With friends like these....

[conuly]

Dear Sahaj: I have a dear friend who has been one of my best friends for over 30 years. As we have gotten older, I am still working, active and healthy, and my friend has precipitously declined in health. She has issues with her knees, her feet, her teeth, her gastrointestinal system and more.

I have not seen her in two years, even though we live about a mile from each other. I have attempted almost weekly to get together, and every time, the same thing happens: She is exceedingly excited but, at the last minute, cancels. I was understanding for a long time, but I have become increasingly irritated. Her last-minute cancellations seem selfish and self-pitying.

It has been alarming for me to watch her health decline so rapidly, as I care for her deeply, but I am running out of patience. She also has a history of drug usage that led me, at one point, to stop being around her for years. I’m mad she didn’t take care of herself then and is now paying the price while seemingly also positioning her poor health in a self-pitying way.

I am struggling with stating my boundaries with her, dealing with my impatience and carrying this nagging feeling that she brought this on herself with her poor decisions and past drug use.

I do love her as a friend. But I really don’t know if she is even the same person anymore.

— Want To Be A Good Friend

WTBAGF: You have built up a lot of resentment from previous experiences with your best friend that may still be unaddressed and unprocessed. You want to be careful to differentiate what is a present-day issue and what is a past issue. Sure, things could have been different if she took better care of herself, but sadly, here we are.

I’m struck by how often you are trying to spend time with your friend when it sounds like she is really sick. Why are you trying to force a “certain” type of relationship that your friend clearly isn’t able to offer right now? You can be disappointed and frustrated, but it sounds like she has consistently been showing you where she’s at. If you have expectations of your friend beyond her capacity to meet them where she is — and you refuse to adapt to the situation as it is — you will continue to be disappointed. You’re holding your friend to a standard of who she was or who you want her to be, and that’s frankly unfair right now.

You need to grieve how your friendship, and your friend, has changed, and you may even need to grieve what you won’t have with her because of certain choices she has made. Being friends with someone for decades means enduring through different life stages, illnesses and choices. By allowing yourself to really feel that loss, only then will you be able to relinquish from the expectations of what you want(ed) from her and truly explore how — and if — there’s a friendship as she is today. Beyond the fact that she cancels in-person plans, have other parts of your friendship from afar — like celebrating milestones or being emotionally supportive and available via phone — also suffered? Only you can decide if the friendship has anything to offer that still feels worth holding on to, beyond history.

I’d suggest waiting to have any conversation until you readjust your expectations and feel more calm to minimize defensiveness and to help the conversation be productive. Be honest, and kind, about how you are feeling about your friendship. Show concern for your friend, but be careful to not blame her, and make sure to use I-language to focus on your feelings. This can sound like, “I really care about you and miss you, but I noticed we’ve had to cancel plans a lot. I feel sad that we don’t see each other, especially when we live so close. I know you’re not always feeling well, and I understand that and want to support you in taking care of yourself, but I also want to share how it’s making me feel.”

Consider also approaching your friend with curiosity so you can try to find a solution together. This may mean finding other ways with lower stakes to make time for each other — whether that’s you offering to spend more time at her house, dropping by to bring coffee and check in, or inviting her to group plans you already have, so if she does cancel, your calendar isn’t as thrown off. It’s possible your friend is embarrassed and doesn’t want you to see her in the state she is in. Try to reframe her “self-pitying” with love: “I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. You sound like you’re in a lot of pain. I know it can be discouraging, but you don’t have to go through this alone.” Offering to do something to support her through her health issues, like driving her to doctor appointments, is a way to genuinely show concern — with the added bonus of spending time together.

While you can be honest and kind to your friend, you won’t be able to change how she decides — or doesn’t decide — to take care of herself or show up in your friendship. When and if she is ready to reach out and show up, you can be there with open arms, but it’s also okay to give yourself some space from trying so hard and to nurture other relationships to get your social support needs met. Take that space and time to see how things progress in the friendship and focus on the parts that do feel good.

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Comments

[conuly]

1. Not that I think these cancellations are "self-pitying", but if they were, listen, it's okay to have some pity for a person whose health is in a rapid decline and who cannot do the things they want to do! Even if that person is you!

2. I think that if LW showed this letter to Friend, Friend would stop making plans with them. That might be best for both of them.

[minoanmiss]

Someone could write this letter about me and if they did I'd want them to just let me go. In fact I suspect this was a factor in a recent friend breakup.

[cereta]

Same. I would also kind of like to know how "past problems with drugs" led to health problems like bad knees and feet. Arthritis (which is what this sounds like) can have many causes, but drug abuse is not among them that I am aware of.

[minoanmiss]

This is where the scientific concept of "mechanism" would be very useful, yes. LW, do you think "using drugs" causes "bad person vibes" to inflict chronic illness on people or something?

[bikergeek]

They can go together. There's evidence that being a childhood trauma survivor leads to both drug use and abuse, as well as an increased incidence of long-term, chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia and CFS, as well as other long-term physical health issues.

[minoanmiss]

Oh absolutely. I was snarking about LW's implied mechanism.

[jadelennox]

same.

also, not for nothing, but... two years? LW, do you know how many of my loved ones have long covid-related chronic conditions now that they're still grieving and don't yet know how to manage? Combined with (given "30 years"), general middle-aged aging onset?

[minoanmiss]

WORD.

