staying at home and living the life of leisure, the vast majority would choose not to work. I sure as hell wouldn’t work if I didn’t need to. That doesn’t mean I don’t take my job seriously, and I resent your implication that it does. Second, mental health is a really really really tough field where it is extremely common to burn out. They need all the help they can get. I know people who work in the field part-time, and people who volunteer. Are those people not serving their clients because they aren’t fully committed? Should my wife, a therapist with children, find a new career because she occasionally has to take time off to take our kids to the doctor? Of course not, and it’s offensive to even imply that, both to the mental health professionals like your friend and to the people they serve, most of whom are probably grateful for what she is able to provide.
I don’t think you actually believe your friend shouldn’t work in mental health because she has non-work priorities, because that’s an untenable position. Taken to its logical conclusion, you would exclude the vast majority of qualified workers from a field that is already desperately short of workers. More likely, you’re using this to hold on to your grudge that your friend is no longer committed to being childfree. That’s... not very friendly on your part. Not surprising that she wouldn’t want to stay friends.
So yeah. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s worth digging too deeply into why you drifted apart, because it’s just a thing that happens and you just kind of have to learn to deal with it. But if you do want to dig, I would suggest focusing on your role as well as hers. You’re not blameless, and to pretend otherwise is to reinforce the problem.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:54 AM on December 29, 2020 [37 favorites]
This really stood out to me: “ While she’ll sometimes tell me she still sees a childfree life as valid, I’m now left with the impression that this was a phase for her and she thinks her new life is far, far superior.”
Yes, and? If I had a dollar for every 25 year old “proudly childfree” woman I’ve known who eventually settled down and had kids, well, I’d only have like $7, but still. Not zero is the point. The reality is that, for a non-trivial number of people, childfree is a phase they go through and grow out of. This isn’t specific to childfree though. Pretty much anything you’re doing in your early to mid 20s is a phase. You could say the same thing about touring with Phish or playing professional sports. Those things are essential to identity when you’re 25, but much less important when you’re 35. Some people stick with it, but most don’t. That’s normal. What’s not normal is expecting someone to pick a permanent identity at like 23. (Incidentally, I think the opposite of childfree - i.e., having kids really young - is also a phase, and many of those young moms start going out and partying around 35 to make up for what they missed out on in their 20s.)
The reality is that it’s really hard to maintain friendships with co-workers. There’s a whole shelf of books about this. Friendships at work tend to be dependent on that job; once someone leaves the job, the associated friendships wither. You gradually talk less and less until you’re just one day... not friends anymore. I left a job in March of this year, and it was the first job I got after moving to a new state. I literally don’t have any other friends within 1000 miles and yet, I only text two or three of my old co-workers maybe once every couple of months. I’ve been really close with co-workers at past jobs, hanging out several times a week with them, inviting them to my wedding, etc., but now I only interact with them by liking a Facebook post every once in a while. I would suggest reframing your thinking: while it sucks that this friendship has faded, it’s also pretty impressive that it lasted as long as it did. Give yourself some credit for that.
Another thing that stood out to me is this: “ She didn’t acknowledge the one year anniversary of FIL’s death”. I have friends who have lost parents, siblings, and other loved ones, but I have absolutely no idea when these people died. It has literally never occurred to me that I should mark the anniversaries of my friends’ loved ones’ deaths. It’s hard enough for me to keep track of my actual friends; keeping track of their families on top of that would be incredibly difficult. And this isn’t even a blood relative! Even if you were my absolute best friend in the world, I still would not have messaged you about the anniversary of your FIL’s death. Sorry. Just not a thing that happens.
Even if your friend were the type to do this, though, she could be forgiven because she has a pretty good excuse: she’s elbows deep in planning her kid’s first birthday. You may not have kids, but that doesn’t excuse you from understanding that kids exist and have needs. I’m not a doctor, but I realize surgery is difficult. The first birthday is a pretty significant milestone for a kid, and parents take it seriously. I don’t see how you can expect your friends to remember the anniversaries of your in-laws’ deaths while you don’t have to remember their children’s birthdays. A little one-sided, that.
The last thing I want to point out is this: “ I don’t think this is the type of job you should be in if your mind is elsewhere and you’re not fully invested” This is insidious in two ways: First, does anybody really want to work? I sure as hell don’t. Kids or not, if you gave people the choice of working or staying at home and living the life of leisure, the vast majority would choose not to work. I sure as hell wouldn’t work if I didn’t need to. That doesn’t mean I don’t take my job seriously, and I resent your implication that it does. Second, mental health is a really really really tough field where it is extremely common to burn out. They need all the help they can get. I know people who work in the field part-time, and people who volunteer. Are those people not serving their clients because they aren’t fully committed? Should my wife, a therapist with children, find a new career because she occasionally has to take time off to take our kids to the doctor? Of course not, and it’s offensive to even imply that, both to the mental health professionals like your friend and to the people they serve, most of whom are probably grateful for what she is able to provide.
I don’t think you actually believe your friend shouldn’t work in mental health because she has non-work priorities, because that’s an untenable position. Taken to its logical conclusion, you would exclude the vast majority of qualified workers from a field that is already desperately short of workers. More likely, you’re using this to hold on to your grudge that your friend is no longer committed to being childfree. That’s... not very friendly on your part. Not surprising that she wouldn’t want to stay friends.
So yeah. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s worth digging too deeply into why you drifted apart, because it’s just a thing that happens and you just kind of have to learn to deal with it. But if you do want to dig, I would suggest focusing on your role as well as hers. You’re not blameless, and to pretend otherwise is to reinforce the problem.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:54 AM on December 29, 2020 [37 favorites]
Friendship losses can be super painful, especially the kind of friendship you describe, where you bond with them as part of developing your own values and worldview. My heart goes out to you.
What you had with her was very precious, that feeling of sisterhood, of shared values and mutual support against difficult circumstances. And it's also common to lose those. I feel like I've heard this story from others about friendships in their 20s. It's a specific time of life, and it's challenging to maintain friendships as you pass through that defining time into wherever it is you're going with your life. The fact that it didn't last doesn't negate the value that it held for you both, and I tend to think it might be better to just let things rest -- let go of expectations and try to let go of hurt and resentment -- instead of blocking her, since sometimes friendships wax and wane.
I do think you're probably not fully appreciating what she went through with the pregnancy and delivery. It's a natural time to receive support from the community around oneself instead of having a lot of extra to give. Those are very transformational times when a person needs a lot of support, ideally from people who are also going through it and get it, or who are at least interested. She probably needed to talk about things like morning sickness and exhaustion, buying or borrowing a new wardrobe to fit her growing body (does "wardrobe" sound shallow? having clothes that cover one's skin is crucial to functioning as an adult), how to know if the baby is healthy, is that shooting pain something to worry about?, and how will this enormous baby manage to get out of her body? Her entire body was transforming. It can be all-consuming to go through. Those aren't trivial things -- we're talking about her own health, her baby's health, and her daily physical comfort. And she was too sick to attend an event -- that's an extra-difficult pregnancy. It may well have been tiring and uncomfortable to attend your wedding and undertake the long drive. You don't seem to recognize or take that into account.
And this may have been alienating to her. You're there caring about your husband's father's sickness and people in other countries, and meanwhile your friend herself was feeling sick and dealing with a possibly life-or-death delivery. Judging her for not having energy to spare because for now she happens to be at the center of her own maelstrom comes across as unkind.
Instead you're mad she didn't help take down decorations and better support you in the loss of your father in law. I can understand feeling upset that you felt like the big events of your life were going unseen, and that would be hard. I'm not defending her lack of interest in your life. But some of this comes across as BEC and petty. Pregnant people are specifically directed not to climb ladders because the extra weight and the extra bloodflow messes with balance in a few ways. Overall, you guys were in a tough time when she was having a tough pregnancy and delivery (and you weren't available or interested in or able to be sensitive that) and when you were supporting others like your husband through the death of his father and could have used some support yourself. All in all, you just weren't able to be one another's support.
It's also possible that she didn't grasp what a big deal his death was. I'm not sure I'd recognize the one-year anniversary. Of a father, yes! A father in law? I guess I should but I might not have. And in her 20s and early to 30s, she may just not yet have the life experience to know how important that was to you.
