I've got an old friend who I've known for 25+ years. I adore her: we really "get" each other in a way which is truly rare. We have similar ideas about the world, similar sense of humour, like many of the same things, have a long history together and have great fun together. Our DDs get on well, we've been on holiday together. She's part of my life.
She's always been flaky about making arrangements and meeting up. Since I've known her, she's prone to never confirming plans, changing plans at the last minute, taking weeks to respond to invitations, hedging her bets and dropping things for nebulous reasons and it often turns out she's chosen to do something else instead. I've come close to ending the friendship over this many times and have landed on a kind of stasis where I've accepted that this is "her" and that despite this she's still a loving and kind friend but this is the price of doing business. Because on a risk/reward benefit the pleasure of her company has outweighed the frustration of this behaviour.
But she's just done this again (for the second time this year) and I'm really at the end of my rope: a group of us, she, me and two other local friends, had planned to do a dinner this coming weekend and one of us messaged the group to check we were still all OK. This has been in the diary since early June and we've talked several times about what we plan to do.
Flaky friend replies in an embarrassed fashion to say she "might" be going camping instead but doesn't yet know. I messaged back to ask when she was going to know when she was going camping and that we could potentially move the dinner and she replied, sheepishly, that she's actually already decided she is going camping. So, not only has she dropped us for a better offer (again) but she doesn't have the balls to be honest about this and pretends she hasn't made up her mind, so presumably was expecting this to just quietly go away and not be asked again so she could go off camping.
Firstly I think its beyond rude, when you've got an arrangement in the diary with friends, to drop it for a better offer without explanation and I hate the fact that she does this so regularly. I can't see any excuses for this. Maybe I'm being really hardline here but I think its shit behaviour. If you commit to something with good friends you do it unless there's something genuinely unavoidable or its an offer you literally can't refuse. You don't just change your mind because someone is doing something more fun around the corner and hope you won't get called on it.
Secondly, if for whatever reason you have decided you have a better offer (for example if someone has offered you two weeks free in the Caribbean) you should be direct and honest about it, rather than dancing about the issue and expecting other people to wait while you pluck up the courage to tell them you actually have had a better offer. The sheepishness and dishonesty of saying she "might" be going camping but hadn't made up her mind annoyed me almost more than the fact she'd done it.
I'm really agonising about this. I don't want to be treated like an option rather than a priority by an old friend and increasingly this friendship feels like this. But I'm in my 50s and genuinely good friends are rarer than hens' teeth. I'm not going to call her out on it because I've done it before and it won't change, and I'm not going to block or flounce because its undignified. But I don't feel I can accept this stuff any more.
Curious as to whether this would be the last straw for others? Should I just let this friendship drift? Should I try to convey to her how much she's pissed me off? Or should I accept this as the terms of the friendship.