The question Two years ago, my closest friend of 20 years stopped messaging me. Until then, we’d had almost daily contact. I was worried that something had happened to her. About a week later she replied and said she was “taking a step back from our friendship”. There was no explanation and no invitation to talk about it. It hit me like a bereavement, and I began to go over the last months and years of our interactions in my head, searching for what might have gone wrong. My mother died five years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child. My friend was a rock for me. I did rely on her heavily at that time.
About a year after her message, I contacted her again asking for more clarification, seeking to understand what had led to it and whether she envisaged our friendship continuing in the future. I wanted to understand her perspective and wanted closure if that wasn’t an option. Her response said that I’d leaned on her too much and that it had felt like a one-way street with me not supporting her. It opened my eyes to the fact that grief is selfish and I apologised for not having the self-awareness to see that perspective for myself, but I never received a reply. Another layer to this is that our lives have developed differently. I’m married with two children, while she is single and doesn’t have kids. And I guess my husband and I are more materialistic than she is.
