Hi. I've namechanged as I would prefer not to be identified. I am a MN regular though.
I have been friends with a woman for several years now. I thought we were good close friends. She's been supportive to me several times about various things. However she seems to go in phases with me. Sometimes she is very friendly and we're close and at other times she's off with me. She's mainly off when there is someone else around to talk to whom I assume she perceives to be better company than me. Our DCs are in the same school year at the same school.
Before the school holidays I thought that she was being a bit off and ignoring me when others were there at school collection time, but I actually dismissed it as me being a tad sensitive. She would do things like walk up to someone that I was with and talk to them but not acknowledge me. This happened 2 or 3 times in the last couple of weeks of term and even though I'd say a cheerful hello to her she would just greet me offhandedly and then carry on talking to the other person. If I'm waiting at pickup for my DS she will walk into the playground and go and stand with others and will only stand with me if there is no one better to stand with. If I go over to her she will be very distracted when talking to me and will keep putting her back to me and chatting to others. I'm not a shy person and can easily hold my own in a conversation but I always get the feeling she doesn't want to talk to me when there are others there. I have also been to a soft play centre with her before with our younger DCs and she invited a friend without telling me and they were engaged in chat about things I knew nothing about and left me out a lot despite me trying to join in.
Today at school pickup she was standing with 2 other mums and I went over to speak to her as we'd exchanged several texts during the day. She had a very uncomfortable look on her face, spoke to me very little,although the other mums were fine with me and I could see she was making a concerted effort to exclude me from the conversation. She kept putting her back to me again to turn to these other mums and in the end I actually walked off without saying goodbye as my DS came out of school. She made no effort to say goodbye to me.
What gets me is we normally meet up once a week with our younger DCs and she instigates this and is lovely with me then and we get on well, but it seems that she only wants to know me when there are others there. Reading all this back to myself, I know I need to stop bothering with her, be busy when she wants to meet up and just let the friendship peter out. I can't understand why she is like it though and am understandably quite upset. What do I do?