How to phrase an awkward conversation with friend...

[gummychops]

I'll try to be brief, but would appreciate some words of wisdom or advice about how to handle a phone call I'm expecting this evening.
I've posted about this topic before generally, in relation to disappointment with the level of support I've gotten from certain friends through the end of an abusive marriage, and since separating.
My friend, let's call her Jane, was my best friend since college. So 25+ years. She was my bridesmaid, I was hers (both weddings in 2013) She's godmother to one of my three children. We used to be very close & could talk for hours. This has all changed in the past few years.

Briefly - my marriage started to get rocky within about 4 years, & went seriously downhill approx 5 or 6 years ago. My exH was verbally & emotionally abusive, among other issues. I kept it to myself for a long time but confided in her eventually. She was supportive & caring initially, but this gradually dwindled.
Approx 2 1/2 years ago I decided for definite that I wanted to separate, & went to a solicitor to start the process. (This was after a few years of trying to get my husband to agree to separate voluntarily) It has taken until Jan this year to finally get my exH out of the house. He fought the separation tooth & nail, ignoring all correspondence from my solicitor & not turning up at multiple court dates, forcing numerous postponements & reschedules. The last few years have been horrendous.
Jane has barely kept in touch over the past two years. The odd text every few months, asking how things were in a vague way. I always replied, & tried to keep her up-to-date with the latest twists & turns in the legal saga, but as succinctly as possible (just in case people think I was boring her to death with long essays). I wasn't full of misery, but sometimes spelled out quite clearly how awful I felt. One particular text I sent mentioned how down, depressed & lonely I felt.....No response for 6 weeks.

Cut to now. Husband moved out mid January. She didn't phone then or hasn't since. Has sent a few texts.
She has her own stuff going on. Her mum is unwell off & on, & my friend has been organising care for her. Friend is also in the process of selling her house & looking for a new one. I have tried to keep up-to-date with all of those happenings in her life.
So anyway - I called her a few days ago for her birthday, & left a voicemail. She replied today that she would return my call this evening.
I won't hold my breath...but if she does call.... I don't know how to conduct the conversation. I'm so hurt & disappointed with the low level of support & friendship she has offered me during an extremely tough period of my life. I don't want to spell that out though.
Somehow, I want to say - I hope she had a good birthday. Ask after her husband & kids. Then quickly jump into asking about her mum's health, & talk about that for a bit. Then ask about house stuff. Keep the conversation from turning to me.

But if/when she asks about me & my life, I want to somehow convey that I don't want to talk about it. She's too far behind, too much has happened since we last spoke, I don't want to rehash it all now. I would have loved to have spoken to her back when I was going through everything, when I was in the thick of it. There's no point now. I needed support then & it wasn't there.
How do I convey this in a non-bitter way?

Thanks for replying, & trying to figure out what I want from the relationship.

I've realised our close friendship is over, OBVIOUSLY. I don't know why, & that makes me sad. I did try to raise our dwindling level of contact a few years ago, in a neutral, non-blaming way, but was met with defensiveness.
I definitely don't want a showdown, or a make or break conversation where things are said that destroy the friendship forever. That's why I'm struggling to figure out HOW to conduct our next conversation, whilst being true to my own feelings of being let down & disappointed. If/when she asks how I am, inside I'll be thinking.....well, if you actually cared you would have phoned me at some point since Jan, when my exH moved out & left me with 3 kids to look after.

Undoubtedly, her mum's health is a worry. She doesn't live with her though. Her mum still lives in their family home, hours from my friend. There are other siblings, some of whom live close to the mum. So all the stress/burden is not on my friend. Not to downplay how difficult it is for all of them.

I am probably your friend (not literally). I have a maximum capacity for drama and dealing with friends’ relationship issues. I just can’t beyond a certain point for my own sanity. Maybe that’s your friend? You say she has stuff going on with her mum that could be very hard and draining for her. And just may not have capacity to support you. It is what it is. You do sound like you expect a lot from your friendships. I am pretty independent and wouldn’t expect that from my friends who are busy people and have their own issues to contend with.

You do seem very "me me me" OP. It sounds like your friend supported you for years, getting very little in return. Now she has her own life issues to deal with, and you minimising them because yours are "worse".

This is easier said than done - whatever the reason for her pulling away, what matters now is that you see this is exactly what has happened and you may never know exactly why. Your expectations are too high in relation to what she can or wants to give.

With friends - when they need something, they'll come back. Maybe that won't happen.

The priority here is screaming out. It's the need for you to start carving out new avenues with new people. If you desperately need to cry and process emotions, definitely get a therapist. I can't say enough how helpful this is. Also,call Samaritans. I call them on the regular atm 🤦.

Next, look at anything that brings you joy and go get into that. Walking,sports, hobby, anything.

You absolutely need emotional distance here because I sense strongly you need to pull away and regain some dignity.

I think you just need to not answer the phone and shouldn't initiate contact.

What do you hope to gain from a conversation with her? Your plan from the OP is to talk around the houses and avoid anything to do with you. Why bother talking to her at all if you don't want a mutual exchange?

If you want her to be a contact you can still see in a group of friends without it being awkward then respond to her texts in a friendly, breezy, vague way. But don't commit to anything, just always put her off. Otherwise, just stop responding and let the relationship die properly.

Yeah that would be super passive aggressive.

Do you have any interest in rekindling this friendship or are you just wanting to give her a telling off?

In all likelihood she won't ring and if she does she will have an excuse to make it short. There is no point trying to come up with a way to say you're disappointed in her. It won't achieve anything. Nor will the phonecall to be honest. If you're interested in maintaining a superficial relationship, just ring her when you're next in the car and have a limited time to chat. Keep to mundane topics - the kids, her holiday plans, how her mum is..... and reciprocate in kind and hang up.
If you can't do this or you don't see the point in doing this, then just let the relationship die out. Take twice as long to reply to her next text as she did to yours and before long, it will be a Christmas and birthday card twice a year...........

