VandVsmama
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2011
- Messages
- 8,925
Another poster's experience on this thread got me thinking. Sometimes, you know that it's time to end a friendship when you encounter something so incredibly uncaring and horrible that you can't imagine spending any more time with the person. And other times, the friendship is a slow death over time...made worse in a way by social media and one's reluctance to official un-friend someone on Facebook & other apps.
In my case, my friendship with a roommate from college withered away and then she did a couple of pretty insulting things that resulted in my mental light switch in my head switch to "Off" mode. For example:
Friend & I met freshman year in college. She was new to our dorm & moved in part way into the school year. I helped her move into her room & invited her to join a group of girls that I was friends with because I didn't want her to feel out of place and alone. We totally hit it off. She went to my wedding, and I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. We lived in other parts of the country for several years, then circumstances were such that we both ended up living in the same city when DH & I were about to have children.
She was a lifesaver...we'd compare notes on our kids, we would go out together once a month for a moms' night out (that saved my sanity when my kids were infants), we helped each other out and supported each other. We'd take our kids trick-or-treating together at Halloween every year. And one year, we celebrated Thanksgiving together. It was a lot of fun.
Fast forward a few years to when ODD was entering kindergarten. Looking back, the signs of trouble were there back then. Friend started bragging about how much better her kids' elementary school was than ours, lectured me about how I should use open enrollment to enroll ODD in her elementary school, etc., etc. DH & I chose differently.
2 of her kids were really into dance & she'd brag about how great the dance studio was. We tried it out with ODD & YDD when they were little for about a year. Then it became obvious that to do it more often was too cost prohibitive and we stopped going. She took it as a personal insult.
About a year and a half after that, the moms' nights out started to happen very sporadically. And when she & I would be out to dinner, she would be calling another friend of hers to make plans to meet Other Friend for drinks after Other Friend got off work (Other Friend worked at a restaurant at the time). No invitation came from her to me to join them. Yet there she is making other plans with someone else right in front of me...and bragging about how great this other person is, how much cooler she is than me, etc.
Around this same time, Friend's eldest daughter enters the teenage years. Her ODD is very girly and is a lovely young lady inside and out. Friend would repeatedly make snarky comments to me IN FRONT of her ODD about the ODD's beauty routine, about ODD's popularity at school (she had a lot of friends, unlike Friend, who has always been very introverted). It was uncomfortable to listen to. What kind of mom would be jealous of her own child? I just didn't understand that.
She was a Girl Scout leader for her kids' girl scout troops. But she hated it. At least, I thought she did because she complained about it nonstop. yet she wanted, insisted that I enroll my kids in Girl Scouts, too. We thought about it and decided not to for a couple of reasons. Friend was upset & insulted. If I had enrolled the kids in Girl Scouts, they wouldn't have been in Friend's troop anyway.
Then when my ODD was in 1st grade, we made the decision to enroll her for 2nd grade in a charter school. YDD would be entering kindergarten that year as well. Friend was horrified and personally insulted...again. She wouldn't let it go, told me repeatedly mean things like, "Oh you're going to hate it there. Just you wait. I give it two years and then you'll be back at XYZ Public School and you'll be wishing that you listened to me. You'll see. Good luck with that."
Then she stopped returning my calls. I stopped calling her as often as I used to. That same year on Christmas Eve, I called her house to wish her and her family a merry Christmas. She never returned my call. That was the last straw. Just the year before, we'd had Thanksgiving together and 12 months later, she's not even speaking to me.
Looking back, I think that perhaps she saw the latter years of our friendship in a different way...perhaps she saw herself as superior and more knowledgeable than I and that I relied on her for parenting & child rearing advice and perhaps she got a lot out of that. I, on the other hand, saw us as equals.
A couple of months after the "no return phone call Christmas," I ran into her in the grocery store. I was very happy to see her. We ran into each other in the dairy section. I said to her, "Oh hi, So-and-So! It's so great to see you! What are you doing here this evening?" She looked like she wanted to run away and didn't say a word, so I filled in the conversation with, "Oh, haha! How stupid of me! Of course you're here doing the same thing that I am...grocery shopping! Well, I won't keep you! It was great to see you!" The latter part of that I said to her as she turned her cart the opposite direction and started walking away from me without saying a word.
A woman who I'd been close friends with for about 20 years. Treated me like a total stranger at the grocery store. That was it. I unfriended her from Facebook later that day, removed her contact info from my phone & email, and that was that.