And you were going through grief around the time that she was dealing with a newborn literally around the clock. Those first two to three months are really surreal, like a waking dream, because of the sleep deprivation, and because of how intense it is to try to figure out how to keep the baby alive and doing okay (e.g., problems with feeding, e.g., getting screamed at by a colicky baby), often alone and in the middle of the night.
I would try to reframe things in more neutral and respectful ways like that. She didn't recognize your FIL's one year anniversary -- did you recognize her baby's one-year birthday? You guys may just not be the right people to support one another right now.
posted by slidell at 8:24 AM on December 29, 2020 [18 favorites]
What you had with her was very precious, that feeling of sisterhood, of shared values and mutual support against difficult circumstances. And it's also common to lose those. I feel like I've heard this story from others about friendships in their 20s. It's a specific time of life, and it's challenging to maintain friendships as you pass through that defining time into wherever it is you're going with your life. The fact that it didn't last doesn't negate the value that it held for you both, and I tend to think it might be better to just let things rest -- let go of expectations and try to let go of hurt and resentment -- instead of blocking her, since sometimes friendships wax and wane.
I do think you're probably not fully appreciating what she went through with the pregnancy and delivery. It's a natural time to receive support from the community around oneself instead of having a lot of extra to give. Those are very transformational times when a person needs a lot of support, ideally from people who are also going through it and get it, or who are at least interested. She probably needed to talk about things like morning sickness and exhaustion, buying or borrowing a new wardrobe to fit her growing body (does "wardrobe" sound shallow? having clothes that cover one's skin is crucial to functioning as an adult), how to know if the baby is healthy, is that shooting pain something to worry about?, and how will this enormous baby manage to get out of her body? Her entire body was transforming. It can be all-consuming to go through. Those aren't trivial things -- we're talking about her own health, her baby's health, and her daily physical comfort. And she was too sick to attend an event -- that's an extra-difficult pregnancy. It may well have been tiring and uncomfortable to attend your wedding and undertake the long drive. You don't seem to recognize or take that into account.
And this may have been alienating to her. You're there caring about your husband's father's sickness and people in other countries, and meanwhile your friend herself was feeling sick and dealing with a possibly life-or-death delivery. Judging her for not having energy to spare because for now she happens to be at the center of her own maelstrom comes across as unkind.
Instead you're mad she didn't help take down decorations and better support you in the loss of your father in law. I can understand feeling upset that you felt like the big events of your life were going unseen, and that would be hard. I'm not defending her lack of interest in your life. But some of this comes across as BEC and petty. Pregnant people are specifically directed not to climb ladders because the extra weight and the extra bloodflow messes with balance in a few ways. Overall, you guys were in a tough time when she was having a tough pregnancy and delivery (and you weren't available or interested in or able to be sensitive that) and when you were supporting others like your husband through the death of his father and could have used some support yourself. All in all, you just weren't able to be one another's support.
It's also possible that she didn't grasp what a big deal his death was. I'm not sure I'd recognize the one-year anniversary. Of a father, yes! A father in law? I guess I should but I might not have. And in her 20s and early to 30s, she may just not yet have the life experience to know how important that was to you.
And you were going through grief around the time that she was dealing with a newborn literally around the clock. Those first two to three months are really surreal, like a waking dream, because of the sleep deprivation, and because of how intense it is to try to figure out how to keep the baby alive and doing okay (e.g., problems with feeding, e.g., getting screamed at by a colicky baby), often alone and in the middle of the night.
I would try to reframe things in more neutral and respectful ways like that. She didn't recognize your FIL's one year anniversary -- did you recognize her baby's one-year birthday? You guys may just not be the right people to support one another right now.
posted by slidell at 8:24 AM on December 29, 2020 [18 favorites]
Coming back in to add that I also picked up on the way you speak about your friend's choices; I deliberately didn't mention it because I wasn't sure how well that would be received.
But it may be telling to you that someone not connected to this situation not only picked up on what seems to be some strong dislike of the kind of lifestyle your friend has now, but actively avoided mentioning it because I was afraid some of that anger would be directed at me.
And if I was avoiding talking about it....imagine what kind of impact this may have had on your friend, who was living it.
HOWEVER. This is not a fault-finding statement I am making - you have every right to find this kind of public presentation of motherhood to be nuts and icky. But you still have to understand that your friend does not - and if that's the case, your choice is either to accept that she doesn't agree with you about that, and support her where she is today, or to accept that you are just not suited to each other any more.
I also didn't say anything about those things because I was afraid you might convince yourself that you drove your friend away somehow, and you would beat yourself up. So I again stress that this was not all your "fault". There is no one at "fault" here. Maybe she was unfair to you, maybe you were unfair to her, but healthy friendships can withstand that; friends apologize for being unfair to each other and move on. That is a separate issue from friends growing apart, and it looks like you have indeed grown apart. Time and the separate paths you've been on have just....lead you each in different directions.
In fact, the things that you've each said to each other recently suggest to me that she might also be in the same place where she thinks fondly back on the friendship you used to have and she also wishes she could get it back. But you're two different people now. It sounds like you've got an idea of the person you wish she had turned into and you're disappointed that it's not matching the reality; but it sounds like she's doing the same thing. You and she wouldn't have done that if you didn't value your former friendship. But sometimes the distance between people is just too great to overcome if they've grown apart.
So - again, I do not think she didn't value you back then. On the contrary, I think she valued you tremendously. And I also think that she's wishing you'd get along better today. But the problem is, the only way that you and she would still be able to get along would be if you each were different people than who you've each turned into.
Good luck.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:25 AM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
But it may be telling to you that someone not connected to this situation not only picked up on what seems to be some strong dislike of the kind of lifestyle your friend has now, but actively avoided mentioning it because I was afraid some of that anger would be directed at me.
And if I was avoiding talking about it....imagine what kind of impact this may have had on your friend, who was living it.
HOWEVER. This is not a fault-finding statement I am making - you have every right to find this kind of public presentation of motherhood to be nuts and icky. But you still have to understand that your friend does not - and if that's the case, your choice is either to accept that she doesn't agree with you about that, and support her where she is today, or to accept that you are just not suited to each other any more.
I also didn't say anything about those things because I was afraid you might convince yourself that you drove your friend away somehow, and you would beat yourself up. So I again stress that this was not all your "fault". There is no one at "fault" here. Maybe she was unfair to you, maybe you were unfair to her, but healthy friendships can withstand that; friends apologize for being unfair to each other and move on. That is a separate issue from friends growing apart, and it looks like you have indeed grown apart. Time and the separate paths you've been on have just....lead you each in different directions.
In fact, the things that you've each said to each other recently suggest to me that she might also be in the same place where she thinks fondly back on the friendship you used to have and she also wishes she could get it back. But you're two different people now. It sounds like you've got an idea of the person you wish she had turned into and you're disappointed that it's not matching the reality; but it sounds like she's doing the same thing. You and she wouldn't have done that if you didn't value your former friendship. But sometimes the distance between people is just too great to overcome if they've grown apart.
So - again, I do not think she didn't value you back then. On the contrary, I think she valued you tremendously. And I also think that she's wishing you'd get along better today. But the problem is, the only way that you and she would still be able to get along would be if you each were different people than who you've each turned into.
Good luck.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:25 AM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
Everything changes, including relationships. What was once coherent and mutually beneficial became, over time, less and less so. It ran its course, just like everything in life, and eventually life itself, runs its course. Acceptance, rather than kicking and screaming and obsessively seeking reasons and finding fault, would seem to me a more positive strategy long term. Just my .02, pre-tax.
posted by charris5005 at 9:07 AM on December 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by charris5005 at 9:07 AM on December 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
One of my closest adult friendships (and those are hard to come by!) was forged by us working together at a job we hated. This can be a really great bonding experience, especially when you’re in your twenties, but I do think it caused some growing pains in our relationship when we eventually both left that job. It’s tough when you first grew your friendship by complaining and feeling disgruntled with life/the world, it can make it hard to be happy for each other when something good happens. We remain great friends to this day, and I think it is mostly because we have both found our own happiness and fulfillment in life (I mean, within reason....life is pain and all that).
