I’m devastated by how my oldest friends have treated me

QHow should I deal with a situation involving a group of friends I have known my whole life? We grew up and went to school together, lived together at various times, travelled together, supported each other through good times and bad.

We have had great fun, huge sadness and huge success. Some are married, some separated, some single, some became parents, some overcame addiction. We try and get together annually to properly catch up. We have reduced in size over the years and are now a core group of five.

I used to really look forward to these weekends. I felt I got great support from my friends and it was lovely so see them and let our hair down together, dress up, have dinner in a nice restaurant, catch up.

For the most part I have organised the weekends away.

However, over time tension grew between myself and some of the others. I increasingly felt barraged by their questions about my life, personal and business interests. I felt my answers to their questions were ridiculed, dismissed and rejected. Even the price of a holiday I had booked was trashed and I was told that what I was spending was crazy.

A weekend we had recently upset me to such a point that I am losing sleep.

I have a young child with special needs who has always come with me on these weekends with my friends’ agreement as I am a single parent.

I texted the group beforehand to inform them that this would be the case again, but looking back I note that my child was not spoken to at all by members of the group. Everything I said was dismissed, challenged or contradicted in some way. Three members of the group dominated conversation all through the weekend, not even looking in our direction.

I left the restaurant with my child when the first meal was finished and just one friend said goodbye to us.

They arrived back to where we were staying about five hours later and had a drinking session until the early hours of the morning.

Naively, I got up and tried to join in the conversation but it quickly became apparent that I was not wanted. I was told I was talking rubbish. I went to bed confused and excluded.

At breakfast when we sat down at a table, three of my friends got up and sat at another table. The other arrived, walked by us and sat down with the other three. I feel devastated and hurt.

There was no expression of gratitude for arranging the weekend. I have not heard from three of them since. The other texted me to say it was great to see us and wished us both well.

I don’t know if they were upset because I brought my child. But I do know that I can’t be part of this group any more.

Please advise me how I can walk away like a lady. I cannot figure out the problem — is it staring me in the face?

AYOU and your child were certainly made to feel unwelcome and excluded from the group and you wonder if it was because you had your child with you.

In your email, which I have edited for brevity, you said you have always brought your child and this time was no different. So it doesn’t make sense that this was the reason for you to be treated so badly.

It certainly sounds like some decisions had been made by the group as to how they were going to treat you.

No matter what the reason, you didn’t deserve this — if they had a problem with you then you should have been told, rather than flounder around feeling unwanted for the weekend.

Without input from the others, I am unable to speculate as to why they subjected you to such a loss of dignity. But they have made their point and you no longer want to have to endure this.

Send a text to the person who texted you and explain that you have been irreparably hurt by the weekend in which she cannot have failed to observe what happened.

Explain that you have no idea what you have done to deserve this, and that you will no longer put yourself in a situation where it could happen again. At least you will then have taken back control of your life.

I’m really sorry that you have had to go through all of this and be left with such a void.

While we expect to lose friends through death we don’t expect friendships to end on a sour note such as you have experienced.