It's now been about 2 years since that happened. My kids are still at the Evil Charter School she said we'd hate...and they're doing just fine. I'm still FB friends with her DH.
In my case, my friendship with a roommate from college withered away and then she did a couple of pretty insulting things that resulted in my mental light switch in my head switch to "Off" mode. For example:
Friend & I met freshman year in college. She was new to our dorm & moved in part way into the school year. I helped her move into her room & invited her to join a group of girls that I was friends with because I didn't want her to feel out of place and alone. We totally hit it off. She went to my wedding, and I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. We lived in other parts of the country for several years, then circumstances were such that we both ended up living in the same city when DH & I were about to have children.
She was a lifesaver...we'd compare notes on our kids, we would go out together once a month for a moms' night out (that saved my sanity when my kids were infants), we helped each other out and supported each other. We'd take our kids trick-or-treating together at Halloween every year. And one year, we celebrated Thanksgiving together. It was a lot of fun.
Fast forward a few years to when ODD was entering kindergarten. Looking back, the signs of trouble were there back then. Friend started bragging about how much better her kids' elementary school was than ours, lectured me about how I should use open enrollment to enroll ODD in her elementary school, etc., etc. DH & I chose differently.
2 of her kids were really into dance & she'd brag about how great the dance studio was. We tried it out with ODD & YDD when they were little for about a year. Then it became obvious that to do it more often was too cost prohibitive and we stopped going. She took it as a personal insult.
About a year and a half after that, the moms' nights out started to happen very sporadically. And when she & I would be out to dinner, she would be calling another friend of hers to make plans to meet Other Friend for drinks after Other Friend got off work (Other Friend worked at a restaurant at the time). No invitation came from her to me to join them. Yet there she is making other plans with someone else right in front of me...and bragging about how great this other person is, how much cooler she is than me, etc.
Around this same time, Friend's eldest daughter enters the teenage years. Her ODD is very girly and is a lovely young lady inside and out. Friend would repeatedly make snarky comments to me IN FRONT of her ODD about the ODD's beauty routine, about ODD's popularity at school (she had a lot of friends, unlike Friend, who has always been very introverted). It was uncomfortable to listen to. What kind of mom would be jealous of her own child? I just didn't understand that.
She was a Girl Scout leader for her kids' girl scout troops. But she hated it. At least, I thought she did because she complained about it nonstop. yet she wanted, insisted that I enroll my kids in Girl Scouts, too. We thought about it and decided not to for a couple of reasons. Friend was upset & insulted. If I had enrolled the kids in Girl Scouts, they wouldn't have been in Friend's troop anyway.
Then when my ODD was in 1st grade, we made the decision to enroll her for 2nd grade in a charter school. YDD would be entering kindergarten that year as well. Friend was horrified and personally insulted...again. She wouldn't let it go, told me repeatedly mean things like, "Oh you're going to hate it there. Just you wait. I give it two years and then you'll be back at XYZ Public School and you'll be wishing that you listened to me. You'll see. Good luck with that."
Then she stopped returning my calls. I stopped calling her as often as I used to. That same year on Christmas Eve, I called her house to wish her and her family a merry Christmas. She never returned my call. That was the last straw. Just the year before, we'd had Thanksgiving together and 12 months later, she's not even speaking to me.
Looking back, I think that perhaps she saw the latter years of our friendship in a different way...perhaps she saw herself as superior and more knowledgeable than I and that I relied on her for parenting & child rearing advice and perhaps she got a lot out of that. I, on the other hand, saw us as equals.
A couple of months after the "no return phone call Christmas," I ran into her in the grocery store. I was very happy to see her. We ran into each other in the dairy section. I said to her, "Oh hi, So-and-So! It's so great to see you! What are you doing here this evening?" She looked like she wanted to run away and didn't say a word, so I filled in the conversation with, "Oh, haha! How stupid of me! Of course you're here doing the same thing that I am...grocery shopping! Well, I won't keep you! It was great to see you!" The latter part of that I said to her as she turned her cart the opposite direction and started walking away from me without saying a word.
A woman who I'd been close friends with for about 20 years. Treated me like a total stranger at the grocery store. That was it. I unfriended her from Facebook later that day, removed her contact info from my phone & email, and that was that.
It's now been about 2 years since that happened. My kids are still at the Evil Charter School she said we'd hate...and they're doing just fine. I'm still FB friends with her DH.