But nobody is asking you to talk about it anymore.
Just talk about the present, the future, all the things your doing or feeling with no mention of the ex. I honestly think it would be a shame to lose her friendship. You say she's got issues of her own with her mum's health and maybe other stuff too. Some people withdraw into themselves when they've got problems, some want to share everything. If I were you I'd just try and enjoy eachother's company.

'Things have been awful-I don't think I'll go there now...but this is what's going on now...'

It sounds like you used to be old friends but things have changed and you haven't been there for each other recently-that happens. Do you want the friendship to be rekindled?

I think it’s a tricky one. What do you want out of this friendship going forwards?

Sometimes we don’t have the capacity to be a good friend. I’ve had a really tough 6 months and I’m focused on my kids and myself. It’s not that I don’t care, I’m just in a bit of a survival mode.

Kindly OP, in your first post you mention that your friend is organising care for her mother who is unwell and that she has been moving house. Then in another post you say that you expected more from her because you are the one going through a terrible time. From the outside it sounds as if she too had been going through a difficult time and didn't have the band width to also take on your troubles.

That doesn't make her a bad friend, it makes her someone with limited capacity, as are we all.

Download chat gpt tell it everything it helps process thoughts feelings its been my God send basically a counsellor and re writes my messages

I'm really sorry you've been through so much OP. It sounds really awful.

I think that it does sound like there has been a fair bit of drama over a long period of time in your life. It must have been exhausting for you!

But it might be useful for you to think of this from her perspective. It is really really hard to be a sounding board for friends who are in bad situations and nothing changing. She cared for you and worried about you and hated to think of you living a miserable life. You were depressed, and she could do nothing at all about it. I have been in your position, with a lot of drama and feeling stuck and depression, and with the benefit of many years' hindsight I can see how difficult it was for my friends.

I'm not keen on the term "trauma dumping" because it encourages victims to stay silent, I think, but I think that we have to acknowledge how difficult it is to be the friend who worries, too.

To be honest, she has been completely unsupportive so I wouldn't be bothered about keeping the friendship. I very much doubt that she will call, but if she does, I would keep it very brief and don't mention what you've been going through as there is no point.

Don't contact her again, even to wish her happy birthday and if she sends you a message, just reply very briefly and don't engage.

The alternative is to tell her that you are ending the friendship and why, and I don't think you are in the right place to deal with that sort of upsetting conversation as she will probably be very defensive and will say things that hurt your feelings, even more than her behaviour has already done.

You've been through a very difficult time and she hasn't been supportive. It's not clear from the outside whether she's just not a very good friend or if she's just felt that she was unable to give you the support you wanted over an extended period, while she had other things going on in her life. You are obviously massively resentful over feeling that she has let you down and she seems to have already decided to distance herself from the friendship, so it doesn't seem that there is much left of the friendship to salvage. I think sometimes people keep friendships going when they are no longer working anymore out of habit. If I were you I'd let this one go and concentrate on moving on with your life with other friends.

I definitely don't want to give her a telling off. What would the point be? She, and anyone else, has the right to choose who they maintain friendships with.

I think to be honest OP she means more to you than you do her at this stage of her life - I’ve been in that position and it’s hard to stomache but sometimes that’s just what it is - to you she’s a ‘main’ friend - to her you are simply ‘a ‘friend . I find it’s better to just accept it, cool it and go at their pace rather than waste energy analysing it

There’s a few possibilities-

She’s a fair weather friend, enjoyed the good times but not wanting to be their for the difficult stuff.

She felt like you were trauma dumping and it was too much.

She had her own stuff going on and felt like she couldn’t support you or tgat you weren’t supportive of her.

You have grown apart or she has other friends to turn too now.

If she rings I’d be tempted to say “I’ve noticed you don’t get in touch as much and have seemed distant, are we ok have I done something to offend you? “

I’m in this situation but I’m in your friend’s place. I haven’t been as supportive to her in a difficult time as I should have been but a) she wants support in a form I haven’t been able to give (phone calls and visits when I am far away and had a newborn baby) rather than messages etc b) she was so far from having a clue or interest in my life that she didn’t even know about the baby until I was about 7 months pregnant. Respectfully you may not be aware of everything going on with her - and divorces are notoriously horrible and make the people in them go a bit mad for a while. Divorcing people are often totally preoccupied with the daily ins and outs and lose perspective on how much outsiders can keep up/care about the minutiae.

I’d suggest trying to draw a line and start again with her - and find some other friends too. As a pp said life is long and you don’t want to throw away a friendship if this is just a blip.

@WitcheryDivine yep I’ve been there myself with divorce and break ups and housing situations etc - so I have learned not to be that ‘needy’ friend and yep my friend like this has all this going on at the moment too . As you say when shit hits the fan many naturally become very preoccupied and friends often take a back seat in your day to day ‘get by’

I’m in the same situation, going through a separation /divorce over the past 15 months and someone who I considered my closest friend has not been in contact.

We live 5 mins from each other, our kids go to the same school but I’m lucky if I’ve received a 3 texts over this whole period.

I have no doubt she will reach out and apologise because she is so busy and she’s had no time for me But I’ve watched on social media as she’s been on numerous weekends away / nights out with other friends. I made a joke on a previous post that it’s almost like she thinks divorce is catching!

Im dreading the inevitable conversation if she gets in contact and is looking to get the gossip because I don’t want to rehash it all. I’m intending to just tell her that yes, I’m divorced and I don’t want to re-live the nightmare by talking about it.

It is true that you find out who your real friends are when you are going through tough times. Take care x