Hi everyone,
We have been friends since we were 14. It’s always been a very solid friendship – we share a similar sense of humour, many common interests, and we never run out of things to talk about.
We’ve both had a stressful past eight months or so. I was diagnosed with stage one uterine cancer in November last year, but it was dealt with quickly, and all I needed was surgery. I now just monitor for recurrence. Her husband was diagnosed with a benign brain tumour in December last year, which also just needs to be monitored for growth.
She is mother to a four year old and a one year old. Her four year old has had some developmental delays, and they are currently investigating those.
She began to withdraw from me after my diagnosis. We probably made plans about 6-8 times, and she would cancel at the last minute. It was exhausting. I asked her what was up, and that if she was worried about my cancer, we could talk about it, or if she didn’t want to talk about it, that was okay too. I figured she was just stress, and eventually everything would return to normal.
I’ve seen her twice since November last year. On one occasion we’d organised to meet at a park to chat and have a lunch. She said another friend of hers invited herself along when she told her about her plans for the day, so we didn’t get much chance to talk. They mostly just talked about babies. Then, we met again at another park, but we just ate and then she said she had to go.
It was my birthday and her son’s in March. She wished me a happy birthday and I tried to organise a catch up, specifically because I had a gift for her son. It never happened.
I’m having neurosurgery on Thursday for a neurological condition I’ve had since birth. It isn’t serious, it’s just a bit disabling physically. I told her about it, and she suggested catching up on the weekend a couple of weeks ago. I replied and said I was available that weekend.
She messaged me a few days after the weekend had passed and asked me if I was available that morning to catch up. Unfortunately I had other plans, and suggested another date. No reply so far. My guess is she’ll send me a message wishing me luck on the day of.
This may not be quite so confusing, but she has met up with other friends for dinner. The difference is those friends are also partnered, and they all bring their partners.
I do wonder if it’s related to discussing my illness in front of her son. She doesn’t leave her son with anyone else ever, so he comes everywhere with her. She has code words for COVID and vaccinations because she doesn’t want to talk about them around him.
She has lost a lot of friends because they have explicitly said she’s a bad parent. She refuses to vaccinate her kids, which means they can’t go to kindergarten in our country. It’s not what I would do, but I respect her autonomy and right to make her own choice, and I love her regardless. No one is perfect.
Any suggestions on how to move forward? I feel confused.
Thank you!
tl;dr Best friend is withdrawing from me. What should I do?
2 comments
Leave the door open and accept that she is pulling away.
You can’t force someone to be friends with you and her actions are showing that she wants to step away from the close friendship.
There are several hints what could have caused this to happen – maybe she just found new friends she gets along with better, maybe it is related to your cancer, maybe she has genuinely spiralled down into antivax-conspiracy-hell and since she knows you don’t share that mindset, she decided she’d rather associate with people who think like her.
Since you tried meeting up and it didn’t work out several times, you could try calling her and straight-up asking her what changed. But if she just deflects, then you know you won’t get an answer and unfortunately, she doesn’t legally “owe” you one. Morally, yeah, but there is nothing you can do if she wants to step away from the friendship if it doesn’t work for her anymore.
So really, maybe the best thing you can do is just trying to make more and new friends. I lost a best friend all of sudden as well two decades ago (she just stopped talking to me all of sudden) and even twenty years later, I still think of her sometimes, but have long realized that no one owes me closure and I just need to somehow make peace with it myself.