I’ll try and keep this short bit sadly a long winded situation! Posting here for traffic but you can tell me if IABU!!
- Had 1st baby DD 11 weeks ago, 6 day Induction, emergency c section, horrible long recovery including infection.
- 3 weeks before DD is born good friend (10 year + friendship) who lives overseas (Europe) informs me she will be visiting for the day at the end of jan (making DD about two weeks old and me a shell of a person!) - she lives abroad so I said we would make it work. (I had told her I’d love her to meet dd when she was born but I was expecting some kind of discussion before anything was booked!)
- This wasn’t a special trip to see me though, it was connecting flight at an airport near me on her way home from another country.
- Two days after I got home I said to her that I could only handle very short visits at that point (not relating it to her visit, just that’s where I was at that point, if I had seen her I would have dug deep! But also expect her to have some understanding of the reality of our situation!)
- a few days later she messages asking if it’s ‘frankly, worth her time’ (actual wording) to come and see us because I may not be very active/up for visitors following my comment - tells me she’s looking out for me by asking - but I honestly just found the whole exchange quite hurtful and patronising as though in my delicate state we were not going to be good enough to entertain her and she would rather spend her day in England doing something else if we couldn’t keep her adequately occupied. I reassured her multiple times that I would happily have her over for most of the day but what that day looked like would probably be very different than what she was expecting but she kept pushing it (felt like she was pushing me to tell her not to come) so in the end I told her not to come as I didn’t need the pressure and she had totally soured things so I wouldn’t enjoy the time at all. And I think If I get to be selfish ever… it’s when I’ve just been sliced open and looking after a newborn…
- she ended up spending the day with a mutual friend instead. Mutual friend has seen Messages and told her she went about the whole thing wrong no matter how noble her intentions.
- since then I’ve messaged her a couple of times (once to say thanks for a card and small present for DD she sent whilst in England, once on her birthday) - no reply from either. Thought they might open up the lines of communication and offer her an opportunity to say sorry and move on. I don’t want to hold a grudge but I don’t want her to think it was all okay and to brush it under the carpet.
I am of the feeling that if she offered a simple apology I would gladly move on. She doesn’t have kids and she doesn’t get it. We are in very different seasons of life. But Life is too short to loose friends (she has been my rock at other points in the past) but at the end of the day she was massively insensitive at the most vulnerable time of my entire life so I feel like I’m owed an apology at least. Or was I wrong to tell her not to come and I owe her an apology and should be the one to make amends?
All I know is that I miss her and she’s missing out on lots of things in my DDs life so far (even if via WhatsApp!) and I think it’s a bit shame if it’s just because we/she is being stubborn.
YABU - apologise to her and hope she still wants to be your friend
YANBU - she should apologise to you unprompted