Friendship drifted - was it my fault?

[Cwestional]

I met a friend at uni 20 years ago and we became close. After uni we stayed in touch, had graduation meal together and she was at my wedding etc

She'd mentioned a few health issues back then but was quite vague about it and it didn't seem like a topic she liked to discuss so I didn't pry. She also attended class/ nights out like everyone else so had no indication of anything serious.

Fast forward a few years and her health worsened. Turns out she'd had a long term chronic condition all along that was becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

We lived in separate countries at this point but still kept in touch. Although I often felt like I was saying the wrong thing as she'd go on about how healthy people couldn't understand and mention how other friends had fallen away due to this. I was determined not to be one of those friends and I tried to make an effort - flew out to see her etc

However My own life then became more complex, a nasty divorce and another friend who lived nearby got diagnosed with cancer and I had to support her through that as she had no family nearby. Contact with other friend lessened a bit, plus she wasn't nearby.

Over the next two years I focused a lot on friend with cancer and trying to get my life back on track after divorce. I kept in touch more sporadically with my other friend and admit I probably could have done more - her health was worsening culminating in hospitalisation but around that same time my friend with cancer sadly died.

I'll just go ahead and admit that having watched one friend deteriorate and die over two years, I just could face getting more involved again with my other friend who was in hospital with her chronic condition, now so bad she was also at risk of death (although I only found out how serious it was much later on). I just couldn't deal with it and was not in a good place mentally that year. I ended up in therapy after not grieving my cancer friend properly and starting to have massive panic attacks.

She luckily got better after many months and we reconnected over text a bit after she was out of hospital and exchanged messages every few months. We couldn't meet at this point as it wasn't possible due to her condition but the intention was to see eachother again eventually. We still sent nice texts at this point, birthday messages, wishing eachother well for new endeavours.

However, her messages then stopped after I announced my pregnancy. I got a congrats but any further attempts from me to chat were met with very short and limiting replies. She clearly didn't want to know about my life anymore and I wanted to be respectful as I know this can happen sometimes with pregnancy news (she can't have children).

She's now a campaigner/ influencer for her particular health condition (which I'm not naming as outing) and sometimes does podcasts/ guest blogs to discuss it.

Last week she shared a new interview with a very well known website where she talked about her condition, life and referenced friends that had drifted away - obviously no names mentioned but with the timeline and the context I'm pretty sure one of them was me (she referenced several)

It's knocked me for six and sent me into a terrible spiral of feeling like an awful friend who wasn't there for her. I messaged her after I read it to apologise profusely, explain life was difficult for me at time and her reply wasn't exactly horrible but made it clear that we're done but 'she won't hold things against me'.

I want stop feeling bad about it all as I never set out to deliberately hurt anyone but her words have cut deep and shook me a lot. I wish I wasn't this affected by others words and opinion of me.

It sounds like you did the best that you could, but it doesn’t surprise me that she has ‘told her story’ in a way that paints you in a bad light.

This has happened since time immemorial, in books, poems and, most recently, members of the royal family ‘telling their truth’ on any broadcast medium possible!

Perhaps you should send a follow up message to say that actually, on reflection, you supported her as much as you could and feel that she could have supported you more at times.

Don't worry about this, maybe it helped you get the closure you needed as well.

Now you can ignore her with a clean heart.

Perhaps you should send a follow up message to say that actually, on reflection, you supported her as much as you could and feel that shecould have supportedyoumore at times.

Oh wow I would love it if OP did this! But ultimately it would give her more cannon fodder for her social media.

I'm tempted to follow up with another message tbh but don't want to make things worse.

One of the other times I went quite for a while was during multiple miscarriages- she never knew about it as if I'd tried to talk about my own issues in the past, it was compared to her own struggle and obviously her struggles always trumped and were much worse.

