Monday, September 1, 2008

Should I Bother?

Not much has happened with the best friend-turned-pregnant-non-friend saga. The only contact I’ve had with BF was receiving a brief happy b-day e-mail back in July which I responded to with an equally brief thank you and best wishes email.

I don’t really socialize with BF’s sister much, but we occasionally have reason to see one another. She stopped by last week to pick up some of our leftover wiring for her kitchen remodel and we chatted for a bit.

Out of some sort of politeness/self torture, I asked about BF. I didn’t really expect it to be so hard hearing about how happy BF and her husband are now and how she’s showing already and will be finding out the sex of the baby soon.

I know it’s always going to be difficult to hear stuff like that, but it’s harder knowing that so much is going on in her life and I’m no longer privy to it first-hand. I know it can't be fun dealing with a frustrated infertile friend, but to be rudely dismissed from her life now that it’s not so convenient is a hard pill to swallow. I always thought that good friendships weathered the tough times.

I’ve often wondered if it wasn’t just the pregnancy hormones leading BF to be so insensitive and quick to withdraw, and now that she’s hopefully leveled out, she’s just too embarrassed to deal with the situation. Or…she’s not who I thought she was and I’m better off without her.

I would like it to be the former and have things back to normal. We've know each other for more than half our lives and been good friends for the last 10+ years. But in all honesty, it’s not like we talked every day or even every week. So her absence from my life isn’t all that acute. It’s more like the idea of her absence is more painful. Kind of sad, but true.

I’m still pretty pissed that this happened in the first place. One part of me doesn't want to be the bigger person, I just want to put this behind me and write her off. I feel like I'm already on the losing end of this debacle anyway. At least she gets a baby at the end to fill the void of a former friendship. What do I get? But... I feel like I should make some sort of attempt at reconciliation, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Know what I mean?

Which brings me around to the same question I had before, do I try to fix this or leave it alone?

Her b-day is in about a week, so I have to decide soon *IF* I want to contact her or not. I'm still pretty angry, so it might not be an easy road, especially if I have to do all of the work.

As I see it, I have several options *IF* I do want to make an attempt.

Option A: Treat her birthday as she did mine and e-mail her. It takes minimal effort and has minimal impact as far as our “friendship” goes.

Option B: E-mail her a happy b-day and go a little further by inquiring after her health, goings on, husband, etc. -Carefully staying away from any hostile accusations and hurtfulness.

Option C: Send an actual card to her house. Also rather safe, but it does have a little extra thoughtfulness. (I’ve already bought a very benign card, not the usual Shoebox-snarky- best friend-card ‘cause we’re not there anymore)

Option D: Similar to option B, sending the card and including a hand written note to break the ice and offer her an excuse to contact me if that’s what she’s waiting on.

Option E: Of course the riskiest of all and least likely to happen, phoning her up on her b-day for an actual chat. This would take extreme amounts of courage (possibly liquid, ha-ha) on my part as I would have to remain composed in regards to our friendship meltdown AND the pregnancy, assuming that she could bring her-self to speak to a lowly infertile such as myself.

What do you say? You guys give great advice and I’m in need of some discourse that isn’t solely taking place in my neurotic head. ;)

P.S. I’m out of town this week, so I don’t know how often I’ll be able to check in, but I’ll do my best!

3 comments:

Soapchick said...

I vote for option D. I don't think you are quite ready for option E, there is still a lot of IF baggage that might get in the way. Option D shows you are making an effort. However I don't really have the answer here, hoping it just comes to you and you are lead.

Barb said...

Oh my goodness! I guess it really depends on what makes you most comfortable and how ready you are to let go of the anger part of it.

If I wanted to mend the relationship, I'd probably go with the card and note and then a little phone call afterwards to see if she received it.

But I've also gone through this unfortunately. I lost my best friend of 10 yrs because she was getting divorced and couldn't handle DH's and my happiness (which I could understand, but I would have been happy with her asking me to step back for a while and if she didn't want me to mention DH or didn't want to see him) AND she couldn't relate to my infertility since she didn't even know if she wanted kids. I really needed her then, so it kicked my ass and made me cry many nights. She didn't really want or need my help with the divorce however, b/c she just does emotional stuff on her own. It was awful.

But when she made it pretty apparent that she didn't want to keep working on it, I realized that our friendship had been like this for a while... me trying to be with her, work on our relationship etc, while she was with me only when it was completely most convenient to her. She lived 40 mins from here and we NEVER EVER even did a lunch date or anything. It sucked. We started doing once a month dinner dates for a little while, and I saw her more, but then she dropped that when things got hard again. She made me cry so many times in our relationship b/c she just "couldn't be there" that I decided it was for the best after all. She's not causing me so much pain anymore.

I guess I'm just relating my story so you know that you aren't alone and aren't a bad person. I felt so badly about myself during all that, but then I realized that it wasn't all my fault. I hope you know that about yourself too.
xoxo and good luck
B

JW Moxie said...

I say don't do any more than your heart can take. If it's too much for you to be open to hearing about her developing pregnancy, don't open that door. Sometimes it's necessary to think about self-preservation. I think I'd send a card.

Thanks for stopping in to comment on my blog. Your blog was one of the first that I started reading diligently when I came into blogland!