My close friend and I have drifted due to her fiancé.
I met my best friend 11 years ago, you know those kind of friends you get so close to they’re better than a sister? That. Almost everyday we’d have coffee together and/or lunch while we were both on maternity. Never missed a birthday or a child’s birthday. Out on the town at the weekend once a month. We know each other inside out and have always been there for each other.
Then she met a man, I encouraged it, I was friends with his sister (I’m not now) and he’d taken a shining to my friend so I told the sister that my friend was single and had shitty past experiences so this might be just what she was looking for. Well they hit it off! They began dating.
Her whole personality changed and she’d avoid me to hang out with him and sometimes his sister too, which I expected in a new relationship. I said all of these things to her in person and via text, that she seemed different. The usual jokes we’d have, stopped. The nights out stopped. The coffee stopped. Her laughter disappeared because he didn’t approve of what she was laughing at. Didn’t like her hanging out so much, so late, drinking. Didn’t like not knowing where she was or who she was with.
Someone, we know who now, started to stir the pot and said that I had been bad mouthing her and her changes, which as I said above, I’d done to her face. So, not true. For 18 months we stopped speaking despite what I said to mend the bridge. In that time the relationship between her and him, and his sister got stronger. They got engaged. They had a baby. I missed all of it and it absolutely broke my heart, I missed my best friend having a baby.
Eventually I thought f**k this I’m going to reach out and prove to her that that’s not what happened, so I did. I didn’t care who I annoyed so I screen shot all the horrible things that had been sent to me by people she trusted while we weren’t speaking. She couldn’t believe the back stabbing of others and we made up! She finally saw that I had told the truth. For a while it was good despite her phone always going off whenever she was with me. Texting her and calling her, saying he missed her when she had popped in for a coffee. Calling her to him if we were all in a room together so she’d have to go into another room away from me.
Her fiancé doesn’t talk to me or acknowledge me when I’m right in front of him. Even when I say hello. His mother goes to friends houses and talks badly about me and they then pass it on, the sister does the same. My friend constantly defends him and says it’s just his personality and that he doesn’t like people. Any people. He treats her children differently to the baby they had together, shouting at them and bossing them about. No affection or security that he loves them as his own. I don’t want to lose her again so I keep my mouth shut.
We recently attended an event together and I ended up sitting alone! He wanted to sit with his family in a corner and so I was allowed to be by myself the whole evening. He didn’t acknowledge me in any way and his sister and mother shot me dirty looks the whole evening. My friend allowed all this and said nothing. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable and feel she had to choose so I left.
It is not my place to tell her not to marry this guy because she loves him and is happy but she is questioning their relationship and messages me as such. They don’t sleep in the same bed, they have no sex life, he treats her children differently to the baby etc. I have to remain unbiased and tell her it’s probably just a phase and will work out if she talks to him and says what it is that bothers her. Maybe he will change. When actually all I really want to do is scream at her to run and not marry into this really strange family!
The final straw was when I said that it had been over 6 months since I’d seen her or had a coffee, so let’s go out for a meal and some cocktails. She turned me down and said she doesn’t drink alcohol anymore. I said ok so what’s wrong with a meal and Diet Coke then? No reply. I said or maybe a quiet coffee!! She replied that it depends because when he is off work they hang out together. I just don’t know what to do. She is unhappy, she tells me as such but then it’s like something comes over her and it’s all forgotten until the next time and I feel like she’s drifted away again.
Now we barely text at all. Let alone see each other and this year for the first time in 11 years, she didn’t do anything for my children’s birthdays. No text or card. Nothing. I messaged her and asked what she was up to, you know to jog her memory! She replied that she wasn’t up to much just hanging out at home watching TV.
Sorry this is so long. Well done getting this far!!