Last weekend I received an email from an old friend. He wants to meet for coffee and catch up.
How cute, you might think. But the first thing I thought when his name appeared in my inbox was, ‘Oh no, I thought I got rid of you!’
It may seem heartless, but I don’t regret “ghosting” Julie five years ago, cutting her off without a word and leaving all her attempts to reestablish contact unanswered, and I’m determined to stay dead to her.
However, we were once best friends. I talked to her every day. She was the person I called when I had good or bad news or just wanted to have a drink and a chat.
So what, you may well ask, would lead me to abandon her in such a heartless manner?
We first became friends 12 years ago, after my daughter Emma, now 18, befriended her in primary school, something I was initially grateful for because I saw Julie as an ally: We were both older mothers and felt like we stood out a little. at the school gates.
Our first conversation was about how difficult it was to juggle full-time work with raising a young child in his 40s. “Nothing has really changed for my husband,” I remember Julie confessing to me. “He tells me I’m in a bad mood when I’m really exhausted; he doesn’t understand how hard it is.”
Hallelujah, I thought. Here is someone who has the same struggles as me. We can be friends.
At first, being friends felt good. But it soon became clear that Julie seemed to like me more when things didn’t go her way (archive image)
At first, being friends felt good. We help each other with various childcare tasks and take the girls on day trips together. At night we would have drinks and complain about our partners.
But it soon became clear that he seemed to like me more when things didn’t go his way.
When I told him I’d gotten a promotion, he launched into a rant about how terrible his own prospects were, making me feel guilty as I wondered if I’d rubbed his nose in my success.
But the time I called her crying, after failing a job interview I’d spent three weeks preparing for, she came straight to me with flowers and a bottle of wine.
A few years ago, I confided in Julie that I had found the printout of a holiday booking for two at a romantic-looking hotel in the Lake District after snooping through my husband Mark’s desk drawer. “I wish I hadn’t seen it,” I remember lamenting.
Julie immediately threw her arms around me, calling me poor and Mark a pig, and offered to be there when I confronted him about the affair he was obviously having.
No, no, I told him, he doesn’t have another woman. This would be part of our silver wedding celebrations the following month. I just felt bad because I had ruined the surprise.
“Well, you must have been suspicious in the first place by looking for evidence of an affair,” she replied angrily.
Now I can imagine his face, dejected, when I told him I had only been looking for stamps. She seemed really disappointed that, instead of throwing me into a crisis, my husband was doing something good.
It turned out that her husband’s flaws went far beyond the fairly benign imperfections of mine. He was apparently a heavy drinker who gambled to the last penny and spent more time in the pub than at home.
After confiding all this to me for the first time in the early days of our friendship, he turned to me and seemed to wait for me to make equally damning revelations about my own home life. When I didn’t, because I couldn’t, she asked me directly if Mark was a disappointment too.
When I told her the truth (that he’s actually a good father and we generally get along), she raised her eyebrows and sarcastically congratulated me on getting ‘Mr. Perfect’.
I instantly felt terrible, like I had somehow let her down.
When his name came up on my phone, I sent it to voicemail. I started taking days instead of minutes to respond to text messages.
Over time, I realized that I often felt this way around Julie (like I felt stuck-up, even entitled), especially when I talked about my life in a broader sense.
I once told him that when I was a child I loved riding lessons, but that my parents couldn’t afford to have a horse. She made fun of me and called me a spoiled brat.
When I got excited about taking my daughter Emma to the same Cornish holiday spot we’d visited every summer growing up, she mimicked my enthusiastic tone.
When I asked her why she was doing that, she said she was jealous because they couldn’t afford a getaway that year. He suddenly “remembered” that he had to be somewhere else and ran off, leaving me wondering what I had done wrong.
This pattern continued throughout our children’s primary school days. ‘Why are you subjecting yourself to this?’ My husband became desperate when I complained about how bad he had made me feel after buying a car.
I felt nervous about pulling into the school parking lot there, because I was worried about how she would react, which I can now see was ridiculous. Especially considering it was a second-hand Volvo estate, not a flashy Porsche.
—What was wrong with your old car? he asked, before shaking his head and telling me I had more money than sense. I was too nervous to point out that our old car was about to break down with 120,000 miles on the clock.
But, as much as he hated that side of Julie, he could also see the good in her. When things got tough, like when Mark was threatened with firing, or when I had a big fight with my sister, she was there for me.
When, five years ago, my mother fell ill and spent a fortnight in hospital, I couldn’t have asked for a better friend to support me through what was a really difficult time. She called me every day to check on me and left me meals she had prepared so I didn’t have to cook.
But when Mom came home and began to recover faster than anyone had anticipated, I turned to Mark and said, half jokingly, “I feel like I should pretend to Julie that things are still very bad, so that she can continue being gentle”. me.’
As the words left my lips, I realized how toxic this so-called friendship had become, and I felt a horrible, rising panic spread from my stomach to my chest.
At that moment I knew I no longer wanted Julie in my life.
So I cheated on her.
When his name came up on my phone, I sent it to voicemail. I started taking days instead of minutes to respond to text messages. The excuses I made for not meeting became weaker and weaker: my head hurt; Mark wanted us to spend more time together; It seemed like it was going to rain.
‘What does the weather matter?!?!?’ she responded to that, which I texted her after she asked me if I wanted to go to the movies. I didn’t bother to respond.
Tried calling and left a short message. “I’m sure I’m imagining it, but I feel like you’re ignoring me,” she said.
I felt a pang of guilt, but not enough to make me want to reconsider the idea of turning her into a ghost.
I reminded myself of how I had begun to edit my life for her benefit: keeping quiet about the good things I did with my family and pretending that work was a source of misery when in reality I really enjoyed my job. Anything that doesn’t make you envious. Not having their negativity in my life felt liberating. The longer I held on, the easier it became.
After she left that message, I just ignored her completely. Doing anything else would only have prolonged the process. She didn’t try to contact me again.
Leaving Julie was easier then than it would have been before the girls started secondary school, because we no longer saw each other every day at the school gates. I had always worried that if I fought with Julie I would ruin Emma’s friendship with her daughter, but now they were old enough to not care if their mothers got along.
And in fact, now that they were in the enormous pond that is high school, they had begun to grow apart, making my breakup with Julie even easier.
I knew for sure it was over between us when we ran into each other at parents’ night a few months later and she just stared at me.
If anyone else had done that, I would have been very worried, but seeing the animosity on Julie’s face was a relief.
Unfortunately, now it seems that she has forgiven me.
But I’m not going back. So I sent his email straight to spam, which is exactly where that friendship belongs.
The names have been changed.