last one standing
by rantywoman
I was reviewing my single, non-mother friends in my head last night, and it wasn’t pretty. I’ve lost all of them, for the most part.
One to alcohol, another to mental health issues. One to flakiness, as she only reaches out every few months and her return phone calls are unpredictable.
One to incessant demands; I could never do enough for her. I finally ended that friendship when I was in the grips of a chronic illness and she told me she didn’t care about what I was going through because I had done the least of all her friends for her years earlier when she had cancer (this, after visiting her in the hospital and helping her at home).
One to “yintimidation” (defined in an earlier post). She dropped speaking about relationships with me once she found a boyfriend and then subsequently became obsessed with yoga and juice cleanses. She completely stopped engaging with my issues over the phone, although I continued to listen to and counsel her for hours, and during our last conversation, when I finally confronted her, she responded with heartless yoga-speak.
One to the inability to ever make time for me. Every phone conversation began with, “I only have five minutes.” Yet, she was angry when I failed to express concern for a family crisis she was going through. I had no idea, as I hadn’t heard from her in months, including over the holidays. When I brought this up, she ended the friendship.
The one I had the greatest intellectual connection with was the biggest loss. I helped her during a rough transition to a new city. I never minded and was interested in her journey. We talked for hours every week and took a couple of trips together. Then she got a boyfriend, and I heard from her much less. When I told her I had decided to move, she responded with “I can’t go through all that again” and cut off contact. Two years later, after I had made the stressful move alone without her, she popped back up as if nothing had happened. When I expressed wariness, she disappeared in a huff.
I read this comment on a Dear Cary article and nodded in recognition (although I know plenty of difficult married women to):
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/17/i_hate_my_amazing_life/
LW, this is, indeed, a hard question to decide. I am glad you have a friend and go for dog walks – these small pleasures are really something. Your description of the pros and cons of your situation are very realistic, and as you note, a return to your home country is no picnic either – especially as jobs are scarce and friends have moved on.
Concerning your social isolation, I can only point out something from my own situation. For about the last 10 years, I seem to be on my own with few friends. Like you, LW, I cherish those good close friendships, with long conversations, etc. But, in my life, as is inevitable, people moved interstate, founded families, people changed (one friend lost interest in me when she got a high prestige job and new set to hang out with), one friend developed severe bi polar illness, which runs in her family, and is now always slurred with medication … sad. And one way and another, my social contacts reduced. This is just a thing in life, and it is a bit daunting but – as one gets older, it is harder to make friends. I have been making a conscious effort to reach out and be open to others, in order to have more sharing and company in my life.
I wonder if in part, your sense of isolation is that move from being a young person to being in the mid section of life. It might be just as much an issue at home. And I don’t want to sound like a doom sayer, but past the age of 30, single women, in particular, find it difficult to create a good circle of friends. Married women prefer others with partners, and a significant number of other single women are often … well … difficult people. Single for a reason.
According to this entry and, as far as I can tell, your entire blog, you are never to blame. Ever. Will the penny ever drop for you? What is the one thing all of these failed relationships have in common?
Meh. I don’t think Ranty has a particularly bad problem with blame-passing. She seems to acknowledge, on some occasions, that she has acted less than perfectly, and her delving into the depths of her own psyche appears to be a genuine attempt to understand herself, rather than blame others.
I do think that all of these chicks could benefit from simply talking less often. Much, much, MUCH less often. Especially about themselves. But that’s the kind of thing that people gradually learn as they get older, not the kind of thing people understand because someone mentioned it on a blog once.
Hmmm… I assume you are male?
I miss those conversations with my female friends, but yes, I have learned to live without them.
I’ve taken the blame before, and I can say that my part in it is not speaking up sooner… being too meek to make waves. I feared that if I did so the friendships would end, and sadly, I think in most cases they would have (and of course that is what ended up happening anyway). Along those lines, I held onto the friendships too long, because those non-mother friendships are so rare. Had I cared less about having friends in the first place, I would have dropped all of them at the first sign of trouble and not thought twice about it, and it wouldn’t even occur to me to think or write about it.
Also, I am a pessimist (realist?) and do complain and that is too much for a lot of people…something else I have ‘fessed up to here as well (which is why I write now instead of conversing– I figure people are free to stop reading anytime). I think that is the only complaint my former friends have lobbed against me, because really, I am a pretty good friend– I listen, I return phone calls, I don’t call people out on stuff (even in those cases where I should).
No way. The only thing she “acknowledges” is that she should have known what a jerk the *other( guy was (“I am to blame for not seeing what a selfish opportunist the roommate was, even though I basically created everything good in his life.” Ha!) — that’s not acknowledging anything. And the proof is in the pudding: “Last One Standing.” Sorry, but people can smell schadenfreude, envy, self-pity and rationalization a mile away. I have followed this story based on a recommendation from a NoMo thread, waiting for the penny to drop — but she seems locked in to this mindset for good. And I am tired of all the astonishing enabling on these NoMo blogs.
No, I am a woman. Does that make it harder to dismiss?
Yes, actually…
Do you tend to just keep things light with your friends? No long conversations? Do you have a therapist? I’m genuinely curious.
I’m only talking about single No-Mo friends in this post, not my entire friendship circle.
I don’t know what to tell you… I think my complaining has gotten to people, and that is why I have turned to “journaling” my thoughts instead, and every year I try to be a better listener, another thing I’ve mentioned on the blog.
As far as the roommate, I kept my mouth shut for months over his behavior and it was he who screamed at me in volcanic rage over being asked, via email, to clean the bathroom as he had promised. I could understand him being mad about cleaning, but his rage was completely out of line and became personal when it should have remained focused on an impersonal issue.
I never said I created everything good in his life, but he got the idea to move here through me, got his job through my reference, and now is buying a condo in my building after sussing the place out from living with me, a situation which afforded him less than half the rent he was paying before. Do you really not think he got some advantages here?
Honestly, thinking this over, I’m sure my former friends have their sides of the story to tell– I just don’t know what they are. All I know is how things went down and what was actually said to me. But my point to the post– and I should perhaps have written it in a different way– is that it has been exceedingly difficult for me to keep a group of single girlfriends long-term. At this point, I’m admitting to failure in that endeavor. And so I wrote the post for anyone out there who may have had similar experiences and can thus feel less bad and self-blaming about it, as I felt after reading the comment on the Dear Cary article.
Ditto with my roommate– I’m being honest about the fact that my attempt to create a communal-type living experience failed. Would you prefer I left out the bad parts?
Since everything is anonymous, and I’m anonymous, there is no “revenge” involved.
You can look in the “envy” folder for specific instances where I have copped to that emotion.
If your experience has been different, and you have a tight-knit circle of single girlfriends who are not mothers who have stood by your side for decades, please share. It could be a good example of how things can be different. My experience is that most women don’t want to stay in the “single, no-mo” status for long, and so they quickly disown their single friends when boyfriends come along, or they slide into unhealthy behaviors, or they are quick to shed single friends as reminders of what they don’t want to be. I am having better luck forming friendships with divorced single moms who don’t wish to remarry.