Dear Lorraine,
I have a friend (let’s call her Deb) who I’ve known for thirty-two years, since our kids were in the same elementary school class. She was one of the first people I met after we moved to a new city in our early thirties, and she made me feel at home in a way I’m still grateful for. She’s funny, sharp, a little too honest, which I loved from the start.
What I’ve noticed, especially over the last ten years, is that Deb calls when things are bad. When her marriage was in trouble. When her mother was dying. When her daughter went through a devastating divorce last spring. She calls, I listen, I show up. But when things are quiet, I don’t hear from her. Months go by. I’ve invited her to lunch, to my granddaughter’s birthday, to a concert I knew she’d love. She cancels, or she just doesn’t answer at all.
I love Deb. That’s not in question. But I find myself wondering: is this who she has always been, and I just didn’t see it? Or has something shifted? And honestly, does it even matter, since I’ve already decided this is still a friendship?
Still Showing Up in St. Louis
Dear Still Showing Up,
Let me start with the sentence you almost buried at the end: does it even matter, since I’ve already decided this is still a friendship?
That is not a question. That is an answer dressed up as a question because you’re not quite ready to own it. You have already decided. You’ve decided probably not once but many times over the last ten years, and you keep showing up anyway. That tells you something about yourself that’s worth naming: you are a person who can love someone without needing the love to be symmetrical. That’s not weakness. It’s a specific kind of generosity that most people can’t manage, and you’ve been doing it for a decade without calling it by name.
Now, to your actual question: is this who Deb has always been, or has something shifted? I’d say both, and I’d say it matters less than you think.
Some people are constitutionally oriented toward others only when they’re in pain. This isn’t malice. It isn’t selfishness in the way we usually use the word. It’s closer to a kind of tunnel vision. When life is smooth, they’re fully inside their own life, and the people they love live there too, quietly, without needing tending. When life falls apart, they reach out. To them, the reaching out is the friendship. Those crisis calls are real. The connection in those moments is real. What they don’t account for is that from where you’re standing, the silence between crises feels like something.
Has something shifted in the last ten years? Possibly. Deb’s life sounds like it’s been genuinely hard. A troubled marriage, a dying mother, a daughter’s divorce. People managing that much loss at once often lose the capacity to be curious about anyone else’s ordinary days. They’re not indifferent. They’re at their limit. That doesn’t excuse the missing birthdays and unanswered invitations. But it explains something about the shape of the friendship, which is worth understanding even if it doesn’t make you feel better.
Here is what I keep coming back to: what you’re describing isn’t a friendship that has disappeared. It’s a friendship of a specific shape. Deb is your person for the hard moments. She calls when her world is burning, and you answer. Thirty-two years of that is not nothing. It’s a particular kind of bond, and it’s real, even if it looks nothing like regular lunch.
What I’d invite you to stop doing is pretending the friendship is symmetrical when it isn’t. That pretending is what’s wearing on you. The frustration you’re not quite naming in your letter comes from expecting reciprocity that isn’t coming, then feeling guilty about the expectation, then absorbing both of those feelings quietly, alone. That’s a lot to carry. You don’t have to keep carrying it silently in order to be a good friend.
There’s one thing I notice you haven’t mentioned doing: telling her. Not as a complaint. Not with an accounting of all the concerts she didn’t come to. Just as information, the way you’d tell someone something you genuinely thought they’d want to know. Something like: “Deb, I miss you when things are going well for you. Call me when nothing is wrong.” That’s a short sentence, and a thirty-two year friendship can hold it. What she does with it is up to her. But you will have said the true thing, which has its own value, independent of her response.
You can love Deb, fully and without apology, and also know she’s not your person for the Tuesday afternoon call, the good-news call, the ordinary week. You can hold her as someone who matters and stop expecting what she hasn’t shown you she can give. Those two things aren’t in conflict. They usually go together.
You asked whether it matters that you’ve decided this is still a friendship. It matters to you. You’re the one who keeps showing up. You get to decide what that means.
Lorraine