I think it could be valuable for you to look at your own life and see what is missing right now. Figuring that out is the most valuable way for you to be able to develop healthy, fulfilling friendships in adulthood. You seem almost nostalgic for what to me sounds like an overwhelming and dramatic codependent relationship where you had to bring her food when she was too depressed to get out of bed. This just seems like it was probably a real low point in her life, but you look back on that time as when you were getting a lot out of the friendship and were happy - this is worth exploring in therapy.
posted by cakelite at 9:12 AM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
I think it could be valuable for you to look at your own life and see what is missing right now. Figuring that out is the most valuable way for you to be able to develop healthy, fulfilling friendships in adulthood. You seem almost nostalgic for what to me sounds like an overwhelming and dramatic codependent relationship where you had to bring her food when she was too depressed to get out of bed. This just seems like it was probably a real low point in her life, but you look back on that time as when you were getting a lot out of the friendship and were happy - this is worth exploring in therapy.
posted by cakelite at 9:12 AM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
Well, this is a lot to untangle on the one hand and on the other it's very simple.
You two grew apart, and your friendship's natural journey has come to an end. It's totally okay to grieve that and move on. I think that is the simplest and clearest path, a bit unicorns and rainbows maybe but that is completely okay at some points. I would have a little grief ceremony and then move on.
But you have provided a lot of detail and so I do have a few thoughts. First, I think only kids think "like sisters" is a relationship that...doesn't often exist. Those of us who grew up with actual sisters know that like sisters pretty much describes everything you have said above and more. So one way to look at this would be that now you know what a sibling relationship can look like and be glad you can actually choose your friends to suit you in your present and not be tied for life to someone who has changed their life in a way you don't respect.
Others have commented on the codependent and lack of respect aspects of your post and I agree with those observations. From what you've said, she seems to mostly be - human.
I don't know how much of that you want to address, but I will add that for me what also stands out is that every time she set a boundary, you took it as an insult to yourself or to the friendship. I think long-term, in therapy, that's worth examining - it probably speaks volumes about your upbringing and where your sense of self-worth is at. The all-consuming-work element is kind of speaking the same language there.
I recently heard a phrase, "if I can't be loved, I'll be needed," and I wonder if this speaks to you because you seem to have narrated this friendship through two sets of lenses. One is need. Your mutual help society, her needing you, you needing her. The second is similarity - people who are the same, behave the same, have the same beliefs. These are pretty natural parts of friendships, but they aren't the sum of what friendship can be when people come to the friendship secure in themselves. I think that's maybe something to consider going forward.
In any case I am sorry for the pain and grief you are going through. I feel pretty confident that you will have great friendships in your future, probably with other people, and most especially with yourself.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:50 AM on December 29, 2020 [9 favorites]
You two grew apart, and your friendship's natural journey has come to an end. It's totally okay to grieve that and move on. I think that is the simplest and clearest path, a bit unicorns and rainbows maybe but that is completely okay at some points. I would have a little grief ceremony and then move on.
But you have provided a lot of detail and so I do have a few thoughts. First, I think only kids think "like sisters" is a relationship that...doesn't often exist. Those of us who grew up with actual sisters know that like sisters pretty much describes everything you have said above and more. So one way to look at this would be that now you know what a sibling relationship can look like and be glad you can actually choose your friends to suit you in your present and not be tied for life to someone who has changed their life in a way you don't respect.
Others have commented on the codependent and lack of respect aspects of your post and I agree with those observations. From what you've said, she seems to mostly be - human.
I don't know how much of that you want to address, but I will add that for me what also stands out is that every time she set a boundary, you took it as an insult to yourself or to the friendship. I think long-term, in therapy, that's worth examining - it probably speaks volumes about your upbringing and where your sense of self-worth is at. The all-consuming-work element is kind of speaking the same language there.
I recently heard a phrase, "if I can't be loved, I'll be needed," and I wonder if this speaks to you because you seem to have narrated this friendship through two sets of lenses. One is need. Your mutual help society, her needing you, you needing her. The second is similarity - people who are the same, behave the same, have the same beliefs. These are pretty natural parts of friendships, but they aren't the sum of what friendship can be when people come to the friendship secure in themselves. I think that's maybe something to consider going forward.
In any case I am sorry for the pain and grief you are going through. I feel pretty confident that you will have great friendships in your future, probably with other people, and most especially with yourself.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:50 AM on December 29, 2020 [9 favorites]
I'd like to touch on an aspect of your post that hasn't yet been mentioned, which is that you deleted her from all your social media and have blocked her number on your phone. You say you tried to accept that your relationship with her would never be as close as you once had been, you say you tried to accept that this "downgraded" version of friendship is the best you both can have right now... and you failed to accept these things. You want the Original Full-Service Version of the friendship or you want nothing to do with her at all.
This type of black and white thinking pervades your post.
posted by MiraK at 9:54 AM on December 29, 2020 [50 favorites]
This type of black and white thinking pervades your post.
- Either she was your soul sister who cares deeply about you, or she must have been using you cynically all along.
- Either she is always ready to be outraged in tandem with you about the things you want to be outraged about, or she has sold out and stopped caring about the real issues of the world.
- Either she remains committedly childfree all her life, or she must be secretly looking down on you for being childfree while she lives the "superior" life as a mother.
- Either she minutely tracks every detail of your life and presents herself to your service no matter what is going on in her own life, or she must be a "self focused" narcissist who never cared about anyone else.
posted by MiraK at 9:54 AM on December 29, 2020 [50 favorites]
It reads to me like you saw Kendra as a kind of wife who would reinforce your values/do very personal things for you (and you would do the same in return). Kendra didn't have the same view of the situation and when her attention shifted to her own family, you felt shafted.
Also--if you're feeling secure in whatever you're doing right now, Kendra's choices wouldn't bother you so much.
posted by kingdead at 9:59 AM on December 29, 2020
Also--if you're feeling secure in whatever you're doing right now, Kendra's choices wouldn't bother you so much.
posted by kingdead at 9:59 AM on December 29, 2020
FWIW I notice that you're slightly younger than her and you give your age as 31. Man, I remember the years between, like, 29 and 33 or thereabouts, being years of serious internal change for pretty much everyone I knew but especially the women. (For men, they tended to have this phase a little later in their 30s.)
You just start, at a certain point, realizing how short life is and how short the days can be and how very little energy you really have. Priorities get clearer. The importance of keeping yourself healthy and resilient becomes clearer. On the sadder side, you start to realize that you're never going to save the world and you're not going to live forever, and that every day you spend sad and stressed out and angry is a day you never, ever get back. And that life is really, really, fuckin hard.
You also kind of start integrating all of the experiences you've had, and the experiences of people around you, into how you view the world. It gets harder to view people as purely one thing or another; it gets easier to forgive people for the ways in which they fall short of ideals. Have you ever met an activist who's in her 60s? They tend to be some pretty mellow, tolerant humans.
This ending/transitioning friendship might be the start of you experiencing this shift yourself, and if you can embrace it instead of fighting it you might really like what happens.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:06 AM on December 29, 2020 [10 favorites]
You just start, at a certain point, realizing how short life is and how short the days can be and how very little energy you really have. Priorities get clearer. The importance of keeping yourself healthy and resilient becomes clearer. On the sadder side, you start to realize that you're never going to save the world and you're not going to live forever, and that every day you spend sad and stressed out and angry is a day you never, ever get back. And that life is really, really, fuckin hard.
You also kind of start integrating all of the experiences you've had, and the experiences of people around you, into how you view the world. It gets harder to view people as purely one thing or another; it gets easier to forgive people for the ways in which they fall short of ideals. Have you ever met an activist who's in her 60s? They tend to be some pretty mellow, tolerant humans.
This ending/transitioning friendship might be the start of you experiencing this shift yourself, and if you can embrace it instead of fighting it you might really like what happens.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:06 AM on December 29, 2020 [10 favorites]
I wonder, OP, whether you sent presents or wishes acknowledging your friend's child's first birthday? Your anger over her lack of acknowledgement of your FIL's 1 yr death anniversary is IMO beyond hypocritical if you did not.
(A child's first birthday is much more important to acknowledge than an in-law's death anniversary, but even if you consider it equally important, and therefore justify to yourself that it was fair-and-square tit-for-tat that you refused to acknowledge the birthday, that still wouldn't explain why you didn't send a present - something that you ought to have done before you knew that your friend would fail to acknowledge your FIL's death anniversary.)
posted by MiraK at 10:09 AM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
(A child's first birthday is much more important to acknowledge than an in-law's death anniversary, but even if you consider it equally important, and therefore justify to yourself that it was fair-and-square tit-for-tat that you refused to acknowledge the birthday, that still wouldn't explain why you didn't send a present - something that you ought to have done before you knew that your friend would fail to acknowledge your FIL's death anniversary.)
posted by MiraK at 10:09 AM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Sorry, I don’t know how to @ specific people on here.
