I feel so abandoned by everyone
DEAR BEL
A FEW weeks ago I had to have an operation on my left breast. It turned out to be a blocked duct and nothing more serious.
I told my six long-standing good friends (we’ve known each other for some 40 years) that I’d be out of action for a few weeks.
They live between 100 and 150 miles away. What’s upset me is that not one has been in touch to see how I am. When one had an accident, falling downstairs, I phoned and sent flowers.
The same with another friend who had a double mastectomy. But I haven’t received a card, flowers, or even a phone call, and feel very let down.
I don’t want to ruin our friendships as I find it hard to make friends. We all used to live fairly near, got married and had families and would see each other as a group three to four times a year. Then my husband and I had to move from the South Coast to Suffolk. I hate it here.
The neighbours are very unfriendly — don’t want to know us ‘southerners’ … taking all their houses and jobs etc. We can’t afford to move back. If it weren’t for my three-day supermarket job, I’d never see anyone.
Even when I came out of hospital, my husband hardly helped.
I know he has his own health issues (arthritis in his knees and a heart attack 12 years ago) but only once did he make dinner and get me a cup of tea. Instead of resting, I’ve had to do the washing and ironing and I’m unhappy.
What am I supposed to do? Our children have their own families to deal with, so I haven’t been able to rely on them. I feel my life is not worth anything, and my thoughts for my friends are unwanted. So do I just pretend all is OK and carry on sending cards even if they are bad friends — or lose them? SALLY
This isn’t the first time i’ve had a letter about disappointing friends. Most of us have experienced that feeling of being let down — and the hurtful suspicion that perhaps a certain chum means more to us than we do to him or her.
Recently an old friend who’d been for supper emailed her thanks with the comment that she’d ‘missed’ us — when it’s me who always does the inviting!
My response is a smile and a shrug because that’s what she’s like — and i’m very fond of her indeed. With all faults — as the antique dealers say. And maybe we should think of old friendships as like rare old china — valued even with chips and cracks.
it must have been so frightening to have that health scare, and i completely understand how sad you felt that those distant friends didn’t respond to you as you did to them. All i can suggest is that you try to be philosophical about it because to complain to them would be too needy — and potentially destructive. Don’t think of them as ‘ bad friends’, just people caught up in their own lives.
so yes, i think you should continue to send cards because doing so honours the shared past.
Yet there’s more going on within this letter. First, it bothers me that you have so readily accepted that you don’t make friends easily. have you ever asked yourself why? Do you find it hard to ask people questions about themselves? You will never make friends if you are closed off and perhaps a little incurious. But is the real problem this relocation that you so hate? i’m afraid your sweeping generalisation about resentful suffolk dwellers simply does not ring true.
People often act as a mirror to who we are ourselves — so that friendly folk will probably find others friendly, and so on. You may not like the fact that i’m saying this, but i believe you have to help yourself. You hate where you live and dislike the people, so what kind of face do you turn to the world? Think about it.
On the subject of resentment, you are unhappy at home, too. is this the real issue here? You tell me that your scare was ‘nothing more serious’ than a blocked duct, but then complain that your husband didn’t treat you like a real invalid.
There’s something illogical there, and it suggests you have always wished that he would help more. Like many married couples, you settled into roles. But if you are to grow older together in harmony then give and take is absolutely essential.
if i were you i’d cut the ironing down to the bare minimum (the younger generation never irons) and ask him to help with other chores — bearing in mind that he’s not in the best of health. Tell him gently that you have to take care of each other.
i worry that you are locking yourself into discontentment because you dislike suffolk and are perhaps suddenly aware that none of us lives for ever. Casting off your old friends won’t help.
Now you must make a conscious effort to examine the life you have and vow to make it better. Tell yourself you can and will make new friends, while keeping in touch with the old.