long story - I have offended a friend. Is it me or not?

[susia]

Please could you advise me. I have offended an old friend but don't know if she should be so offended or what to do.

My friend is my DD (aged 8)godmother. I only got her christened last year though. My friend has a DS of a similar age and lives about 2 hours from me. We usually go and stay with each other a few times a year or least she stays with me, I've only been invited to hers a couple of times in recent years.

Anyway, I am a single parent and work part time and find life quite tiring at the moment. I am possibly about to be made redundant, my DD is changing schools and her Dad is being very difficult and hasnt seen her for over a year.

When I see my friend we usually have a good weekend but the children tend to argue and the problem I have is that my friend has endless energy and wants to do things from morning to night over the weekend and I end up feeling shattered.

She rang at the beginning of the summer asking if she could come to stay for a weekend and said she wanted to go somewhere that is about an hours drive away, quite expensive (for me at least) and somewhere I'd recently been to. I wrote (I thought) I really polite email saying for those reasons, I'd love to see her but would rather do something more local and cheaper. I had no reply so I rang her and tried to explain but she didn't seem to understand so I ended up saying (regretably) that I ended up feeling exhausted after we spent the weekend together. The conversation ended ok but I did feel I had been way too blunt.

Since then I have called and emailed and she hasn't replied. I even said it was my DD's birthday coming up and that she was changing schools etc and she didn't send a card even though she is her godmother.

I want to apologise but the problem is that what I said was true - I also felt at the time quite irritated to be fair that she invited herself for a weekend with already a plan of what she wanted to do while here and wouldn't accept my reasons for not doing them or let me entertain her. Most importantly though I feel really upset for my DD and upset that she has got so offended that she hasn't acknowledged my DD's birthday.

My friend does get upset easily and I do feel that I can't ever say no to her without her being offended. On the other hand I am fairly tactless.

Any advice?

yes, I did post on here a couple of months ago but things are unchanged and it still really bothers me.

TBH I think that if she was a friend worth having she wouldn't have suggested it. She must know that money is tight - so she is just being selfish from the start. It's totally out of order expecting people to spend more money than they have IMO.

I think she is not being a good friend.

A friend of mine once had to tell me that I was exhausting and bankrupting her. She was exactly right to point out that my circumstances had changed (pretty decent graduate scheme job) and hers hadn't (still a student). I was very embarrassed that I hadn't realised the impact I was having on her and changed my behaviour pretty swiftly.

Honestly, I wouldn't say anything accusatory about the DD/Godmother relationship. Whilst she is in the wrong regarding her behaviour to your DD because of her issues with you, she needs to work that out herself or anything you say will only force her to dig her heals into her current role of 'hard done by' one. Perhaps you could just point out that DD misses/would like to see you and leave her to join the dots together.

Just because she's a bit self-absorbeddelicate doesn't mean she can't be a decent friend. It's very hard to initially see things from other peoples point of view. The test really is that once someones pointed out their circumstances, whether or not the 'friend' changes their behaviour. I wouldn't leave it till Christmas, if this has been bugging you for a while, then send an email soon and if she isn't going to meet you half way then I would seriously consider whether you want to carry on with the friendship. Sad, but possible less bruising than months of you wondering if she's ever going to forgive you for the dreadful crime of being candid with a friend only to lose the friendship anyway. Hope it works out for you.