[dissectionist]

In an era of Long Covid and autoimmune illnesses affecting hundreds of millions of people, it’s wild that LW automatically assumes the chronic illness is automatically LW’s “fault” and that her “past drug use” caught up with her. Then the columnist just agrees without question with statements like, “Sure, things could have been different if she took better care of herself”.

I’m not saying that it’s automatically *not* the past drug use, just that there’s a lot of autoimmune and other conditions - Ehlers-Danlos comes easily to mind - that can cause GI, knee, foot, teeth, and other problems and cause difficulty going out due to fatigue, pain, etc., and it can often take a decade or more for them to be diagnosed properly. I’m guessing LW Friend’s doctor hasn’t sat down with LW to explain how all of this is directly and only because of prior drug use, and that’s an assumption LW is making and the columnist backed up.

[ethelmay]

The past drug use could have started as treating chronic pain, for that matter. And lots of autoimmune disorders cluster - people with celiac disease have a higher prevalence of autoimmune arthritis, that kind of thing.

[melannen]

If she's really agreeing to plans and then cancelling last minute on a near-weekly basis for *two years* I feel like there probably are friendship issues here beyond just her health and your being judgy about it.

LW, is it really near-weekly or does it just feel like it? And is she actually really excited or are you pressuring her to agree? Have you made any attempts to work with her on better/more flexible ways to make arrangements? Like, I have friends with the kind of disability that makes it hard to know in advance how available or able they will be, and it was pretty tough while they were still working out their limits and how to communicate them, but it shouldn't take two years to settle into "I'd love to see you but I know you can never predict when you'll be up to it, can we make tentative plans for something low demand on you, and you text me day of to let me know if it's going to work?" instead of "I can definitely come! --- oops never mind" repeatedly if you're both willing to try to work around circumstances.

Are you just not accepting/not hearing the tentative maybes with caveats, or is your friend still deep in denial about what she can actually promise? (in either case though: you need a big dose of patience and compassion if you want to keep this friendship, and you seem short on both.)

[ashbet]

Yeah, I try SO HARD not to be flaky with friends (I hate it when plans get canceled, too), but sometimes I just absolutely cannot make it out of the house/out of bed, and things that require tickets in advance give me massive dread — because I never know from day to day whether I’m actually going to be able to spend the spoons to go out to something like a concert.

Whatever the letter writer is doing, it’s not working – I wonder if they’re listening to their friend saying that she needs lower-expenditure hangout plans.

[princessofgeeks]

Wow, this LW is so judgy. And pretty lacking in compassion, I must say.

Also how many times does this friend have to cancel at the last minute for LW to figure out that this method of trying to get together IS NOT WORKING?

Maybe the friend WANTS to get together and YEARNS to say yes and then at the last minute feels too bad to travel to the date or to have company. People who have major health problems and are in pain kind of live in the moment and are getting through their days in a blur, as best they can. They are not usually in a position to step back and look at the big picture at all.

Also the LW is on Mars for not realizing that whatever they may WANT or EXPECT the friend to do, things have changed. The way they can conduct the friendship has changed and will continue to change. LW needs to update their expectations. A lot. It's like they never dealt with anyone in declining health before. Strange.

[petra]

"I've been trying to do the same thing every week for a year and it hasn't worked!"

That's a clue from the universe that maybe the thing you're trying to do is not feasible. Possibly around attempt #3, instead of attempt #52, you should've readjusted your expectations of your friend to more closely match the lived reality.

[redbird]

From the friend's viewpoint, the options may be (a) just decline the invitations, (b) accept them because she wants to do the thing, especially because she had to cancel the last few times, or (c) tell the LW straight out that she wants to get together, but might have to cancel on short notice.

If the friend had written in, I'd have suggested she try option (c). But damn it, I've been in something like the friend's position, and no I didn't want to lose one day a week to medication side effects, and I don't like having to skip parties or museum trips because my health is like that. It's difficult not to feel sorry for myself when I'm staying home while my friends are going out and doing stuff.

Even if LW is right that the friend is suffering the results of past bad decisions, she can't go back and change them now.

[matsushima]

Even if LW is right that the friend is suffering the results of past bad decisions, she can't go back and change them now.
This is what really gets me! LW should be proud of their friend for getting clean!

[matsushima]

One of the many reasons my best friend is my best friend is that we are both disabled/chronically ill and so we understand that sometimes (even often) one or both of us has to "flake out" of plans, no matter how excited we were to see each other. Has LW offered to go over to their friend's house, rather than meeting up elsewhere? That might help.

…carrying this nagging feeling that she brought this on herself with her poor decisions and past drug use.
OK, even if she did "bring this on herself" (barf) addiction is genetic and people don't start using drugs for no reason. You'd think a friend would be 1) sympathetic to the situation(s) that lead their "dear friend" to turn to drugs to cope, and 2) proud of them for getting clean, not judging them for past decisions that have a negative impact on their health now. It's understandable to be upset that your friend is in poor health but comfort in, dump out.

[azurelunatic]

This person is literally the nightmare that so many of us people with health conditions have about our friends and our "friends". Go read up on chronic illness, LW, and maybe hire someone to be a sensitivity coach.

[firecat]

(Identifying far more with the “dear best friend” in this scenario) Nope she’s not the same person any more. If you aren’t willing to accept the person she is now, just leave her the fuck alone. Probably some of the reason she cancels is that she knows either consciously or unconsciously that you judge her and being around you makes her worse.