‘I’ve had a traumatic event, but my best friend has not really shown up for me’

Question

I recently had a traumatic event in my life and many people, some of them quite unexpectedly, have been really supportive and there for me to talk and listen.

However, the person I considered my best friend has not really shown up in the way I would have done for her in the same circumstances. It has left me feeling hurt, confused and disappointed. This person’s personality has also changed over the past number of years from the caring person she was to being much more hard-nosed and critical of people in general, including mutual friends.

I don’t know if this is just unhappiness, bitterness at life, or signs of depression. I also feel she has been interfering in my life behind the scenes, as some things happened recently that I am curious about and did not make sense. While I feel she is still a good person, her recent behaviour has left me feeling less inclined to engage with her. I am feeling a need for some distance from this relationship, as I feel let down by recent events.

Am I being selfish and unkind? Should I reach out to see what’s going on? What is stopping me is that I feel the kindness is not always reciprocated.

Answer

Kindness is one of the most highly rated characteristics of friendship. Even small children will only maintain relationships if this is part of it. Kindness means that our friends are able to focus on us, perceive our needs and act on them.

If someone fakes kindness we feel it immediately as a kind of dismissal, and our reaction is to avoid that person. Your friend is not being fake but her capacity for kindness seems to have receded and something may have happened to her to cause this. Giving attention to our friends in the form of talking and listening are core to helping understand each other, but sometimes we give those closest to us the least of our attention as we take them for granted.

You feel at the receiving end of this at the moment and are experiencing how much this hurts. When this happens a type of grief sets in as the loss can be huge. There are two other related factors that are essential to friendship: loyalty and fairness. Loyalty in friendship requires that our close friends chose us over other people, ie our friend chooses the seat beside us or chooses to spend most time with us. In essence, it means that we trust that our friend has our back and we can assume their support in any situation.

In addition, strong loyalty allows for things to challenged, as we know the relationship is robust enough to tackle disagreements or differences and more importantly that the relationship is worth fighting for. Fairness and reciprocity are central to the maintenance of any friendship. Our sense of fairness is most likely innate, in that we know when there is an imbalance or when things slip into inequity.

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This does not mean that both friends need to initiate contact or set up social things equally, but if only one person does all the seeking out of the other, it is very difficult to maintain the friendship. It can feel that all the attention is going in one direction and this can be fine as long as there is either previous experience or future expectation that the direction of attention will also go the other direction.

Sometimes, the friendship can go into a pattern of one person doing all the supporting and this habit turns the friendship into a kind of carer/patient role and ultimately this is dissatisfactory for both people. Having a conversation is essential and perhaps not setting it up as a make or break one will allow for a more nuanced approach. Ask your friend how they think the friendship is going and what might it need to thrive. This allows them to consider the state of the relationship and to come up with some suggestions for it.

Say that you can chat again after some reflection, but some honesty on your part will be necessary to make the conversation real. Honesty requires some level of vulnerability and at present you don’t trust your friend fully so this is hard. However, unless you engage with some level of truthfulness the friendship will slip away and you, yourself, will not have behaved as a kind, loyal and fair friend should.

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It may well be that you discover your ex-best friend does not have capacity for friendship and this will mean moving them to a more acquaintance level in your life. This involves grief and a period of loss and if this has to be borne, do it with a sense of wishing them well as this allows for a clearer emotional ground for you.

That friendship is important for you is something you can be happy with as it is a core component of a successful life, and is worth giving serious thought to.