Dear Prudence,
In March, a good friend of mine, “B,” moved several hours away. She moved because she realized that her mother had given her a lot of mental health issues, including an eating disorder, and she didn’t want her daughter to grow up with that kind of influence. It’s taken her a long time and a lot of therapy to realize just how terrible her mother was to her. I was happy for the realization but sad to see her go. Due to work-related trips, neither of us have been able to see each other until a couple of weekends ago. I called her the week before to set up plans and she said Saturday afternoon would probably be the best, but she needed to wait and see how her kids were doing. She has two kids under three, which I realize is difficult, but I’ve always been flexible with her. She mentioned she was incredibly stressed, so I didn’t want to push finalizing plans with her. Saturday comes and goes without a word from her. So Sunday morning I texted her to see if we could do brunch or lunch and she said she was already heading out of town and that she’d text me the next day.
Well, Monday comes around and her sister posts a ton of photos online of all the things they did over the weekend, things I could have been invited to, but wasn’t. Then, B sent me a rant about all the things her family made her do. No apology for not seeing me or even texting me until she left. I was too upset to answer. When I am that kind of upset, which is rare, I need my space. B knows this. I didn’t answer her text on Monday or the phone on Wednesday when she called. Friday she texted me saying she was worried about me. I told her I was busy and would talk to her the next week. She asked if I was upset about something and I said, yes, but I’ll call you next week. She didn’t listen and texted me asking what I was upset about. I lost it a bit after that and while I was able to scale everything back because we were texting, I think I may have overstepped.
I told her that I was upset that she did all these things with her family and that I didn’t get so much as a text, which takes five seconds to send. She got upset too and said I didn’t understand what it was to be a mother and she thought I forgot since I never texted. I told her that was BS, I did text her on Sunday, but I didn’t want to add to her stress by trying to finalize plans. That this wasn’t about her being a mother, it was about her prioritizing her crappy family over someone who has supported her for decades. She texted me that I was starting to act like her crappy family. We haven’t talked since. I feel so weird about the situation. Was I really being that unsupportive? Is it too much to expect a simple text update? There were things I could have done that day that I missed out on because I was waiting to hear from her. Am I in the wrong here?
—Not So Supportive