I'm sorry if this is long!
I have a friend who I have been close to since our daughters were very small (my DD1 is 13 and her DD is 12). She is funny and generous, and we've shared a lot. But recently I've been feeling that the friendship is causing me more upset than happiness, and I'm not sure what to do.
As background, she's always been fairly pushy for her children, and pretty competitive. If we started doing something, she would quickly copy. Her daughter started piano, ballet and ice skating all within weeks of me announcing my DD was doing them. She expects her DD to achieve highly, both academically and in all her outside activities. She once told me that since she spends all this money, she expects something in return. I said nothing (she's the kind of person you can't argue with, it's easier to let things drop) but it seemed very odd to me. My children do those things because they want to. Whilst it's nice to see them doing well, all I "expect in return" is their happiness. Up until fairly recently, both girls have been fairly level pegging, both academically and in all the activities they do. So, although I knew there was an element of competition there, it never affected our friendship.
Everything was great with us until last summer. Then in September, my daughter became home educated (don't flame me for that, I nearly put it in the home ed section but it's really a friendship issue). Since being home educated she has gone from strength to strength in every way you can imagine. She has made great friends, she is taking 3 GCSEs next summer, has made enormous strides in her ballet and skating. She's happy and thriving.
For a while, my friend pressed me to but my daughter on the waiting list for her daughter's school (they were not at the same one). Recently, it has become obvious that she won't be returning to school.
The last few months have become increasingly uncomfortable between us. Within minutes of seeing my friend, she digs at me over the homeschooling. I try to keep it really low key, but she is constantly saying, of course (her daughter) has to get up in the mornings/ can't do nothing all day like my DD/ can't go ice skating all the time like us/ can't practice ballet the whole day like we do...etc...
Most of these statements are utter nonsense. My daughter still gets up the same time she ever did, and we are not free to do whatever we want all day because her studying takes up a lot of time. But she won't be corrected or argued with, and I've given up trying. I just agree now to keep the peace, but I hate having to agree to things which are not true to keep her happy. The truth is, she knows virtually nothing about our days and how they work because she doesn't want to hear it. So I try not to mention it at all, but still I get these constant jibes.
Two things have happened in the last week. Firstly we went to a ballet audition. My two girls got in and hers didn't. She was so angry at the end, she made a whole series of comments to me about how the whole thing was unfair and biased(all pretty hurtful) and stormed off pushing past my daughter without saying well done or even goodbye. Secondly we went skating and she realised my daughter had passed an exam during the term (which I hadn't mentioned for fear of upsetting her). Mostly she was really nasty to her own daughter, saying that if she wasn't going to try harder she would stop lessons, but she made more of the same jibes to me about how, of course, we can go up there every day now (we go once a fortnight but I can't tell her that, she refuses to listen).
As I post this I can tell that the whole thing sounds really nasty and competitive, and not what friendship should be at all. The skating thing was two days ago and I was shocked at how nasty she was to her own daughter, as well as to me, and I still feel pretty rung out over it.
My feeling is that this friendship has run its course. I suspect that if I put DD1 back into school everything would be hunkydory again, but of course, I can't change our family's life choices to suit other people - and nothing stops her from making the same choices in her life. But my daughter is very keen for me to salvage the friendship as her daughter is her longest standing friend and very valuable to my DD. Her daughter is a really lovely girl, too, and I feel responsible for not ending their friendship - it would be harder for them to see each other as they don't live that near.
I would talk to her, but I suspect I won't get past the first sentence. She is very quick to see faults in others but would never acknowledge she is being upsetting in any way - I know it would be all my fault. Yet she has had my DD in tears before now for digging at her so much over these issues. She really won't leave it alone.
Any advice would be really appreciated.