MiraK - yes, I sent her child a birthday gift, as well as a gift when she was born. Also a stuffed animal when she turned 6 months (a chihuahua because the family has 4 chihuahuas). And enjoyed the pictures of her with cake, dogs, family, smiles etc, and shared the pictures with mutual friends who also know her because I thought they were quite cute. We don’t live in the same place so I could not attend (before Covid). I disagree with your assessment that her child’s birthday is more important than my FIL’s death or death anniversary. I don’t think that’s a useful way to categorize experiences.
Re: the comment about the ladder. I want to
clarify I did not ask or ever expect her to scale the ladder. I understand pregnant people cannot climb high ladders/any ladders at all. I did not even expect Bert to scale the ladder but Bert literally works as a gallery installer and is quite comfortable with ladders.
I feel that I didn’t express myself well in this post or explain the ways that I WAS there for her and she for me and that I was initially very happy for her pregnancy! I planned and threw her baby shower, as one example. There was a lot of love in our friendship that didn’t come through in the original post. I maintain that distancing myself was the right choice for me.
Thanks for your replies. I appreciate the time you took to write them out and reflect on the post.
posted by thatsaskatchewangirl at 10:28 AM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
MiraK - yes, I sent her child a birthday gift, as well as a gift when she was born. Also a stuffed animal when she turned 6 months (a chihuahua because the family has 4 chihuahuas). And enjoyed the pictures of her with cake, dogs, family, smiles etc, and shared the pictures with mutual friends who also know her because I thought they were quite cute. We don’t live in the same place so I could not attend (before Covid). I disagree with your assessment that her child’s birthday is more important than my FIL’s death or death anniversary. I don’t think that’s a useful way to categorize experiences.
Re: the comment about the ladder. I want to
clarify I did not ask or ever expect her to scale the ladder. I understand pregnant people cannot climb high ladders/any ladders at all. I did not even expect Bert to scale the ladder but Bert literally works as a gallery installer and is quite comfortable with ladders.
I feel that I didn’t express myself well in this post or explain the ways that I WAS there for her and she for me and that I was initially very happy for her pregnancy! I planned and threw her baby shower, as one example. There was a lot of love in our friendship that didn’t come through in the original post. I maintain that distancing myself was the right choice for me.
Thanks for your replies. I appreciate the time you took to write them out and reflect on the post.
posted by thatsaskatchewangirl at 10:28 AM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
I had a moment of clarity this week where I was like, “She’s never going back to the person she was before”.
I think this is key. She changed, and that happens. It doesn't mean your friendship wasn't real or important, or that she was using you. She changed. In my experience, there is a fundamental incompatibility between someone who is neutral to negative on kids and someone who goes all in on modern helicopter mommy culture. As you said, there's nothing to talk about. It's not your fault or her fault. It's sad and it's hard. You should grieve the end of the friendship, but don't let the end retroactively ruin the whole friendship. The two of you were important to each other. That was real.
posted by Mavri at 10:53 AM on December 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
I think this is key. She changed, and that happens. It doesn't mean your friendship wasn't real or important, or that she was using you. She changed. In my experience, there is a fundamental incompatibility between someone who is neutral to negative on kids and someone who goes all in on modern helicopter mommy culture. As you said, there's nothing to talk about. It's not your fault or her fault. It's sad and it's hard. You should grieve the end of the friendship, but don't let the end retroactively ruin the whole friendship. The two of you were important to each other. That was real.
posted by Mavri at 10:53 AM on December 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
if a poster here showed up saying that an old friend of hers had done the following:
*judged her for even wishing she could stay home with her baby
*sneered at her for somehow being insufficiently virtuous when she is the one literally providing incredibly draining professional mental health services to high risk populations
*got angry at her for not doing physical work for a wedding when plenty of other people were already doing it, which she had barely managed to attend at all because she was having such a difficult pregnancy;
*failed to understand that there is simply no comparison between the death of one's elderly FIL - a relationship that for most people isn't actually close at all - and the trauma of one's own difficult delivery; and insisted that the person giving birth is at fault for not offering support at the time of both events --
... everyone here would be telling that poster to drop that old friend posthaste and not expose herself to any more toxicity and inappropriate behavior.
I hope the therapy goes well for you; sometimes old friendships can rekindle in different forms when people are older, more mellowed, and less self centered.
posted by fingersandtoes at 10:58 AM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]
*judged her for even wishing she could stay home with her baby
*sneered at her for somehow being insufficiently virtuous when she is the one literally providing incredibly draining professional mental health services to high risk populations
*got angry at her for not doing physical work for a wedding when plenty of other people were already doing it, which she had barely managed to attend at all because she was having such a difficult pregnancy;
*failed to understand that there is simply no comparison between the death of one's elderly FIL - a relationship that for most people isn't actually close at all - and the trauma of one's own difficult delivery; and insisted that the person giving birth is at fault for not offering support at the time of both events --
... everyone here would be telling that poster to drop that old friend posthaste and not expose herself to any more toxicity and inappropriate behavior.
I hope the therapy goes well for you; sometimes old friendships can rekindle in different forms when people are older, more mellowed, and less self centered.
posted by fingersandtoes at 10:58 AM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]
I just wanted to express some sympathies with you. All the stuff that people say in this thread may be objectively true, but there is something unspoken and unacknowledged that happens to many folks, often women with trauma histories, and that is that people just treat us shittier than others. Our personhood is seen as conditional. It’s discrimination and is every bit as unacceptable as any other form of bigotry.
For people like us, attachments where folks treat us like people (and that also includes allowing us to help and support them!) become precious. Then, these people move on in life, and stop letting us know them-start using these rote acknowledgments, doing slow fades.. they have a right to this, but the aggregate of discrimination will continue in our lives. What has helped me is taking this understanding that I’ve got an Unacknowledged Diversity Category thing going on and making allowances for it. That doesn’t mean I think I’m a paragon of goodness, but I do not place undue weight on my own supposed character flaws when I’m evaluating a negative outcome.
What has worked for me - and I see you’ve given this advice to others - is to do all I can to improve my own security, while being aware that there might always be that chance of discrimination against me, even in the nicest and kindest relationship. I very rarely make new attachments, and I almost never share my unvarnished struggles with anyone. I’ve had wonderful opportunities to help others and to enjoy the small things in life, and while I think acceptance is a virulent word that is shoved on women, I make allowances for the possibility that things will be always be more difficult for me because I’m different. Therapists, curses upon them, have not figured out a way to acknowledge these unlabelled axes of discrimination, probably because they think folks will use them as an excuse not to undertake personal growth. But the truth is that once you acknowledge these dynamics you can do what’s possible to improve life within their vicious constraints.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 12:12 PM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
For people like us, attachments where folks treat us like people (and that also includes allowing us to help and support them!) become precious. Then, these people move on in life, and stop letting us know them-start using these rote acknowledgments, doing slow fades.. they have a right to this, but the aggregate of discrimination will continue in our lives. What has helped me is taking this understanding that I’ve got an Unacknowledged Diversity Category thing going on and making allowances for it. That doesn’t mean I think I’m a paragon of goodness, but I do not place undue weight on my own supposed character flaws when I’m evaluating a negative outcome.
What has worked for me - and I see you’ve given this advice to others - is to do all I can to improve my own security, while being aware that there might always be that chance of discrimination against me, even in the nicest and kindest relationship. I very rarely make new attachments, and I almost never share my unvarnished struggles with anyone. I’ve had wonderful opportunities to help others and to enjoy the small things in life, and while I think acceptance is a virulent word that is shoved on women, I make allowances for the possibility that things will be always be more difficult for me because I’m different. Therapists, curses upon them, have not figured out a way to acknowledge these unlabelled axes of discrimination, probably because they think folks will use them as an excuse not to undertake personal growth. But the truth is that once you acknowledge these dynamics you can do what’s possible to improve life within their vicious constraints.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 12:12 PM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
Well, I'm sorry that you don't find this community to be a good fit; it can be a little hard to weather one's first metafilter thread. (and second, and third...actually AskMe can be a pretty rough crowd regardless I guess.)
