I met my friend at a workshop abroad a few years ago, before Covid. The workshop was about a month long, and we were part of a cohort of a few other people. She and I got along really well and, after we realised that we live in the same area, we agreed to stay in touch when we got back to the UK.
We met up for coffee a few times, and then Covid happened. During lockdown, we met up a few more times when it was safe to do so. During these times, we'd talk about our jobs and families. She has a long term partner who she lives with, and I'm married. Neither of us have children.
During our time meeting up, she would often get hung up about her family - she would talk for long periods of time about the stress and frustration that they cause her. I would listen, ask questions, and just generally try to be supportive. She would occasionally ask me about my partner, but not much more than that - in other words, she wouldn't engage much with my life other than talking about work, where there is a lot of common ground between us.
Here's where it gets a bit strange for me. At one point during lockdown, I fell out with a family member. I felt very upset over it, and very lonely given that I couldn't see my family at all during this period. My friend and I made plans to meet up, and she could tell from my messages I was a bit out of sorts, so before we met, she asked what was wrong. I mentioned that something had happened with a family member, and she offered to talk about it with me when we met up. On the day, however, she didn't talk about it at all - in fact, from what I recall, she spoke about her work and family, as usual, and when I finally brought up how I'd been feeling since my fallout with my family member, her reaction really surprised me. She responded with something along the lines of, "Yes, well, things have tough on everybody, haven't they?" She then changed the subject to work. I was really taken aback, as I had hoped to find a sympathetic listener, especially after all the time I'd spent listening to her problems with her own family. This got me thinking that this person seems to have a problem feeling empathy towards others. But I don't know whether that's accurate, or just me projecting my own hurt feelings onto her.
Since then, it's been very difficult for me to really engage with this person. We still make plans to see each other, but the frequency has dropped from a few times a year to perhaps once a year. More recently, I reached out and asked how she was doing and she told me that things were well, aside from some personal issues that were upsetting her a lot. I didn't want to engage with the issue, so I responded a few days later and told her that I'm sorry to hear that and that I hope things get better for her. I didn't receive a reply or a similar question asking how I was doing.
At this point, I'm ready to write off this friendship. It's difficult as I have found that making friends is much harder as you get older. But I am really struggling to see any benefit to this friendship, since empathy and engagement in the other person's life is very important to me.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar? What is your advice?