I suppose I am feeling a little hurt by this situation with a friend and trying to understand why she is the way she is…
To keep it as short as possible, she and I met about 5 years ago. Even though we were adults (late 20’s) when we met and hadn’t known each other long, I would say we quickly became close (or so I felt) because we had both moved to the same city for work and didn’t have other friends/family locally.
We met at a sports club and saw each other quite a lot because we were both really ‘into it’ and it’s a very social club that does a lot of post practice drinks, club dinners etc. We would always share lifts/sit together etc and people made jokes about how we were ‘joined at the hip’. We both joined because we like the sport but also to make friends in a new place.
We did also sometimes hang out outside the club, go to each others’ flats for a takeaway etc.
She would often joke about how she was very ‘flaky’ and say that her friends would moan about it. I did experience her not answering messages quite often and when I would ask about it she would say ‘oh no! I’m so awful with messages. I know! I’m so sorry’ etc. I guess it never had much impact though because we were guaranteed to see each other fairly regularly anyway. She’s also prone to a last minute cancellation and late to everything etc. She openly acknowledges this and calls herself ‘a flake’.
About two years ago I had an injury and had to pull out of the sport. I was gutted, obviously but I didn’t think it wouldn’t affect our friendship so badly. Today I realised I haven’t seen her in 18 months and barely got a message in that time.
In a nutshell she usually doesn’t respond at all, if she does it’s to say ‘yes! I would love to meet up! It’s been way too long!’ Etc but then she doesn’t answer my attempts to find a date. Or it’s to say ‘I’m so sorry!! I know I’m rubbish! Arrgghh!’
I admit it has hurt my feelings a bit. But then am I being silly seeing as I knew she was like this?! She has, in other ways, been a really good friend to me.
I’m a grown woman with plenty of other people in my life and I realise it’s my free choice whether to try to keep this friendship up but I just don’t get this ‘flakiness’ thing. Did I think we were closer than we actually were? Does she actually want to stay friends but something stops her from getting her act together? Why are people like this?!!!