In our defense, though, I don't think anyone said that YOUR relationship with YOUR FIL was not important to YOU. Rather, that in the cultures largely shared across the U.S. and Canada, the in-law relationship is not automatically assumed to be one of great closeness. I mean one of the most common topics in standup comedy here is that "everyone" hates their in-laws. People just don't naturally assume that the death of an in-law is going to be super momentous. Nobody here is saying that this is Good and Right and Proper, it's just how it is.
But then that's kind of the crux of your issue, isn't it? You have some big and legit grievances with How It Is, and you devote most of your energy to trying to tell folks How It Is is wrong. And now, this person you loved has stopped fighting so hard against How It Is.
I hope you find a therapist who clicks and is able to help you come to terms with this friendship's end and validate your anger around all of this stuff.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:14 PM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
In our defense, though, I don't think anyone said that YOUR relationship with YOUR FIL was not important to YOU. Rather, that in the cultures largely shared across the U.S. and Canada, the in-law relationship is not automatically assumed to be one of great closeness. I mean one of the most common topics in standup comedy here is that "everyone" hates their in-laws. People just don't naturally assume that the death of an in-law is going to be super momentous. Nobody here is saying that this is Good and Right and Proper, it's just how it is.
But then that's kind of the crux of your issue, isn't it? You have some big and legit grievances with How It Is, and you devote most of your energy to trying to tell folks How It Is is wrong. And now, this person you loved has stopped fighting so hard against How It Is.
I hope you find a therapist who clicks and is able to help you come to terms with this friendship's end and validate your anger around all of this stuff.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:14 PM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
Also, just my sympathies and acknowledgments to you - this isn’t an either or situation where people have to side with you or this ex friend - I think that society has plenty of scripts for people who want to support her, and fewer for people who want to support you. I am kind to everyone, within reason, but I like to focus my energy on folks at the margins. Social disabilities and social poverty exist, and you have every right to meaningful connection. You can’t expect it from any one given person, as I know you’re aware! But you have the right to curate your life, to hold your boundaries and your values and your standards, and to choose friends that work well for you. And, if someone has you on a slow fade track, you have every right to challenge that and to end things on your terms. It’s liberating to do so. Feel free to memail me if you’d like to chat about things, although I’m no expert! I see you, and I’m rooting for you.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 12:18 PM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 12:18 PM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
It’s not just the FIL dying, it’s the “one year anniversary of FIL dying” that is incomprehensible to most people. I’ve lost several people I care about a lot, and I have never ever acknowledged a death anniversary. The only person I know who does that is my extremely emotionally manipulative mother. That doesn’t mean you’re extremely emotionally manipulative but it does mean you place importance on something many people would consider made up, in a way that feels extremely heavy to them (the reason it’s such a useful tool for the emotionally manipulative, I would imagine). I think about my loved ones who have passed frequently, I cry about it, I sometimes talk to friends or family about it who will feel the same. I still do not observe the anniversary. And I generally don’t mourn it with people who aren’t either also directly affected, or my partner.
All of this is to say you are placing a lot of heavy expectations on this friend. The fact that you were very close when she was depressed or mentally ill enough to have a total breakdown is a pretty clear sign that 1) she was not using you (you have self-righteous opinions about who should treat the mentally ill and also think depressed people are fake friends and liars?) and that 2) that is not a safe space for her to dwell, mentally. You may just be more emotional and traditional than her, also, at the end of the day.
posted by stoneandstar at 12:39 PM on December 29, 2020 [10 favorites]
All of this is to say you are placing a lot of heavy expectations on this friend. The fact that you were very close when she was depressed or mentally ill enough to have a total breakdown is a pretty clear sign that 1) she was not using you (you have self-righteous opinions about who should treat the mentally ill and also think depressed people are fake friends and liars?) and that 2) that is not a safe space for her to dwell, mentally. You may just be more emotional and traditional than her, also, at the end of the day.
posted by stoneandstar at 12:39 PM on December 29, 2020 [10 favorites]
I had a good friend turn against me, and I was surprised by how much it felt like a breakup even though we had never been anything other than platonic friends. Realizing that I'd been dumped was actually helpful, as I could do the basic "so you've been dumped" stuff like not following them on social media, avoiding events where they'd probably be, etc. It took a month or two but I then I naturally moved on to the stage where you realize that you maybe weren't as good a fit as you once thought you were. Now, years later, I wonder why we were ever good friends at all. It's weird because normally friendships fade without you ever noticing, and so we don't have good models for it. I recommend treating it as if you'd been dumped, and move on with new friendships.
That said: as a suburban full-time mom, your superiority makes me laugh. If you don't accept that friends can change but still be worthy, you're going to go through this again. It's fine for friendships to fade but it's wonderful when they stay; that requires flexibility on the part of everyone involved.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:45 PM on December 29, 2020 [10 favorites]
That said: as a suburban full-time mom, your superiority makes me laugh. If you don't accept that friends can change but still be worthy, you're going to go through this again. It's fine for friendships to fade but it's wonderful when they stay; that requires flexibility on the part of everyone involved.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:45 PM on December 29, 2020 [10 favorites]
Also, even in this thread there is a meme that this woman is somehow a helicoptering mommy blogger when it sounds more like... she is a mother investing in her relationship with her child. There is no evidence she’s taking it overboard— she still has hobbies (gardening, dogs) and a job. If you care about mental health, fewer children with uninvested, neglectful parents is a good thing.
posted by stoneandstar at 12:47 PM on December 29, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by stoneandstar at 12:47 PM on December 29, 2020 [13 favorites]
We were both staunchly feminist. As someone from a small, conservative community, it was empowering for me to meet someone so secure in their views. We both strongly rejected the idea of anything traditionally “female”, and specifically bonded over our childfree stance.
I have seen in my own friends, a shift from the thoughts described here, to those that see rejecting the idea of anything traditionally "female" as being in some ways anti-feminist. I suspect that your friend has gone through a similar shift, especially after having a child.
Another shift I've personally made, is to spend less time discussing politics and spending more time actually trying to change things. Part of this includes putting myself in a mental state where I feel motivated to do things. There was a good article posted in the blue about this idea of "political hobbyists" which I ended up taking to heart.
Basically, just because someone attends mommy and me classes doesn't mean they're not feminist, and just because someone doesn't want to spend their free time dwelling over the plight of the Rohingya people doesn't mean they don't care about human rights.
It sounds like the issue is that you valued your friend because she had the exact same views as you, which to be honest, feels like you didn't really respect her ability to make her own decisions and grow as a person. I would suggest you try to to view her choices through a lens that doesn't make her seem evil, and try to make new friends who are closer to sharing your values, but this time giving both yourself and your new friends the freedom to change and grow.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 12:55 PM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
I have seen in my own friends, a shift from the thoughts described here, to those that see rejecting the idea of anything traditionally "female" as being in some ways anti-feminist. I suspect that your friend has gone through a similar shift, especially after having a child.
Another shift I've personally made, is to spend less time discussing politics and spending more time actually trying to change things. Part of this includes putting myself in a mental state where I feel motivated to do things. There was a good article posted in the blue about this idea of "political hobbyists" which I ended up taking to heart.
Basically, just because someone attends mommy and me classes doesn't mean they're not feminist, and just because someone doesn't want to spend their free time dwelling over the plight of the Rohingya people doesn't mean they don't care about human rights.
It sounds like the issue is that you valued your friend because she had the exact same views as you, which to be honest, feels like you didn't really respect her ability to make her own decisions and grow as a person. I would suggest you try to to view her choices through a lens that doesn't make her seem evil, and try to make new friends who are closer to sharing your values, but this time giving both yourself and your new friends the freedom to change and grow.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 12:55 PM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
I don’t understand how someone can change so drastically and become so self-focused. I need tips on how to move on with my life without this person I once considered a sister.
My first reaction is, how on earth did you expect that people won't change? My sisters and I are both the same, but also different people from who we were growing up. We've changed many times over. None of what you described necessarily read as "This person has changed drastically." It more sounded like "This person's life circumstances have changed." For example, I have been in a spot where I couldn't stay up late and ruminate about a friends horrible boss because I was dealing with my own shit. Shit that I wasn't unloading on said friends because I knew they weren't in a great spot either.
Ignoring the contempt you have for her life choices and how that may have led her to pull back to protect herself (maybe you're better at covering that up when interacting with her directly. Maybe your contempt manifested because of how abandoned you feel, so is more apparent here than in real life), it's ok that you're ready to move on from this friendship. It doesn't necessarily mean she's a bad person, or that you are a bad person. You've both just taken different paths, and those paths don't intersect anymore. You don't have to look back on everything you had together and try to justify your decision, or judge it to be fake. Remember the good times for what they were.
