Hi All,
Sorry for the long post.
I am nearly 5 months pregnant with my first baby, and I am now beginning to understand what other women mean when they talk about pregnancy loneliness.
Don’t get me wrong: my partner, family and best friend are very supportive, but as for the other friends that I consider close (all without children), I did not get any thrilled reaction.
However, I am particularly puzzled by the change of attitude of one of those that I consider a very close friend (known her for 15+ years), who has completely ignored me since I told her the news. She was very cold when I went to visit her last time, she stopped contacting me and ignores my messages. We met at a friend’s house a couple of days ago, and she kept on ignoring me.
She’s married with no children, and has always told me that having a baby was not in her plans: my partner pointed out that she might as well have fertility issues but does not want to tell anybody, and she’s now hurt that a very close friend of hers is pregnant too. If that was the case, I would 100% respect and understand her, would not push her and just resume all contacts whenever she’s ready.
I have a feeling, though, that the reason might be quite different: I am almost 32, she’s 36. Throughout those years, many friends of our group got “settled” (some - her included- got married, a couple of them had babies), but the two of us always were like the “free spirits” of the bunch. I have a long standing relationship with my partner, she is married but her husband agrees to whichever idea she has, so in the past few years it was us two going out together for a drink, sushi, night out, etc anytime anywhere, without any particular commitment to family life. Now I’m thinking she feels somehow “betrayed” that I, too, am jumping to the other side of the fence.
She might have got the message that I was on the same page as her in terms of children and family, and to be honest I was with her when we were a bit uncomfortable (and bored) at children christenings or parties we were invited to, but of course that did not mean I was ruling children out of my life forever (also, people are entitled to change their minds I guess?).
She might be hurt because she lost her “partner in crime”, so to say.
Now, I don’t know how to handle this, and I was thinking of 3 possible ways:
- confrontation - but I am afraid it might end bad and make the whole situation awkward and uncomfortable when we are both invited by mutual friends (or create those very stupid situations where the one asks if the other is attending too, so that she can decide whether to go or not). Plus, I don’t know if she would agree on meeting at all;
- Ignore her (with some sporadic text to check how she is?)- maybe with time we will be able to go back to what we were before (I am thinking this would be good especially if she has troubles getting pregnant - in this case I would not want to push her);
- send her a text, along the lines of “I must have done something really bad to you! If and when you want to talk about it, let me know” - but who knows if she’d reply.
I should add that this all happened in the last 3/4 weeks, so since I told her that I was having a baby.
What would you do?
Thanks a lot x