I told barely anyone about miscarriages in the end, not wanting to burden anyone or weigh them down with it. Yet she'll tell anyone who'll listen about her health and how no one can know what it's like

She sounds really self centred and narrow minded. Sometimes i think when people are consumed by something in their own life they lose sight of the fact others can have struggles too. I’m sure she’s had it tough & being consumed is understandable but she’s coming all high & mighty and feeling sorry for herself. It’s probably reinforced this the fact she’s been around people interviewing her & doing podcasts on her. You stayed in touch, your friend died you got divorced- that’s rough!!! yet she’s made it all about her. She can’t see past herself. You got pregnant and she cut YOU off!!! Some friend. She should be apologising to you imo. I wish she hadn’t got that letter off you as it reconfirms to her that you should be sorry when you shouldn’t. She also spent her life keeping you in the dark about her illness so what does she expect.
Please no more beating yourself up about this. After seeing her true colours I’d be purposefully cutting her out now tbh. Time to move on.

I live with a chronic illness and what I need from a friendship has changed. I wouldn't call it an expectation as such, because I honestly don't expect anyone to change themselves because of my situation, but when you've got health stuff going on and it's quite fast paced/ever changing, those long old friendships where it doesn't matter if you don't speak for months on end become less easy. You kind of need people who are naturally in the loop/part of your day to day.

I feel that my longer term friends tend to focus on my illness more than the people I see and speak to regularly and it's really off putting. When I'm with friends I just want to have fun and not have to give my medical history at the start or worse, the end of the night, to catch them up.

It's tricky for everyone involved but it does change things even if you don't want it to. It's really annoying.

Obviously I empathise with your friend, but you both have important needs and ever evolving elements to your life and seems you've evolved away from one another.

You can't be everything to everyone, I wouldn't feel too guilty about it.

Thanks for your perspective. It's interesting and understandable that you prefer not to give your medical history with friends or focus on it too much. This makes a lot of sense to me and I remember when texting her I'd try and talk about other things to not dwell or overly focus on health matters, be a bit of a distraction.

But actually I think she wanted to talk about it all and didn't like it much when I went off that topic. If I casually mentioned something to make conversation she'd have to bring it back to the fact that 'Well I can't do that, as I'm bedridden' and then I'd feel bad for trying to distraction her. But then when you only talk of health matters, it can be hard to know what to say and you're scared to say wrong thing. Basically I couldn't win

Mmmm she's definitely one of these who has made the illness her identity from what you've said. Can't think of anything worse myself, but these people do serve a purpose.

It's a fickle situation for sure and there are so many strands to it - every response on here raises different points that rings true, so there really is no point in beating yourself up. As you say, a lose/lose situation. I'd just leave her to it. Wish each other well and be happy 🙂

Your friend sounds a little bit narcissistic, I think.
there are always two sides to every story - you showed up for her as much as you could and with the knowledge of her condition that you had.
I agree with the PP about your friend creating a narrative - which she is entitled to do - but do no feel bad about anything.
Has she asked of you - I’m sure you would have been there for her.
don’t be hard on yourself - you sound a considerate friend.

Yes maybe there's some narcissism at play. I think social media brings out the worst in people tbh. It's gone to her head

Being a friend is different to being a mother. As a friend you can’t make the same sacrifices and constantly shine a spotlight of attention onto whoever demands it. You can’t be there for every moment you are needed and witness every life event. Your friends expectations were unrealistic and unfair. You have a kid and a life of your own, your purpose is not to be someone else’s 24 hour cheerleader.

People who make their illness/condition their identity are tiresome. Influencers who drone on and on about how ill they are, are even worse. As someone with many health issues, the last thing I want to do is talk about them or listen to other people harp on about theirs. I'm surprised anyone watches it.

She didn't deserve your apology.

I don't think you need to contact her about this further unless she brings it up to you. You have reason to feel angry about her talking about it publicly without speaking to you about it first, but her audience is one that will confirm how she feels not about how you feel.

Having an illness is isolating for so many factors, but it can also give you a certain type of narcissism perhaps as a protective response? As she moves through her life and things get a bit easier to manage, she might feel different in the future and regret her harsh assessment of you.

Friendship is a two- way relationship, and they also ebb and flow. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. It’s a fact of life that we all have our own lives, and consequently priorities change. You can’t be there for everyone all the time, and she could have made the effort to contact you more. You could argue that she drifted from you, not the other way round, especially as she ceased contact with you after you were pregnant (which I think is quite telling).

She seeks a lot of validation from her online audience and seems to use them as main source of support now. I think it's a slippery slope to rely so much on online stuff as it's not really real but nevermind.