It may also help to re-calibrate what you think it means to consider someone a close friend/sister. Relationships where you seem in lock step with someone on everything are intoxicating in their own way and enjoyable. But they are a bit illusory in the sense that it's like a honeymoon period, the relationship hasn't been fully tested. At some point friends will disagree on something. How the friends handle that determines if the friendship will continue to grow or if it will start to fade. This friendship didn't pass that particular test, and that's ok. It was helpful for the duration it lasted. Now it's time to move on.
posted by ghost phoneme at 1:18 PM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
My first reaction is, how on earth did you expect that people won't change? My sisters and I are both the same, but also different people from who we were growing up. We've changed many times over. None of what you described necessarily read as "This person has changed drastically." It more sounded like "This person's life circumstances have changed." For example, I have been in a spot where I couldn't stay up late and ruminate about a friends horrible boss because I was dealing with my own shit. Shit that I wasn't unloading on said friends because I knew they weren't in a great spot either.
Ignoring the contempt you have for her life choices and how that may have led her to pull back to protect herself (maybe you're better at covering that up when interacting with her directly. Maybe your contempt manifested because of how abandoned you feel, so is more apparent here than in real life), it's ok that you're ready to move on from this friendship. It doesn't necessarily mean she's a bad person, or that you are a bad person. You've both just taken different paths, and those paths don't intersect anymore. You don't have to look back on everything you had together and try to justify your decision, or judge it to be fake. Remember the good times for what they were.
It may also help to re-calibrate what you think it means to consider someone a close friend/sister. Relationships where you seem in lock step with someone on everything are intoxicating in their own way and enjoyable. But they are a bit illusory in the sense that it's like a honeymoon period, the relationship hasn't been fully tested. At some point friends will disagree on something. How the friends handle that determines if the friendship will continue to grow or if it will start to fade. This friendship didn't pass that particular test, and that's ok. It was helpful for the duration it lasted. Now it's time to move on.
posted by ghost phoneme at 1:18 PM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
I don't know if I've ever had a friend where we agreed on things to the extent that you and Kendra did, so while I can emphasize on the loss of a friend it isn't like I've lost half of my self. But people change and over time there's more opportunity for them to change so it would be a truly rare situation where you stayed in sync forever. If you can accept these changes then you may be able to keep the friendship but it doesn't sound like it'll be the same. That doesn't mean it isn't worth keeping but it will be a different kind of relationship to the one you used to have.
Also, in my culture we do have special gatherings to mark the anniversaries of deaths and offer prayers for the deceased. I could expect people to attend for the anniversary of the death of an in-law but I wouldn't expect them to call for condolences if they weren't coming, except as part of a call to say they weren't coming.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:06 PM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
Also, in my culture we do have special gatherings to mark the anniversaries of deaths and offer prayers for the deceased. I could expect people to attend for the anniversary of the death of an in-law but I wouldn't expect them to call for condolences if they weren't coming, except as part of a call to say they weren't coming.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:06 PM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
I suspect much of the anger and judgment that is coming across in this post is your pain speaking - the pain of losing someone you loved dearly to time, to new life choices, to the evolution of personality that happen as people age - these are universal struggles most of us face.
To answer your question about how to move on and heal, I would recommend focusing on trying to grieve. If it helps, grieve her like she died. Then, work on trying to forgive. Forgive her for the ways she was unwilling or unable to be the friend you needed for the long-term. Forgive her for changing in ways that ultimately distanced you from each other. Forgive her to free yourself from the burden of your pain, and to again find joy in the wonderful moments you did share, even if they are over now.
I wonder too if it would help to think of this less as a set of life choices your friend made and more as the realization of a life that was inevitable for her eventually, even if neither of you knew it at the time. When someone we love seems to change drastically, it can feel like they were making active, conscious choices to become another person, but usually its a lot less clean than that. In reality, it's a bunch of tiny experiences that shape and change them, changes neither we or they detect at the time, whether its moving to a new city, loss of a family member, a new hobby, falling in love - anything really - but whatever it was, it kept moving and building, and one day many years later it crystallizes. At that point, it can look so obvious, but that's only because we can see how it all happened in retrospect. I'm not saying it was fate or destiny, but the reality is it takes most of us our entire lives to truly know ourselves and what will make us feel happy and at home in the world. Whether she knew it or not at the time, it sounds like she is happy and this is probably the right life for her.
posted by amycup at 2:19 PM on December 29, 2020 [16 favorites]
To answer your question about how to move on and heal, I would recommend focusing on trying to grieve. If it helps, grieve her like she died. Then, work on trying to forgive. Forgive her for the ways she was unwilling or unable to be the friend you needed for the long-term. Forgive her for changing in ways that ultimately distanced you from each other. Forgive her to free yourself from the burden of your pain, and to again find joy in the wonderful moments you did share, even if they are over now.
I wonder too if it would help to think of this less as a set of life choices your friend made and more as the realization of a life that was inevitable for her eventually, even if neither of you knew it at the time. When someone we love seems to change drastically, it can feel like they were making active, conscious choices to become another person, but usually its a lot less clean than that. In reality, it's a bunch of tiny experiences that shape and change them, changes neither we or they detect at the time, whether its moving to a new city, loss of a family member, a new hobby, falling in love - anything really - but whatever it was, it kept moving and building, and one day many years later it crystallizes. At that point, it can look so obvious, but that's only because we can see how it all happened in retrospect. I'm not saying it was fate or destiny, but the reality is it takes most of us our entire lives to truly know ourselves and what will make us feel happy and at home in the world. Whether she knew it or not at the time, it sounds like she is happy and this is probably the right life for her.
posted by amycup at 2:19 PM on December 29, 2020 [16 favorites]
I recommend a book called: Coming Apart: Why Relationships End and how to Live Through the Ending of Yours
Book by Daphne Rose Kingma
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-Relationships-Through-Ending/dp/157324547X
It offers writing exercises that work through a relationship with the idea that you have a series of developmental tasks to go through.
I have gone through these exercises multiple times and find them healing and leaving me with resolved feelings. Usually with lots of appreciation and fondness even if I no longer want to continue the relationship. I ended up with a lot more clarity about what we both got out of the relationship, why it changed, and how I want to move on.
Best wishes.
posted by halehale at 4:06 PM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
Book by Daphne Rose Kingma
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-Relationships-Through-Ending/dp/157324547X
It offers writing exercises that work through a relationship with the idea that you have a series of developmental tasks to go through.
I have gone through these exercises multiple times and find them healing and leaving me with resolved feelings. Usually with lots of appreciation and fondness even if I no longer want to continue the relationship. I ended up with a lot more clarity about what we both got out of the relationship, why it changed, and how I want to move on.
Best wishes.
posted by halehale at 4:06 PM on December 29, 2020 [12 favorites]
About the acknowledgement of death anniversaries, the different ways people handle memorials could be cultural.
I’m Jewish, and we light special candles on the anniversaries of the deaths of relatives and others we care about. The names of loved ones are also announced during their death months at Friday night services, so other members of the congregation can participate in the prayer.
I do call up my uncle and chat with him about my dad, his brother. We’re more likely to do this casually throughout the year, rather than making a point of it in December, when Dad died.
Anyway, the acknowledging of death anniversaries has a long tradition behind it. It doesn’t surprise me that you care about your father in law’s death and that you memorialize it. I wouldn’t personally be offended that even a good friend forgot about the dates that matter to me though. It’s too much to expect, unless you share the same religious tradition.
posted by cartoonella at 6:26 PM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
I’m Jewish, and we light special candles on the anniversaries of the deaths of relatives and others we care about. The names of loved ones are also announced during their death months at Friday night services, so other members of the congregation can participate in the prayer.
I do call up my uncle and chat with him about my dad, his brother. We’re more likely to do this casually throughout the year, rather than making a point of it in December, when Dad died.
