This is a long story that I’ve tried to condense so a lot is missing and cut short. Donning my hard hat in preparation, but I need advice.
My friend and I have been friends for about 6 years. All our kids are really good friends, our daughters are best friends. We spend a lot of time together.
About a year and a half ago we got drunk and ended up kissing each other on her living room floor. It was kind of out the blue, but then afterwards when I thought about it, I felt like probably the boundaries between friendship had been blurry for a while, and maybe my feelings had been too and I just hadn’t realised. We were really close, in a kind of relationship type of way just without the actual sex.
During lockdown we talked every day. And then the first time we saw each other we ended up kissing and kind of progressed from there. It didn’t feel like an affair, though I guess it was. I have no idea why that is, I feel so completely confused, I guess because I never knew where we “were” or what it even meant.
In the autumn we ended up falling out and she stopped speaking to me. I was devastated and it was awful. She was pretty horrible about it and really cold (which she definitely can be in general). In this time I left my fairly abusive marriage. I had to take my DH to court for non mol and occupation orders. I still feel traumatised by everything that happened and pretty vulnerable and anxious. She knew / knows all of this.
This summer around May /June time she suddenly started being friendly. We’d had to stay approximately in contact to arrange the kids seeing each other, but it was painful and awkward but that seemed to shift. We gradually ended up spending more time together again.
In august we went away and slept with each other again. Having been emotionally distancing myself I ended up feeling entangled again. She isn’t always that nice to me, and sometimes makes me feel like she doesn’t even particularly like me. So I decided that I needed to step back a bit for a while.
The next time we saw each other we had a talk, I said I felt like we needed to be more honest. That I felt like she didn’t even particularly care about me and it was hurtful. She said I wasn’t an idiot and that I should know things only happened between us when we had been drinking.
That was last weekend. Things seemed okay between us since then, but on Friday at school she blanked me. On Saturday she sent me a weird awkward message asking if my daughter wanted to go bowling with her daughter and her husband. I asked her what was going on, it was cold and a strange message.
She replied saying she had told her husband everything that was going on, that we shouldn’t be friends anymore but she hoped the kids could still be friends. I said that we needed to talk and asked if she was okay, she refused.
I said I had no idea what was going on or what has been said so I can’t let my kids go round to play. I don’t even know how that would work. My head feels wrecked and I have no idea what is going on or what to do. I don’t want the kids to suffer because of our ridiculous decisions, but I can’t see how I can let them go there without knowing what her husbands frame of mind is, and what her children have been told. I feel broken and incredibly sad.
What do I do? Help me.