Sad about lost friendship

[ShuttyTown]

I’ve been friends with A for about 3 years, met at a playgroup for our DS’s who were both 2 at the time. We quickly became good friends, and our DH’s got on too so we did holidays, nights out, takeaway nights, Sunday lunches etc together.

A has lots of other friends however (but not as close as I was in terms of spending time together as a 4) that she would see for days out with their kids and play dates etc and I only have one other friend really so sometimes I felt a bit resentful if she was out with her other friends and she never invited me to be part of that.

Anyway cut to half term in February I never heard from her and saw on Facebook she’d done activities each day with her other friends and their children, I was upset but never said anything. Then come the Easter holidays same again, she was busy every day doing days out with her other friends and I didn’t see her for the full two weeks. (Normally we would do days out/playdates for our DS’s in every holiday). I was pissed off after this and I stopped messaging her and she never messaged me either however would still ‘like’ my photos on FB etc. Then the nail in the coffin was she posted a photo of her DS at a football class that we had originally taken our DS’s together, and decided not go back when they didn’t show much interest in it. When I saw she’d taken him back without even asking if we wanted to give it another try I was upset and angry and I removed her off Facebook as I took it as a hint that she was done with me. I left it a few days and didn’t hear from her and then when I checked she had actually blocked me on Facebook.

I have left it weeks now but I do miss her, she was a good friend and we had been there for each other through some hard times, so despite my better judgement I bit the bullet and wrote to her, just a short note saying I was sorry for removing her off FB, I missed her, my DS misses her DS and I’d love to chat and sort things out. She would have received the letter on Monday, I still haven’t heard from her.

WWYD? My DH is telling me to leave it, she obviously doesn’t want to sort things out but I want to go round to her house and face her and ask her why things ended up like this.

Thank you if you’re still with me, that was very long!

I also realise how sad and desperate I sound once it’s all written down but I just feel so sad about losing someone who was such a good friend. Thanks for any advice!

I don't understand

You say she's allowed other friends but you got annoyed that she didn't invite you out with them. There's no law saying you HAD to meet her other friends.

I also don't see the problem regarding the football.

She has her own son. You have yours. They don't HAVE to do everything together? She wasn't betraying you by putting her son back into this football club

You come across as really jealous and over bearing.
You need to leave it now. If she wants to remain friends she'll come back, if not she won't. Either way next time you form a strong friendship keep calm when they do things without you, and don't assume that just because your son is friends with their son, that they HAVE to join clubs together and never separately

OP..you are obviously hurt..I hope things get resolved one way or another. Feeling abandoned/let down is rotten

I think some posters are being really unkind to the OP. I don’t think she sounds obsessive at all, just slightly hurt? It does seem like this friend has been ‘ghosting’ her, which is baffling when it happens, when there’s been no actual falling out.

What she’s struggling with is that they clearly were good friends before, their DSs enjoyed playing together and they obviously supported each other.

People express their hurt on MN in a way they don’t in RL. Just because the OP has come across as hurt and baffled on here it doesn’t follow that she’s expressed this to her friend in the same way.

You will get that kind of post on here, OP. But you’ve had some good advice. The best advice is to go out and build new friendships; it’s good that you have that other close friend and others that you arrange play dates with.

There is really no need for some posters to be THAT harsh. It's not as if she's sat outside her house watching her every move.
Jesus!

Thank you @Mittens1969 and @Sarahface yes some posters have made out I’m stalking her! 😂

My original post was just a snippet into our past friendship but when we’ve been on holidays together, spent full weekends with each other’s families, baby sat each other’s kids, visited each other in hospital etc etc of course I was hurt and baffled as to why she suddenly started to ignore me.

Anyway I’ve had some excellent advice from some lovely posters on here and I’m still glad I posted as it’s given me the wake up call to move on and put it down to experience.

Thanks again

I can understand that you are hurt, it sounds like you were very close once. Your friend has obviously got closer to others now and has shifted you down the line. Not very nice to be on the receiving end of it. But do what you have been doing - step away and concentrate on your new friends. You've written to her - leave it there. No good will come from pursuing her.

However if there is one thing to take away from this experience it's not to use Facebook as a weapon in friendships. Defriending, blocking etc - leave it to teenagers. Sorry I know it sounds harsh but I steer well clear of anyone that uses social media and oblique strategies to get my attention. I'm way too long in the tooth for all that.

shutty I coined the ‘borderline obsessive’..apologies for that, it may have been seen as harsh but not meant that way. It’s the kind of thing I’d say to my mates if they’d told me your story.

