I have dropped a friend that I have had since I was 10 (so, roughly 30 years). It's really because she is very private to the point of secretive and I always felt like I was being kept at arm's length. When having conversations with her she is always asking questions about me and my family but when I ask her anything she manages to deflect it and you leave knowing nothing more about her than before. Another school friend feels exactly the same with her.
Some of the things she has kept secret over the years have been:
- she went to Australia to stay with a relative for 6 weeks over the summer holidays when we were 10. She never mentioned she was going. I only found out when her mum asked mine if I'd write to her as she was homesick.
- her sister had a pony - didn't know about this for years.
- she was doing a PGCE - I knew her husband was just about to start doing his but she never mentioned she would be doing it too.
There are more things but they're all odd things. I think her secrecy is mainly to do with money and not wanting people to think that she's wealthy or that her family may be wealthy. She is very penny pinching although she has got plenty of money - will only drink tap water if we go out, didn't invite my now husband to her wedding reception (because we'd only been together a year) to keep costs down etc. She avoids making phone calls because of the bill, but will phone if one of her children leaves a pair of socks at your house asking for them to be posted back to her.
One time she needed somewhere to live and DH was looking for tenants for his flat as he'd just moved in with me. We let them live in his flat on mate's rates for a couple of months while they found somewhere else (his flat was a studio flat and not really where they wanted to live long term). When they moved in we put a bottle of wine in the fridge and left bread, tea and milk along with a note saying give us a call and we'll go out together. We lived a 5 minute walk away. They never called and were always busy when we called. However when they moved out she mentioned that they'd enjoyed the wine and had shared it with some friends they'd invited round for a meal.
She's one of those people who appears to be incredibly polite and caring on the surface but all her actions are pretty rude and inconsiderate. I was once trying to leave her house with my firstborn who was a couple of weeks old and I wanted to get home before the next round of feeding / changing. Her baby needed changing so she asked me to wait while she changed her and then she'd say goodbye. She spent 45 minutes changing her nappy - I'm not exaggerating!
I let so many things go over the years but since having children (we had our first children within a few weeks of each other) I've found it hard to be around her.
She moved 150 miles away a few years ago but her parents moved about 5 mins away from me so she comes to visit them regularly.
She is always, always late. Every time we have met up the arrangements have been very complicated and you know you're being shoe-horned in amongst lots of other visits. Last meeting she turned at 45 mins late when we were only going to be able to see her for an hour. I know she's busy but she has always been late by a minimum of half an hour and sometimes 2 hours which is annoying - we're busy people too.
The last time I saw her was about 18 months ago and after another rushed meeting where she avoided saying anything about herself I decided that I didn't really want to see her again. It doesn't feel like any sort of meaningful, real friendship as she will share nothing about her life. She phoned recently but I haven't called back. I don't want to discuss it with her because I don't want to have any sort of falling out and my issues with her have gone back 30 years and it would seem petty to bring them up now.
Oh my goodness, I've ranted a lot. I think I feel quite guilty about all of this as it's not that I don't like her and wouldn't help her out if she needed it, it's more that I feel bad around her and want to avoid feeling like that.