"Breaking up" with a friend

man James Murphy was right after all

I mentioned that severed friendship last week

Ironically enough, we reconnected the day after I made that post. She said she missed me and that things were better. It was a complicated situation, she was doing IVF at age 45 and it made every interaction so focused on her BabyQuest. Any time I was having a bad day? "well, I've had three miscarriages this year!" The awesomeness of this pursuit and how it took over her entire life and our entire friendship became exhausting. Not to mention: she is already a mom, and I am personally unwillingly-childless, so, like... "can we talk about anything else? no? fine."

She's set aside the IVF and her dreams of family expansion and she apologised and I told her there was no need, I was informed well-enough about the insane things IVF does to your hormonal balance, that it is supposed to turn you into a Holy Warrior For Baby, and I wasn't mad, I just kinda needed for her to do it separately, and we could reconnect once "it worked" or "it didn't work and she'd decided to stop trying". We're back on the sharing memes and chit-chat, gossip about men, it's nice to have my friend back. I wish the IVF had worked :( ah well

“But my 27 year old brain is just like, "what the FUCK, what is HAPPENING, where's the PARTY AT, where are my FRIENDS AT?" It's very, very weird”

This is true. I’m 46 and even though I know I’m 46 there are still Friday and Saturday nights when I think “shouldn’t we all be out there partying, or trying to find the party?”

I also sometimes seem to vacillate between “too social” and “too much of a hermit” mood-wise.

FGTI - Yes, that's p much exactly what I think happened and exactly how I reacted though now it's 10 years on and still so upsetting. It's just weird. The friend that I met up with having a kid, my mom dying, and so many other things all things that have happened that I wish we could talk about etc. Just so weird. Also, I didn't want to go too much into it on a non-77 board but, given what happened in his life immediately preceding this, it makes a lot of sense. :/ Oh well.

Does K harbor romantic feelings for you

Lily, from what you're describing your feelings are very understandable. It's normal to want to feel comfortable in your own home and to seek to put right anything you may have done wrong.

If the other roommates are being tactless in front of you it is hurtful but there is also a whole wide world of people out there that would want and value your friendship.

I hope you won't be too hard on yourself.

Thank you, felicity. That's so kind.

I did end up hearing back from the former friend (who is also a former housemate, not sure if I mentioned that). She confirmed that she found our friendship "challenging" and drifted away from me on purpose. She offered to elaborate but I don't think I could handle that right now; I'm really struggling not to go into a depression spiral as it is. Since the friendship started to fracture toward the end of the pandemic, my guess is that I was too dependent on her during the pandemic when we were locked down together.

It's hard for me to tell if my roommates are being tactless. From their pov it is perfectly normal for them to still be friends with her, and I am the weird emotional person making them feel bad about something that is not their fault. The fact that I so thoroughly alienated a good person makes me inclined to think that I am probably doing something wrong here too.

But thank you for telling me that this maybe isn't all my fault. I needed the perspective. This house has been a huge part of my life for the past four years, but it's not the entire world, and it's good to be reminded of that.

LD - Fwiw I find the idea of people being mad at me of not liking me almost unbearable so I understand and that would upset me too. I also think if I were the flatmates I wouldn't never utter their name but I prob would choose when to talk about them carefully etc.

LG - yeah I posted about it a little upthread.

Sorry - that wasn't very clear. I was trying to say that if I were one of your roommates I wouldn't pretend the former friend didn't exist but I would likely be a little careful about when they came up in conversation. It doesn't sound like they're being very considerate.

Well, to be fair, one of them didn't know. There have been two years of former friend acting perfectly pleasant to me when we meet in person, inviting me whenever she hosts a brunch or something for the group, but avoiding meeting up one on one, while hanging out separately with the other two. So one of them knew I felt ghosted but thought I was imagining it and doing it to myself by being oversensitive. And the other one had no idea and assumed we were all still friends.

The one I had talked to about it does try to avoid mentioning when she hangs out with this person, but it generally gets back to me eventually. And in this case, she was asked directly - she couldn't really avoid answering.