One sided friendship, what would you do?

laughingcow81

I too have a friendship like this, and it also gets me down from time to time. We are very old friends, we have known each other since we were about 5 years old. However, in recent years we have drifted apart slightly, because I moved away to university and eventually settled in London, whilst she still lives in the town we grew up.
I try to make the effort to see her when I am back home, but since I am only back one weekend in every four or five, and I also arrange to see other friends, we don't see each other as often as I would like but we do tend to email and text.
The trouble is that when we do arrange to meet, she nearly always lets me down the day before or the same day with a long text message, with an excuse that she's ill, she's got a headache or she's had to look after her budgie, or something like that. At first, it was fair enough, I understand people get ill and sometimes things don't go to plan. However over the years this has happened on practically every occasion where we have arranged something and it has got to the stage where I am so fed up I don't ask her to do anything anymore.
We have arranged for her to come up to London to visit me in my new flat, along with another mutual friend who she also lets down regularly - myself and the other friend are waiting on tenterhooks to see if she actually makes the visit!
Since I don't see her much, I find it difficult to say what I think about the situation to her. I think she lacks confidence and is quite insular, and doesn't realise that she keeps letting me down like this. While I am bothered about our friendship, I also am grateful for the times we do actually get to see each other and that is the reason why I choose not to say anything to her as yet. If the situation changes I may well have to find the words to say what I am thinking about our friendship and see what reaction I get.

Feisty_Fairy

Thanx for all the advice peeps, i did text her yesterday and she text me back last night saying she had been to a psychiatric appointment and was feelin bad so went to bed, she mentioned she was up and about and OH had gone out so i said if id known i would have gone round, you will never guess what she replied with! I would have suggested it but MAN UTD are on tonite and its Champions league man!!!! Sorry hun!:eek::eek::eek::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

SO i AM going to tell her, i am gonna go see her one day next week if i can and tell her how it is, if she doesnt like it then tough!:)

fluffnutter

Mental health issues are not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's sometimes difficult to be the best kind of person you can be when you're miserable but expecting your friends to endlessly suffer with you in your psychiatric crises is one of the quickest ways to ruin a relationship. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect and we'd all do well to remember that works both ways. We all like to give our friends a little bit extra when they're down, rightly so. But taken too far leads to resentment and feeling that you're little more than an emotional punchbag.

And the best way to help people with mental health problems is to behave as normally as possible anyway. Too much indulging them delays recovery.

Be kind to your friend Feisty_Fairy. And gently remind her to be kind to you too.

Any

Friendship? I would not call this friendship at all.
I completely agree with your OH.

And I think you need to boost your self confidence. You think what you did what nasty when you told her you are in your jammies???

Well I think it was nasty when she swaped you for football without a thought...

She is using you and she is brilliant manipulator... that's why she is going on about being rubbish friend.. she knows she is but she is feeding you with this talk so you feel sorry for her and let her off so she doesn't have to make any effort.

kitekat

You may find that if you change tactics with this frienship that the friend no longer wants to know,this can sometimes happen when one person makes a change to their usual way of dealing with another person,then you will know if the friend really values you or not or is only happy when you are being the constant giver.

maysmummy

kitekat wrote: »

You may find that if you change tactics with this frienship that the friend no longer wants to know,this can sometimes happen when one person makes a change to their usual way of dealing with another person,then you will know if the friend really values you or not or is only happy when you are being the constant giver.

I agree So use the time when you are being 'cool' towards this friend to seek out old friends, or make new ones as I can't see this person being your BFF:(

Stephb1986_2

Feisty_Fairy wrote: »

Ooh thats horrible of her to do that to you, you are obviously better off without her then!:mad:

I live in warwickshire, but im from manchester originally, why?:o

I don't have any friends now just incase they use me sad I know but I have to protect myself.

I'm from manchester shame you aint up here still we could of been friends

Steph xx

retro_bluebell

Stephb1986 wrote: »

I don't have any friends now just incase they use me sad I know but I have to protect myself.

I'm from manchester shame you aint up here still we could of been friends

Steph xx

sorry for butting in but I just wanted to say Im a bit like that now I dont like to get close to people as unfortunately I have been too trusting in the past and been dumped on from a great height...I do have good friends just a couple, one lives close by but the other 2 live 250 miles away...dont worry about not having "those" kind of friends you dont need them

retro_bluebell

Feisty_Fairy wrote: »

Thanx for all the advice peeps, i did text her yesterday and she text me back last night saying she had been to a psychiatric appointment and was feelin bad so went to bed, she mentioned she was up and about and OH had gone out so i said if id known i would have gone round, you will never guess what she replied with! I would have suggested it but MAN UTD are on tonite and its Champions league man!!!! Sorry hun!:eek::eek::eek::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

SO i AM going to tell her, i am gonna go see her one day next week if i can and tell her how it is, if she doesnt like it then tough!:)

to be honest you sound like you ar better off without her.....Id let it all out if she doesnt like it then you have your answer and she doesnt have the same view of your friendship....you wont lose anything.

minerva_windsong

I had a friend when I was younger who was like that, but it tended to be that she would dump her friends for blokes, muck said blokes about (mainly by getting new male friends and getting very close to them), and then come back to us when it all went wrong. She also thought the world revolved around her - our relationship began to fall apart when I was the only one in the group to side with another friend after a falling out (in my defence, we were 17) - and that she was always right, but was also a massive drama queen and very clingy in terms of needing that attention.

I put up with it for six years because I was (and still am, but nowhere near as bad as I was then) a bit neurotic about upsetting people and them not liking me, but looking back now I think it actually made my confidence issues worse. In the end I cut off all contact with her when I went to uni and haven't spoken to her in almost five years now.

There's a quote about friendship being like a bank account - how you can't keep withdrawing on it and not making any deposits. I think now might be time to think about closing the account and taking your money elsewhere (as it were).