Help me please understand how I feel like that.

[Thistroudeballeisinfire]

I have met this friend about a year ago and I really like her. However something is bugging me. She admitted to me that she lost lots of friendship by not answering text messages or email etc..Fair enough you may think. What's bug me is that yes she is like that, and it's annoying or she won't take any news if I don't take any. For example, if I tell her something about something going on with my son, she will have forgot about it...I don't know if I'm making sense...Imagine, if you chat/confide into your friend, wouldn't you expect a bit that she remembers ? Other thing is : we make plans, she forgot, she double book herself...etc...she is lovely but that really grates me and I hate feeling like that but I can't help it. I'm a friend to my friend, if one has worries in their life..I take news, I'm not invasive but I make sure they know I'm there ! I don't tell to come and see me one evening if I don't mean it ! She is a bit like that as in if I see her randomly in the street : Oh troudeballe, you must come one evening ! I tell her, ok when ? I'll text you ! And she never does !

Hope you can help me see sense !

What sort of sense do you need? It sounds as though you have her measure.

See, if she was really upset about losing friends through not keeping in touch, she'd make more of an effort in future to keep in touch with people, don't you think? But she's not doing that. So you have to come to the conclusion, really, that friends are "easy come, easy go" for her. That she isn't too worried about losing a friend because there'll be another along in a minute.

Thing is, some people just aren't cut out to be close friends. She may be great fun to hang out with but is just not someone you can rely on. There's plenty of room for people like this on the margins of your life, but no future at all in trying to make them more than that. She is not a good confidante, not a good supporter, not someone you can call up in the middle of the night when your cat has been run over; just someone it's nice to see sometimes. She's not your best mate and never will be. That's no reason not to see her or even not to like her, but you have to recognise that she isn't in your life for the long term - and that while she is you can't make any firm plans involving her as she is too flaky to stick to them!

I think you realise all this, though.

Annie, you are completely spot on...I couldn't articulate it like you. You make me feel better by putting into words how I feel. I'm relieve, you wouldn't believe how long I have spent ruminating about it and feeling pissed off with myself for according to much time to a "non-matter" ! Thank you Annie