Do friends have “sell by” dates?

This post is dedicated to my friend and general life coach 🙂

So after three weeks off of the plan due to the torn muscle and the tonsilitis I am now a week back in, sadly the drama in my life didn’t stop there.

I am at a stage in my life where I am happy and settled, I have some amazing people around me, I really am very lucky. Sometimes though, this reveals some of the people who have been not so amazing and unfortunately, this happened to be someone I had considered one of my best friends a couple of years back.

I have this friend, we used to be really close, we went through a lot together, however the last few years I have become more and more frustrated as our friendship seems to have become very one-sided.

Around the time I moved out of the area, she had her first child, all was good I went to visit her regularly and I would take time off of work to drive over to see her and the baby, who I later became godparent to. Understandably, she couldn’t come out as much, but I still made sure I stayed in touch and visited all the time. She didn’t drive at the time so I would go and collect her and take her back to my home if she wanted to come to me, which wasn’t very often. Then it kind of started to fall apart.

I would send her a message or call her and wouldn’t get a response, I understand she has other priorities, not a problem, but when I would see her she would tell me how she had been messaging a guy all night. I was annoyed, she has all this time to message this guy back, but she didn’t have time to message me back? Slightly rude but ok, I decided to take a step back, I didn’t want to fall out with anyone, but I wasnt going to put any more effort in than necessary, I was quite upset, I thought our friendship was better than that.

I would get the occasional phone call or message when there was an update on this guy, I didn’t really want to hear it, I tried to talk about her husband and children but she just wanted to talk about him, she would suggest meeting up but I tried to avoid it on a one to one basis as I didn’t want to hear about her affairs, so I kind of just got on with my life, avoiding the situation when I could and occasionally meeting up.

Then last year we seemed to get a bit closer again, she got better at replying to messages and we kept in touch more regularly and met up a few times, she seemed to have realised that I didn’t want to hear about her affairs, which were still ongoing and then, I got engaged. I sent a message out to all of my close friends, her included and everybody responded, apart from her, she did however respond on social media. Odd.

I messaged her a few days later to ask when she was free and I’ll give her a call as I knew she was going away, I never heard a thing. This was so bizarre. Every time I saw her before she was always asking “Are you engaged yet?” So when it finally happened, it seemed like she didn’t want to know, I was confused, I was expecting her to be straight on the phone wanting to know all about it, not because that’s what I think people should be doing but because she had always made such a big deal about it before, so to hear nothing was strange. When I did hear it was on a group message of a few of us and not much to it just a general message to everyone.

I heard from her on and off, making half-hearted attempts to meet up, although I had to go to her, which unfortunately was a bit difficult as I was so busy at the weekends and it was too far to drive in the evening, I suggested meeting halfway in the week but she said she was too busy, then she didn’t come to the engagement party, so I just left it.

I thought maybe she had stuff going on, but her social media has never been so active, it’s all over instagram her out partying, she didn’t even invite me to her birthday night which has never happened before.

 

I decided I needed to have a good think about this friendship, unfortunately, she had obviously sensed this and I was now getting weekly messages asking when we were meeting up and how was I? I needed some space to think about what I was going to do but I wasnt getting any. I just ignored the messages, hoping that she would realise. This was probably a cowardly thing to do but I didn’t want to be fake and I didnt want to end the friendship until I had proper time to mull it over, this friendship had meant a lot to me once and I needed to figure this out in my head.

She has now realised that I am upset with her and has asked why. I laid out all the facts, I wasn’t nasty I just said it how it was. It wasn’t easy and its something I have put off doing for a while but it was stressing me out and I was losing sleep over it.

I feel better for it now and just hope that I am given the space I have asked for.

 2017-04-25 14:27:43

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