People can be unkind on here, I don’t want to appear as one of them. Do yourself a favour and spend as little time on FB as you can, it can make you feel absolutely crap

Don’t worry about people, just invest in the right ones

notonthestairs spot on!

OP, in the kindest way possible. You need to have your own life, of course you would feel a pang but you dust yourself and move. Do your own thing, leave this woman alone, go to classes, go back to studying, meet new people, meet other parents. Once you do this, you would stop feeling the way you do.

To be honest, and I don't mean to be horrible. But if I had a friend who was a bit clingy. I would distant myself... this sort of behaviour should of stopped at primary school. This friend of yours is entitled to her own life...is she doesn't want to be your friend anymore. Let her be, you will meet other people :).

I have plenty of friends like this. Promise me the earth and then spend time with others in the holidays. I've come to realise, that maybe that you can't force friendships, and you can't make people want to be with you.
Confronting definitely won't help, and don't let her back into your life when she has a crisis. People like that need to learn.

I’m sorry that you are sad about the end of your friendship. Obviously you don’t know your friend’s reasons for distancing herself from you but she obviously has them. I did a similar thing to a friend last year - she was way more invested in our friendship than I was and I was feeling a bit smothered by being her friend. It was a similar situation - she had struggled to make many Mum friends whereas I had a group of friends from antenatal and various mums from various groups. Initially I tried to integrate her into the group but it never quite gelled. So I used to see her just me, her and our kids. Every time we met up I had to listen to all her problems and woes and I came back from every meet up exhausted and slightly pissed off. Her children (who she frequently described as “like cousins” to mine) were horrible and dismissive to my kids and so none of us were getting anything out of the friendship any more. The eldest kids went to different schools last year and it seemed like a logical time to step back from the friendship a bit. As it turned it she was very all-or-nothing about it all and now we don’t see each other at all which although I initiated the change is sort of a joint decision. I don’t dislike her, I don’t wish her harm, I hope her children thrive and are happy. But I can’t be a friend to someone who isn’t really being a friend to me.

I’m not saying this is the case with your friendship and I hope this doesn’t come across as harsh, but there are two sides to every story and perhaps she doesn’t feel that your friendship was as beneficial to her as hers was to you.

There are lots of people out there - perhaps this is a good opportunities to make several new friends who are more compatible with you? Hard to do at first but well worth it.

I'd guess she can't cope with your intensity. Getting mad at her for bringing her son somewhere, because yours went and didn't want to go anymore? You know that's crazy, right?

She doesn't have to invite you along with her other friends, she doesn't have to ask you to do things with her. You act as if she owes you her time, she probably just got sick of it.

I love the way people say ‘I don’t mean to be horrible’ and ‘in the nicest possible way’ then are unkind in what they say. I agree that defriending and blocking shouldn’t be an adult’s response. But people are allowed to feel hurt.

It sounds like it was a close friendship in the past and for whatever reason OP’s friend has moved on. But she’s done it by ‘ghosting’, which isn’t kind.

But life’s too short to stress about such things, OP. There are other friends out there.

Re your sons’ friendship, if they want to pursue it they will do so at school and ask to meet after school themselves eventually. I’m not friends with all the parents of my DDs’ school friends, we text each other to arrange play dates and drop the children off at each others’ houses. It doesn’t follow that we’ll be friends with each other.

So be careful not to burn bridges by expressing your hurt to this lady. Just retain a kind of friendly acquaintance if possible (saying hi when you see each other kind of thing) so your DS has the possibility of being friends with her DS. (Don’t try and push it, only if the DSs continue to play together at school.)

@existentialmoment I never once said to her ‘why haven’t you invited me’ I didn’t cry or throw myself at her feet begging her to ask me along. I had met her other friends through birthday parties, christenings etc and we all have children the same age so I was always just a bit as to why she never invited me but I never ever said anything to her!!

Re the football class. I found this class, we decided we’d take our sons together to try it out, they decided they didn’t like it so we said ah well we won’t bother any more and we’ll look for some other group. Then I just started to not hear from her as much then I’d seen she’d took him back herself. She is absolutely entitled to take her son wherever she likes, it was just an obvious move from her that she was starting to lose interest in the friendship as normally our sons would do stuff like that together.

I just want to clarify I haven’t ever said anything to her about being left out, I’m not some sad recluse who sits and waits for her messages like some sort of puppy. I have my own life with two children and a DH and I have play date friends and one other ‘best friend’ I haven’t stalked her, harassed her or took to my bed because she isn’t speaking to me! I just wanted advice as to whether due to how close we had been in the past it was worth going to see her but obviously not from everyone’s response so I’ve taken that on board and I’ll move on.

