Best friend let me down after we moved close

[Anonymous]

We are both social and have been actively making new friends and meeting people since we moved here. It’s just been a comfort to have someone we already know to live close-ish when everyone else is new and unfamiliar.

We are happy here overall and won’t be moving back, but this situation definitely stings.

[Anonymous]

She was mad at me due to an event I couldn’t attend because of one of my kids. She does not have kids (married age 45)

[Anonymous]

I had a friend who moved close to me and then expected me to be her social life. She took no initiative to make other friends, join anything, pursue interests.

After she literally screamed at me for not inviting her to a family Easter event that my cousin was hosting (I wasn’t even the host!) I blocked her and never looked back. Too much pressure and stalker syndrome.

Were you giving off Single White Female energy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She was mad at me due to an event I couldn’t attend because of one of my kids. She does not have kids (married age 45)

I was wondering if it was something like this. Full disclosure, I am 49 with no kids and would understand, but people are weird. Were you possibly upstaging her (in her mind?). Making new friends or doing "cooler" (sorry, I don't know a better word) local things that she had not broken into?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She was mad at me due to an event I couldn’t attend because of one of my kids. She does not have kids (married age 45)

Was it an important event for her and a kid's soccer game? Did you apologize or have a conversation about it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She was mad at me due to an event I couldn’t attend because of one of my kids. She does not have kids (married age 45)

Was it an important event for her and a kid's soccer game? Did you apologize or have a conversation about it?

Yes, more details would be helpful. But I've sadly found that childfree friends often have little patience for friends with kids. Kids are consuming and a boring topic of conversation. I get it. It can be a pretty fundamental disconnect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I am so sorry this happened. Are there other aspects of this place you've moved to that you enjoy and can see yourself appreciating for a long time?

Because this, like all things will pass.

Some long term friendships only survive because they are arms-length, via email etc. and when confronted with the day to day they expire.

Its just what happens.

This!!

I’m sorry this happened to you. I had a sort of similar situation with a very long term friend, although we didn’t move or anything.

When the friendship fell apart, my spouse was quick to point out that a lot of the reason the friendship survived as long as it did was because the distance really masked the many differences we had in how we approach life. The distance enabled us to simply focus on our commonalities and kept the friendship going longer than it should have in the first place.

NP. This is a great insight, and this happened to me as well. Best friend from high school days, we kept in close touch over the years (10+) as our colleges and jobs took us to different cities, and even different countries. We used to talk on phone/email constantly. However, our lives were diverging in ways that we could ignore while long distance. The friend was living in the DC area and I moved here with my new spouse when I got accepted to law school. I was shocked at how fast our friendship fell apart, and I was even more shocked at how passive aggressive the friend was to me. The dealbreaker was when I couldn't attend the friend's wedding due to my law school final exams.

Years later, I understand it was jealousy, but it was also just two very different people beginning to go their separate ways. Although I was incredibly hurt, angry, and depressed about it for a long time, the acceptance that comes with getting older and appreciating what was has been awesome. Though I will probably never see the person again (he/she is not the kind of person to want talk about all of this) I can say that I loved this person, and I am grateful that he/she had been in my life during a long stretch of time when I needed someone. I wish the ending had been different, or hadn't happened at all, but I'm grateful to have had the friendship.