It Ain’t All About You – Communication Issues with Friends

My friendships with a couple of long-term friends are in an inactive phase, either because we are no longer physically located near each other or because we’re in a different phase in our lives so that the things that brought us together – a job, children, hanging out at the same places – is no longer providing glue for the relationship. We just grew apart.  It happens.

This distance doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t still care for them.  I do and so I try to be in touch on a regular basis.

With some friends this is managed easily.  A phone call every couple of months or so, an annual lunch date, a touch-base birthday or holiday card.  With others, it is quite difficult to connect.  They are the ones to whom this blogpost is written.

I email.  I don’t get a reply.   I leave a phone message.  I don’t get a return message.  I leave another email and/or another phone message.  Nothing.  I send a card or book or article.  I don’t get a thank you or acknowledgment.

One friend I finally reached  when I used the old ring code we used to use when we were dodging bill collectors or boyfriends. 

“Did you get my other messages?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” she replied.
“And you didn’t call me?”
“Well, no.  I’ve been a little down and just didn’t feel like I’d be good company. Blah, blah, blah.”

We talked about the “blah, blah, blah” for a few minutes. And then I pushed back.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I needed help?  That maybe I needed to talk to you?  When I reached out, more than once, in more than one way, it never occurred to you that I might need you to respond?”
“Well, no, it didn’t.”

I exploded (a little bit). ‘IT AIN’T ALL ABOUT YOU!” I exclaimed in a tone of voice just short of a scream.

“Oh.  It never occurred to me that you might need to talk; I thought you were just checking in on me.”
“Harrumph,” I uttered.
“Don’t give up on me,” she asked.
“Even though you’d given up on me?”

I won’t give up on her but I’m telling you, it is so exasperating.  It’s so easy for us to get so caught up in our own drama, day-to-day lives, that we can’t see an SOS.

She’s not the only one, she’s just the second one of my friends I finally got to come up out of her funk/life issues for a minute and engage in dialogue.  My long lost friend Etta, well, I don’t know what planet she’s on.  I just know I'm not a part of it.  While the friendship has effectively been let go, my feelings haven't.  (She would be my longest friend aside from my sister.)

These are people I used to hang-tight with.  One harkens back to high school. Another lived next door to me; we were compadres through our pregnancies and through our children’s daycare years.  She knows my first husband when few people do.  She knows some secrets.

Oh, well.  Some friendships survive a lifetime, others are severed along the way.  The severances are usually clear.  They did something or you did something and now the friendship is kaput!  But the slow-leaking ones that have no precipitating event that would cause them to dissolve those are puzzling.

I say to you, my sisters (and brothers), if your friend reaches out to you, you might want to reach back, because sometimes, it ain't all about you!


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If you like this post, you might also like:
Year of the Friends
You're Not My Effin Friend