I have been friends with this lady, we’ll call her Alexis, since we were 16. We were friends at college along with 2 other girls who i’ll call Paige and Chloe. For over 15 years we’ve maintained our relationships, through degrees, moves, marriages and babies.
I always liked Alexis - she was grounded, intelligent, fun and honest. She is also stunningly beautiful.
Alexis moved away from where we all live about 10 years ago, but we did our best to stay in touch, including a good few long drives on my part. However, in more recent years, I have been increasingly turned off by her acting like a diva. It started when she got engaged, so I just chalked it up to the usual temporary ‘bridezilla’ behaviour and turned a blind eye - plus, she has a new circle of friends who are also very fashionable and glamour-focused (but kinda shallow) so I thought perhaps she was a little influenced by that. It wasn’t something that hugely bothered me at first.
Until she invited us all to a hen do together. It was a ridiculously extravagant affair in an expensive part of Europe, and unfortunately, Paige and Chloe had recently had their first children and didn’t feel able to come from a childcare or cost perspective. I really couldn’t afford it, but Alexis was so furious that the other two had turned her down (it’s MY HEN, ffs!) that I didn’t really dare refuse.
Cut a long story short, I paid over £500 to be treated like sh*t on a shoe by her friends for a weekend (ignored me when i spoke to them, left me out of activities, they even cropped me out of photos - I had piled on weight due to a medical issue and I guess I wasn’t aesthetic enough). She witnessed this behaviour, but said nothing to her friends. Even when they eventually made me cry. But i never brought it up, because as the head bridesmaid kept saying, ‘it was her hen and I mustn’t do anything to ruin it.’
Fast forward 2 years on and communication has been a little sporadic since the wedding - she’s not on Facebook, I moved even further away, I was having a really difficult time in my personal, professional and general life and then the pandemic hit - you know, life happened. During this time, Chloe got pregnant with DC2, and announced it on Facebook. Alexis messaged me and was fuming about this - why hadn’t Chloe told her directly? Why should she have to find out via social media? She said she felt that Chloe had dropped her because she wasn’t a mother, and only wanted mummy friends, etc. I sympathised, but said I was trying not to take it personally, as our lives were going in different directions, and we maybe didn’t have as much in common as we did, but it is what it is and perhaps Chloe just had other priorities atm.
Fast forward a year. I met up with Paige recently (for the first time in 2 years also) and she said ‘ah, it’s so nice Alexis has had her baby’. Well. I was completely blindsided. I had no idea she was even pregnant.
I contacted her about it with something really quite generic, not at all having a go - just asking if congratulations were due? Well, boy do I regret it. She was angry - angry that I asked, angry that someone told me - the whole lot. She told me her decision to keep her pregnancy and birth private was her own and partly due to anxiety that something would go wrong with the pregnancy -ok, an unusual response past the first trimester maybe, but fair enough, I can understand anxiety making you do odd things.
I responded with a message along the lines of I was surprised, especially because I remembered how hurt she was by the way Chloe handled things, but she obviously she had her reasons, and i was genuinely happy for her.
She left me on read for 2 days before responding with a massive essay about how I don’t get to have an opinion on anything, my feelings don’t matter, how i’m a shit friend because I didn’t wish her happy birthday last year, I don’t make any effort in the friendship (!), she’s the one who’s had the baby and ‘i’m making it all about me’. I was absolutely shocked to the point of tears. I only wanted to share in the happy news and felt a little hurt and confused she’d told Chloe and Paige but not me and was hoping this wasn’t a sign she was mad at me, I wasn’t trying to make her feel bad at all.
I sent her a bunch of messages explaining and apologising profusely for not making as much time for her as I should - like I say, i’ve been dealing with some pretty dark stuff in my life and tbh, I haven’t had much time or opportunity to socialise with ANYONE. She has ignored them. Now I’m wondering if her accusations are even fair or whether she’s just trying to make me the bad guy for calling her out a little - especially because she’s certainly voiced very strong opinions on each of our friends’ pregnancies and choices!
AIBU for thinking it’s quite normal for friends to tell each other big news - and very human to feel a little hurt/disappointed if they don’t, even if it’s for a good reason? AIBU to think she’s being a bit hypocritical and unfair? I feel like at least I was open directly to her about it, rather than just slagging her off behind her back like she did to Chloe. BUT: I don’t have children and have fertility issues that probably mean i never will, so perhaps I just do not and could not understand.
The thing that hurts the most is she said she believed my congratulations to be fake. All I want is for her to be happy, even if she decides - as it now seems she has - that she no longer wants anything to do with me.
What should I do? Should I even do anything? I feel heartbroken to lose such a long friendship this way.