I went back to delete my apology message to her. She's already read it and replied so what's done is done but it was so grovelling and I hadn't thought it through so I didn't want it to linger there

Having thought about it more these past few days, I realised she did drift from me.

Whether ir was my pregnancy or fact her online presence had grown so much so she had thousands of followers I'm not sure but she's not really the same now she's an influencer. Just shows how social media changes people

Did she respond to the message? The ball is in her court now.

She replied to my apology to say she doesn't hold it against me and hope I was well etc but that was it. My message was quite open and vulnerable and long while hers was two lines so think we're done with the friendship now tbh. She's never once asked about my life or my DC in past year - it's only been me trying to make conversation about something she posts online to which I got two word replies as if I was any other of her thousands of followers

Well you can walk away with your conscience and know that you did the right thing, were open and honest in your communication and have nothing to feel bad about. Give yourself some kindness now in whatever way feels right for you.

People grow, change, drift apart, that is normal, particularly if you aren't close geographically and are not physically in each others lives.

And some people with chronic health problems particularly those that severely limit their lives, will take that on as a part of who they are, it isn't really avoidable. Of course, some of us aren't utter self obsessed arseholes about it... but there does come a point where you can't totally seperate out 'you' from 'illness'...

Some people will make it their entire identity and feed on the drama, particularly on the worry and concern it causes others, and they'll have no time for anyone elses troubles... but realistically, that type of person was always going to be that type of person, chronic illness/disability or no.

You're doing the right thing to move on, she hasn't been a spectacularly good friend and it seems life has happened and got in the way of what friendship there was.

My message was quite open and vulnerable and long while hers was two lines

Fwiw it doesn't sound to me as if she was curt and friendship-ending. Perhaps she was embarrassed to have been caught exaggerating the narrative for the benefit of her story. Perhaps that's all her illness afforded her in terms of energy. Or perhaps she's a right selfish bitch. Or maybe it's a complicated combination of everything, because life usually is.

I do think it sounds as if the friendship has been significantly one sided for years. Obviously it was her perogative to not tell you that she was in hospital sooner than she did, but it was a choice that she made, and it is unfair if she expected you to intuit that she was dreadfully ill and wanted you to step into the communication gap when she knew you had your own life's shit going on.

Responding badly to you talking about your own life's ups and downs was also a choice she made. It sounds as if she trained you quite effectively, whether she was consciously aware of what she was doing or not. She wasn't there for you and what you were going through, and at least some of that time she wasn't too ill to.

I don't think this is on you.

This really. There are two sides to this story and things might look very different from her perspective. By your own admission you weren’t able to be there for her when she needed it the most- when she was so sick and almost dying in hospital. It’s times like that when people do develop strong opinions about who their friends really are.

Equally, you have your perspective of how and why things ended up that way, and that is totally valid too. We can only manage what we can manage, and you had a lot going on that you needed to put first at that time. You need to be kind to yourself, and realise that blame has no place in this story.

i don’t think people saying your friend is so unreasonable/ selfish etc are right either though. Don’t leave this friendship by demonising her. She’s entitled to tell her story and speak her reality of living with her condition- it’s not like she’s sending you texts and berating/ throwing blame at you. Try not to take it personally. She’s sharing her truth, and you need to move on living yours. I totally get why it hurts though xxx

You had a normal response to hearing that your behaviour had caused someone pain, nothing wrong with that.

Her choice of support is based on what she needs. Right now it sounds like she needs to be a bit narcissitic and angry at the world, to help her deal with how her life has turned out tobe not what she wanted it to be. This happens to alot of people, I went through something similar, and hated everyone for letting me down.

There is a toxic culture about being "brave" and sharing your "trauma". This is meant to empower you. In reality you need a skilled professional who can challange and confront your negative thought patterns so you can move on. Sadly this help is not available unless its a crisis- so people turn to quasi-scientific methods.

The problem with SM and podcasts is that those thoughts that should be kept private or with a therapist. That way you can be a bit of dick safe in the knowledge that it won't bite you in the future or cause anyone any extra pain.

What I am saying, is that she might grow a little and calm down enough to recognise that her behaviour has now hurt you.