Dear Bel,
I’m hoping you can help me with something I feel both sad and guilty about.
I’m 48 and I’ve had the same best friend for 40 years. We’ve been through so much – we met at school, lived together in our 20s, travelled together, were bridesmaids for one another and are godmothers to each other’s children.
Ours has been a deep, defining friendship. But now I think I’ve outgrown it.
Over the past decade, she’s become increasingly negative. She complains constantly – often about the smallest things – and I find myself avoiding her now because I feel drained after every meeting or phone call.
Her life is, by most measures, comfortable and privileged, but she seems endlessly dissatisfied.
Meanwhile, my own life has been full of real challenges and I’ve had to work hard to find peace and joy where I can. I now try to focus on the positives — but with her, that feels impossible. What hurts most is that I no longer feel I can share anything with her – the good or the bad.
If work goes well for me, she finds a way to make me feel guilty or turns it into a complaint about her own life. And if I open up about a struggle, she often responds competitively, as if I’m entering some kind of misery contest. Everything always circles back to her.
I’ve tried over the years to gently explain how I feel but nothing ever changes.
As I approach my 50s, juggling full-time work and motherhood, my priorities have shifted. I just no longer have the energy for the things, and people, that don’t enrich my life.
This friendship once meant the world to me but it no longer feels like a safe or equal space. I feel torn between loyalty to the past and protecting my present peace. Is it wrong to want to step away from something so long-standing? If not, how do I do it with kindness and grace?
MAISIE
Bel Mooney replies: Forty years is a very long time. I’m imagining you sharing toys, making a noise and later giggling over boys.
Letting off steam to each other about annoying parents, worrying about A-levels, sharing thoughts about new boyfriends, chatting about travel, swapping job frustrations after college, wondering if this particular guy is ‘the one’… and so on. There is such an accumulation of riches there. The tears two beloved friends cry on each other’s shoulders when young are diamonds in disguise. They leave marks that last for ever.
The trouble is, we all change – but not necessarily at the same pace.
Different career patterns, numbers of children, family problems, new friendships, issues with ageing parents… all such matters affect how each of us will cope with daily life. Maturity may bring a shift in political views, too, which can cause awkwardness, while new interests as well as varying levels of prosperity can cause chasms between friends if one of them feels left behind.
More complication can be caused by what you think of a friend’s partner (which can be very negative) and also whether the two spouses get on.
When old friendships like yours do survive the passage of time it can only be achieved by a determined effort to withstand an inevitable ebb and flow.
But now you say you have reached the stage where the effort doesn’t seem worth making.
You make a perfectly sympathetic case but, in spite of your rational justifications, I’m thinking this makes you more sad than you admit.
So let’s do a little experiment.
Imagine your friend has written to me instead. What would she say? That after all this time you have withdrawn from her and she doesn’t know why? That she knows you lead a more glamorous life and she can’t help feeling jealous? That it would be better never to see you again than struggle with this sense of rejection?
If I were you, I’d ask myself how you would feel if she ‘ghosted’ you because of those feelings? Would you be angry, bewildered or sad? You see, I don’t think you’d like it.
Even when you make new friends who fit more neatly into your current lifestyle, the moments shared with a very old friend (or perhaps a cousin) are unique. None of the people you know now knew you then – but this friend did.
Once she was there when you needed her – and even if she let you down many times after that, the early experiences can’t be erased.
So I think you have to take things very slowly, because if she disappears from your life, everything you shared – all those memories – will go, too.
If your friend seems ‘negative’, it could be because something really awful is going on in her life. She might be looking at you as you appear to be bestriding the world – and feel terrible about herself.
So cut her some slack – to the same degree that you want such generosity from her and indeed from all your friends.
Honestly, I do understand your feelings because I’ve had them myself.
But I wouldn’t ‘step away’. I would continue to bear the burden of this friendship with ‘kindness and grace’. And one day I suspect you will be glad.
I want a loving woman, not a cold wife
Dear Bel,
I have been married for 25 years. My wife is reserved. I thought it would change after we got married but she is emotionally cold. We have three adult children.
Ten years ago, there was a major shake-up in my work and she was terrible – no sympathy or support. The marriage wasn’t the same.
I work days and she works nights, so she can’t go anywhere with me and I don’t see much of her.
I hate it but she says she loves her job – but she doesn’t need it as we are quite well-off.
A few years ago, I found companionship in another woman. I left home for a month but my wife created hell, saying she loved me and was nothing without me and would do anything.
So I went back. But she didn’t change and she didn’t give up her job.
We rowed a lot – and, six months ago, I left again after one huge bust-up. She kicked me out but was begging me to go back the next day. She threatened to kill herself and said I’d be a pariah if she did.
I feel emotionally bullied. There’s nothing left between us but I can’t escape. Recently, I went to Relate and they sympathised with my ‘big problem’ but didn’t really give advice.
I feel my wife only wants me for security. I’m not perfect but all I want is a loving, fun woman.
She is a good wife in that she does housekeeping and paperwork but it’s not enough.
She says she’s not a person to kiss and hug but I thought if you loved someone that’s what it would be like. I feel lost.
STEVE
Bel Mooney replies: Readers often say they love reading a letter then imagining what they’d say before checking my reply.
Today they’re likely as flummoxed as I am, as this problem seems as insoluble as it is desperately sad.
Men are more likely to be supportive and wish you’d stayed away that first time. And women? Many will feel sorry for your wife, because you ‘found companionship in another woman’. But surely most will, like me, feel pity for you both.
Your longer letter reveals you and your wife have sex from time to time but there is no love in it, with the result that you ‘feel like a used part’. I imagine she feels the same.
You also say she wants you to ‘take her out when there is a function so you look good – Mr and Mrs Perfect’. Presumably, these events are at weekends but, anyway, it must strain you both. Loveless coupling at night and public pretence. This isn’t a marriage, is it?
This impasse must stem from when you had your work crisis and got no support from her. I can see it would have been impossible for you to get over the sense of abandonment. Was she anxious about loss of face if you were sacked? It would fit with her wanting you to look good at events.
Female readers may not like me saying this but, in my experience, some women cling to unhappy marriages for security and status.
I wonder if in the very bad times (especially when your wife threatened suicide), you two ever discussed the future. She couldn’t let you go but refused to change. You went back out of duty, not love. There is no future in this.
Ask whether she wishes to face ageing with a miserable husband. Or if there is a chance of a new life for you both apart. Why not suggest, calmly and affectionately, that you both go to counselling? Remind her you have one life and the sands are running out.
You must know she will never be ‘loving and fun’, so you either accept it or act for change.