Our sons aren’t in the same school so there’s no way of keeping up their friendship but my DS is only 5 and has lots of other friends so I’m not concerned about that really

Sometimes MN is a ridiculously nasty place

@OhPuddleducks thanks for sharing your experiences. If anything it was me being her shoulder to lean on, she was very ill in hospital and they made errors and was taking the hospital to tribunal, she didn’t get on with her sister, had problems with a mum up at her DS school, complained about her DH and his lack of help round the house etc and we would discuss and analyse them all the time.

I’m not the sort to off load my problems on people it’s always me being an unpaid counsellor to friends. I didn’t mind being there for her, she did things for me too in other ways, she did a baby shower for me etc.

I suppose I’ll never know why she did what she did, but I know 100% I haven’t begged her to spend time with me, I didn’t bombard her with messages pleading to invite me out. It was a normal close friendship with mutual amounts of messaging and invitations to do things etc.

People have made out I’m some sort of single white female character!

I never once said to her ‘why haven’t you invited me’ I didn’t cry or throw myself at her feet begging her to ask me along

She knew though.

Nobody is being nasty to you. You asked for opinions, you are getting them.

@existentialmoment oh yes she did know. I forgot to mention she’s psychic

Its hard when kids start school and go to different schools to keep the same frequency of seeing each other and quite often plans are made on the spur of the moment and if you're not there then you may not be included.

I have a lot of friends and sometimes I see some more than others and go a while not seeing some and then it switches. If I were to involve every friend to every outing it'd be a huge logistical nightmare.

I'm easygoing though and don't get offended if I don't get invited to everything (in fact I'm thankful!). Also, when kids start getting a bit older they start having preferences as to who they want to hang out with and harass their parents to arrange playdates with them. If your children are in different schools, her son will likely prefer to spend time with some kids from his school.

Mittens is right, the phrases ‘I don’t mean to be horrible’ and ‘in the nicest possible way’ are often used to preface unkindness so I'll hold my hands up to that. Apologises to the Op.

BUT (I know an apology is undermined by a but - just hear me out!) I have friends that have friended/defriended/blocked each other - never talking to each other directly about why they are angry or upset and things never get resolved satisfactorily. We are in our 40's and I think we should know better - that has coloured my judgement of the Op's actions.

Sorry Op, it does suck, I don't underestimate how hurt you feel, and it sounds like a waste of what was a nice supportive friendship once. Given enough time you will recognise that whilst you might not have behaved perfectly you are not at fault and that it lies with your friend.

I only have one other friend really so sometimes I felt a bit resentful if she was out with her other friends and she never invited me to be part of that.

I had a friend like you. It's suffocating, overbearing and just unpleasant.

She would get arsey if I said I couldn't meet up with her because I'd made plans with my friends of a decade whom I saw every few months!

I cut her off because I just didn't want to deal with that after telling her how crazy she was acting. She still thought I was in the wrong.

You need to just leave her alone and try and build friendships that aren't so stalkery or dependent.

I think it probably is because your 2 DSs are at different schools in that case, there’s no longer that connection between you. Your DS will make other friends and so will you. Some friendships are only for seasons in our lives.

@Taylor22, the OP was NOT like that, how many times??? Projecting much!!

Just to give my perspective on this, I met a friend in similar circumstances who I really liked, I also had more friends than her (to put it horrifically bluntly - only reason was I sort of grew up nearby whereas she didn’t) and she sort of made it clear, without ever explicitly saying, that she wanted to be involved with the things I might do with other friends. Which in one way I didn’t have a problem with but in another way then would have meant basically ALL my socialising would have involved this one friend and personally I just found that a bit much? Not as a reflection on this friend, just for me I didn’t want everything to involve the same person every time. I’m aware that’s not particularly nice of me, but it wasn’t meant with malice - perhaps your friend felt the same? I’m very sorry you’re feeling hurt though.

@Taylor22, the OP was NOT like that, how many times??? Projecting much!!

Well she would hardly describe herself in that way, would she? Clearly the friend has a reason to distance herself from a supposedly good friend who they spent a lot of time with. We can only guess at what that reason could be (OP has given us ideas though) but she obviously had one.

I could have written this 2 years ago. I had to accept that our friendship meant more to me than it did to her and move on. I'm happier in my own company these days.