Anyway, the acknowledging of death anniversaries has a long tradition behind it. It doesn’t surprise me that you care about your father in law’s death and that you memorialize it. I wouldn’t personally be offended that even a good friend forgot about the dates that matter to me though. It’s too much to expect, unless you share the same religious tradition.
posted by cartoonella at 6:26 PM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
She's distancing herself from you because you're not doing a good enough job respecting her new boundaries. I work in a helping field and it's fucking exhausting. I don't want to talk about the plight of refugees when I leave work because it feels like I've devoted my body and mind and soul to others some days and if I'm going to survive I need to set boundaries and focus on myself. She's is allowed to make that distinction. You are taking it as a personal slight and a sign of her newfound, extreme selfishness, when really she is a human learning to set new boundaries so she can survive in her new life. She sounds like she still holds those fundamental values that attracted her to you in the first place, but they are manifesting themselves in ways that are foreign and almost scary to you. She is devoting her life to helping others while also juggling a husband and child; she sounds like a lovely, caring, empathetic person and I would encourage you to try and re-frame your judgment into something more open and loving.
I am glad you're getting therapy. I hope you can use it to re-frame her actions as healthy boundary setting instead of a personal slight. I hope you can look at your expectations for a friendship and learn to recognize areas where those expectations may be flawed. Addressing them is going to be fundamental in cultivating healthy, lasting friendships going forward.
This may be salvageable eventually. But it's going to take some time and work and maturity, which won't happen overnight.
P.S. even if you didn't expect her to climb a ladder at your wedding, but you still expected her to provide help, physical help, at your wedding that she forced herself to attend in spite of a difficult pregnancy. This is so unreasonable it boggles my mind. You seem to have a hard time seeing things from someone else's perspective. That can be addressed, with work, but it will take time to get there.
Good luck.
posted by Amy93 at 9:07 PM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]
I am glad you're getting therapy. I hope you can use it to re-frame her actions as healthy boundary setting instead of a personal slight. I hope you can look at your expectations for a friendship and learn to recognize areas where those expectations may be flawed. Addressing them is going to be fundamental in cultivating healthy, lasting friendships going forward.
This may be salvageable eventually. But it's going to take some time and work and maturity, which won't happen overnight.
P.S. even if you didn't expect her to climb a ladder at your wedding, but you still expected her to provide help, physical help, at your wedding that she forced herself to attend in spite of a difficult pregnancy. This is so unreasonable it boggles my mind. You seem to have a hard time seeing things from someone else's perspective. That can be addressed, with work, but it will take time to get there.
Good luck.
posted by Amy93 at 9:07 PM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]
I'm confused about your wedding details. Was she still a bridesmaid in your wedding? It... would not occur to me that I should offer to help more on the day of, if I wasn't specifically asked. I would figure by the day of, all the big errands are settled. Maybe that makes me uncouth, but, being a bridesmaid was already a big task she was doing for you that day! It was kind of your other friends to offer to help, but if they weren't IN your wedding, they had more time to do so, and it doesn't mean she cared less to measure her against them.
I'm also confused about her birth timeline. Did she have the baby extra early or late? Did you not know she had to be almost due? If you didn't, that suggests to me that both of you had pulled back considerably already on sharing life details, such that her response to your FIL might have seemed entirely appropriate to her, and it might have seemed "too much" to insert more than that.
Finally, if I'm reading dates right, she had her baby in January 2020 and now it's been the year of COVID. You're upset partly because she only wants to talk about her dog and her baby. I don't know your local COVID situation, but in much of the world, people have pretty solely had their pets and households to do anything with-and the world has been terrifying and people have needed light topics now more than ever.
I'm telling you all those because to answer your question, I think the best advice to move on and grieve and feel closure is to accept that you both had misunderstandings and that she too was probably puzzled and hurt along the way. It's okay to feel betrayed and center your feelings for awhile! It's human. But I second MiraK's advice about black and white thinking, and it may help to ask your therapist: "how do I move on from feeling like Kendra did all these things AT me? Why do I feel like that?"
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:18 PM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
I'm also confused about her birth timeline. Did she have the baby extra early or late? Did you not know she had to be almost due? If you didn't, that suggests to me that both of you had pulled back considerably already on sharing life details, such that her response to your FIL might have seemed entirely appropriate to her, and it might have seemed "too much" to insert more than that.
Finally, if I'm reading dates right, she had her baby in January 2020 and now it's been the year of COVID. You're upset partly because she only wants to talk about her dog and her baby. I don't know your local COVID situation, but in much of the world, people have pretty solely had their pets and households to do anything with-and the world has been terrifying and people have needed light topics now more than ever.
I'm telling you all those because to answer your question, I think the best advice to move on and grieve and feel closure is to accept that you both had misunderstandings and that she too was probably puzzled and hurt along the way. It's okay to feel betrayed and center your feelings for awhile! It's human. But I second MiraK's advice about black and white thinking, and it may help to ask your therapist: "how do I move on from feeling like Kendra did all these things AT me? Why do I feel like that?"
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:18 PM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
Hi, OP. I know how it feels when relationships change or end and it doesn't seem like one had a choice in the matter. I do think-- as some posters have suggested already-- that a lot of what happened to you and your friend was situational and to do with getting through your twenties, partnering up and having kids, and priorities diverging. I don't think blaming yourself or the other person is really useful here. You've had choices, and so has she, but you've also just been carried along by life circumstances.
One thing I wanted to add: I think there is a special challenge with relationships that you form in a negative job situation. I was at one workplace that everyone was very vocal about hating. A group of us still lunch together sometimes and one person has remained a close friend. We genuinely have things in common and I would miss them terribly if they all disappeared. But sometimes after our lunches I think, "Wow. I was really rather mean in that conversation." There's a part of me that would probably be healthier if I didn't get back in touch with the feelings from that job, ever. Sometimes it may be just as well to let it all go, whoever initiates it.
posted by BibiRose at 5:25 AM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]
One thing I wanted to add: I think there is a special challenge with relationships that you form in a negative job situation. I was at one workplace that everyone was very vocal about hating. A group of us still lunch together sometimes and one person has remained a close friend. We genuinely have things in common and I would miss them terribly if they all disappeared. But sometimes after our lunches I think, "Wow. I was really rather mean in that conversation." There's a part of me that would probably be healthier if I didn't get back in touch with the feelings from that job, ever. Sometimes it may be just as well to let it all go, whoever initiates it.
posted by BibiRose at 5:25 AM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]
I have never, ever heard anyone mention a death anniversary in a way that suggested I ought to have been aware of it myself. Frankly, I’ve never heard anyone mention a death anniversary at all. The idea that someone ought to, unprompted, remember the anniversary of the death of a friend’s father in law strikes me as utterly bizarre. In fact, if a friend did remember the anniversary of my father-in-law’s death and bring it up to me, I would think, “that’s damned odd.” But that may be a cultural issue on my part.
posted by argybarg at 9:11 AM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by argybarg at 9:11 AM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]
Coming late to the party.
People have said a lot of good things. I wanted to toss in that my best friend of nearly 40 years is a Republican and her husband a card-carrying NRA guy. Please, I do not mean to offend anyone, but we are now so far apart in philosophy that it is hard to carry on a conversation with her -- these weren't things I was paying attention to in my 20s or even my 30s.
Will I dump her? No, because we go way back. Have we had serious conversations? Once or twice, and very carefully.
As others have said: People change.
posted by intrepid_simpleton at 3:12 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
People have said a lot of good things. I wanted to toss in that my best friend of nearly 40 years is a Republican and her husband a card-carrying NRA guy. Please, I do not mean to offend anyone, but we are now so far apart in philosophy that it is hard to carry on a conversation with her -- these weren't things I was paying attention to in my 20s or even my 30s.
Will I dump her? No, because we go way back. Have we had serious conversations? Once or twice, and very carefully.
As others have said: People change.
posted by intrepid_simpleton at 3:12 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
To spare people the work of trying to help: the OP has left.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:35 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:35 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
In case the OP cares, or others are interested, I’ve been thinking about this post quite a bit and it occurred to me that the Drama Triangle is relevant. The Drama Triangle is great at making things “feel” productive when they’re not, and can make people feel bonded when their relationship is more superficial than it appears.
There’s nothing wrong with having a more surface-level relationship based on availability and shared circumstances/opinions, but it’s naturally less durable than one based on investment, acceptance, and boundaries.
It might help someone to move on from a relationship if they don’t feel like they’re personally being rejected, but like the dynamics are being rejected.
posted by stoneandstar at 5:11 PM on December 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
There’s nothing wrong with having a more surface-level relationship based on availability and shared circumstances/opinions, but it’s naturally less durable than one based on investment, acceptance, and boundaries.
It might help someone to move on from a relationship if they don’t feel like they’re personally being rejected, but like the dynamics are being rejected.
posted by stoneandstar at 5:11 PM on December 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
The OP may come back when she has the mental energy to deal with these responses. So, just in case... I totally get this. Freshman year of high school I had the most intense, wonderful friendship of my life. We read all the same books, loved the same music, created imaginary worlds together and lived in a kind of fugue state of connection and in jokes and shared discovery. We were also miserable at our school and about the state of the world and bonded about our shared depression. Sophomore year, she basically dropped me and started hanging out with other girls in our friends group who were into drugs and popular music and boys. I couldn’t understand it and it hurt so much and I just accepted the crumbs she was willing to offer me and we established a less intense but still meaningful friendship, which ended up far outlasting those other relationships and is still going strong nearly thirty years later. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years, but we’ve always reconnected in the end.
Years later I asked her and she told me that she couldn’t handle the severity of my depression, and she, not being more skillful, just grabbed onto people that helped her feel better even if they weren’t as deeply connected as we were, because she felt like I was going to pull her under. And I believe her. It sucked, but she was protecting her mental health the only way she knew how.
At some point I made similar decisions about how much emotional energy I could pour into the problems of the world, when I was struggling with crushing depression. I’ve had to disengage some for my own well being. You can call that selfish or you can call it self preservation. It sounds like your friend made some similar calls after she left your shared job, and it set her on a path that diverged from yours. You guys have grown apart, and that’s not either of your faults.
I would really urge you, though, to let go of a lot of this resentment you feel, and consider not cutting her out of your life. I’m so glad you’re going to dig into it with a therapist. You say she felt like a sister, but the thing about sisters is that they’re always your sister no matter how much they change, and hopefully your relationship is flexible enough to adjust. With friends, with siblings, there can be long periods where you don’t get along that great or you’ve grown apart. But then if the door is open maybe you find you’re back in a similar place and it’s beautiful to reconnect. It’s meaningful to have people who’ve known you a long time, who know the old you’s, and maybe they’re not your best friend anymore, but that shared history isn’t nothing.
Obviously, sometimes friendships run their course, and maybe that’s what’s happened here, but maybe before you throw it away completely, see if you can grieve what it was and be open to it now being acquaintances. Who knows where you’ll both be in five years or ten? Maybe you’ll be back on the same page. It’s a lot easier to reconnect if you haven’t burned the bridge. But that doesn’t mean you can’t grieve the loss, and grieve it hard. Take care.
posted by sumiami at 9:14 PM on December 31, 2020 [9 favorites]
Years later I asked her and she told me that she couldn’t handle the severity of my depression, and she, not being more skillful, just grabbed onto people that helped her feel better even if they weren’t as deeply connected as we were, because she felt like I was going to pull her under. And I believe her. It sucked, but she was protecting her mental health the only way she knew how.
At some point I made similar decisions about how much emotional energy I could pour into the problems of the world, when I was struggling with crushing depression. I’ve had to disengage some for my own well being. You can call that selfish or you can call it self preservation. It sounds like your friend made some similar calls after she left your shared job, and it set her on a path that diverged from yours. You guys have grown apart, and that’s not either of your faults.
I would really urge you, though, to let go of a lot of this resentment you feel, and consider not cutting her out of your life. I’m so glad you’re going to dig into it with a therapist. You say she felt like a sister, but the thing about sisters is that they’re always your sister no matter how much they change, and hopefully your relationship is flexible enough to adjust. With friends, with siblings, there can be long periods where you don’t get along that great or you’ve grown apart. But then if the door is open maybe you find you’re back in a similar place and it’s beautiful to reconnect. It’s meaningful to have people who’ve known you a long time, who know the old you’s, and maybe they’re not your best friend anymore, but that shared history isn’t nothing.
Obviously, sometimes friendships run their course, and maybe that’s what’s happened here, but maybe before you throw it away completely, see if you can grieve what it was and be open to it now being acquaintances. Who knows where you’ll both be in five years or ten? Maybe you’ll be back on the same page. It’s a lot easier to reconnect if you haven’t burned the bridge. But that doesn’t mean you can’t grieve the loss, and grieve it hard. Take care.
posted by sumiami at 9:14 PM on December 31, 2020 [9 favorites]
Whoaaaaa, very late to this. I blame 2020! Hah.
I wonder how many of the more defensive responses on here are from parents? While I agree OP could have better supported her friend here, the assumption that everyone will become a parent and that that is the most important thing you can do with your life is very strong in our society, especially for women. If you make the choice to not do that, it can be very disorienting. What next? What now? These are valid questions.
People without kids don’t stop having problems in their lives or needs for connection because someone else has a baby. It’s easy to say “go to people who are not parents to have your needs met”, but at a certain point for some people, there’s no one else left. As some hit their 30s and 40s, it is not at all uncommon to find yourself as the only childless person in your social group. There’s an epidemic of loneliness in our society. What happens to these people who don’t have the “normal” supports and family structures in place? They get left behind.
While I agree that it’s okay for friendships to be a bit uneven for a while due to hard circumstances on either party’s behalf, the following is also something familiar to people who don’t have kids.
-Friend gets pregnant. You are happy for them because this is what they want and they are excited.
-You organise/attend baby shower - with a gift.
-You squeal over ultrasound photos and tell them how great of parents they’ll be and how you’re excited to be aunt/uncle [insert your name].
-The child is born. You give them lots of space to adjust to their new lives. You bring food. You run errands. You help. Because you admit that you can’t possibly understand what they’re going through and you want to make it easier for them.
-You accept that meeting up with them will be on their terms for the foreseeable future and drive to their house every time you want to see them. You play with their kids. You cook. You help.
-The friendship starts to fade because of different life priorities as the parent friend wants to connect primarily with other parents.
-Several years pass. The friend without kids attends birthday parties and other significant events in the child’s life.
-Despite their best efforts, the parent friend has moved on in life and is no longer able to support the other in ways that are meaningful to them.
-The friendship becomes acquaintances.
Obviously this is not every person who is a parent. I’m friends with many parents I love dearly and I LOVE their children. But the above has also happened to me. Several times. And I wanted to mention it because no one else had yet offered this perspective.
posted by oywiththepoodles at 8:32 AM on January 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
I wonder how many of the more defensive responses on here are from parents? While I agree OP could have better supported her friend here, the assumption that everyone will become a parent and that that is the most important thing you can do with your life is very strong in our society, especially for women. If you make the choice to not do that, it can be very disorienting. What next? What now? These are valid questions.
People without kids don’t stop having problems in their lives or needs for connection because someone else has a baby. It’s easy to say “go to people who are not parents to have your needs met”, but at a certain point for some people, there’s no one else left. As some hit their 30s and 40s, it is not at all uncommon to find yourself as the only childless person in your social group. There’s an epidemic of loneliness in our society. What happens to these people who don’t have the “normal” supports and family structures in place? They get left behind.
While I agree that it’s okay for friendships to be a bit uneven for a while due to hard circumstances on either party’s behalf, the following is also something familiar to people who don’t have kids.
-Friend gets pregnant. You are happy for them because this is what they want and they are excited.
-You organise/attend baby shower - with a gift.
-You squeal over ultrasound photos and tell them how great of parents they’ll be and how you’re excited to be aunt/uncle [insert your name].
-The child is born. You give them lots of space to adjust to their new lives. You bring food. You run errands. You help. Because you admit that you can’t possibly understand what they’re going through and you want to make it easier for them.
-You accept that meeting up with them will be on their terms for the foreseeable future and drive to their house every time you want to see them. You play with their kids. You cook. You help.
-The friendship starts to fade because of different life priorities as the parent friend wants to connect primarily with other parents.
-Several years pass. The friend without kids attends birthday parties and other significant events in the child’s life.
-Despite their best efforts, the parent friend has moved on in life and is no longer able to support the other in ways that are meaningful to them.
-The friendship becomes acquaintances.
Obviously this is not every person who is a parent. I’m friends with many parents I love dearly and I LOVE their children. But the above has also happened to me. Several times. And I wanted to mention it because no one else had yet offered this perspective.
posted by oywiththepoodles at 8:32 AM on January 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
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When I attempted to broach the subject directly with an ex-close friend of mine ("I've noticed we've grown apart..."), it only made things worse. I've since learned to let go.
posted by lecorbeau at 5:58 AM on December 29, 2020 [23 favorites]