One Sided Friendship?
Hi! This is my first post here. I hope everyone who reads this is having a wonderful day, and if you're not I'm sending virtual hugs <3. I was just hoping to make a thread where I can vent a little about a friendship problem I'm having and maybe come back and update later. Advice/comments are welcome if you have them, but please be gentle :)
Ok, here we go. First off, here's some background for context. I honestly only have a couple of friends who stayed in contact after high school. I commute a fair distance to my university every day, so although I've made some very casual friends there, it's been hard to foster anything more than that. My job is one that is mostly executed alone, but there are coworkers who I am friendly with. But really, it's just the three or so friends from high school that I feel close to. One of the main ones was a friend I'll call Alice for the purpose of this thread.
Alice and I have been friends for nearly 8 years now. For the most part, I really enjoy our friendship. We have similar interests that I don't share in common with almost anyone else, and we've got a lot of common history to bond over. She shares things with me about her life that (according to her) she doesn't share with anyone else besides her therapist. I'm so glad she feels safe enough around me to do that.
But the thing is that for a long time, especially these last couple of years, I've really been feeling like the friendship is one sided. She always vents to me, but there's only been a handful of times where she's given me a chance to vent to her. I'm almost always the one to initiate contact or to try to arrange time to spend together, or to remember birthdays and things like that. Because of that, I feel like an afterthought in her life. I was really lonely, and it felt like I wasn't getting any support or acknowledgement from her.
The final straw for me to fully realize why I wasn't happy was honestly really small. I sent Alice a text asking how she was, nothing else, and I didn't get a single response for almost a week. When she finally did text me, she completely ignored my previous text and just boasted about a small victory in her life. Don't get me wrong, I was happy for her. But I felt unimportant. And after she finished being excited over the thing in her life, she stopped texting. It feels petty to care about, but she didn't even ask how I was doing.
I was so tired. I spent senior year of high school feeling incredibly lonely but doing my best to cater to her needs at the time because she was going through a rough patch. Unfortunately that included leaving her alone to sit in the band room with a bunch of her other friends because hanging out with me and the rest of our friend group was "too exhausting". I didn't want to be selfish and petty, but I was and am still just tired of it all.
So, I figured I'd stop contacting her. I'd let her come to me so I could take off that mental weight. I told myself that if she wanted to talk to me, she would. But almost three weeks and I still hadn't heard from her at all. It's like she forgot about me. But with Christmas coming up, and the fact that I would honestly feel terrible if I ignored her on the holiday instead of sending at least a "Merry Christmas", I did just that. Early Christmas morning, I sent her a "Merry Christmas".... and nothing. So late that night, I gave in and I asked if she was okay since I still hadn't heard from her.
She did eventually get back to me with the excuse that she'd been "so distracted by family she forgot to even look at her messages". Honestly, I would get it. I don't blame her if that's honestly what it was. But this is a pretty regular thing, and I had seen her like things on social media during that time anyways, so I know she at least had access to her phone and the time to scroll. Just apparently not to respond to me after three weeks of nothing.
But her response didn't do much for my resolve to let her come to me, and I kept the conversation going for a few texts (aka me asking how she was and how her Christmas was, her giving a vague "mostly good", me asking if she wanted to talk about it, her responding "eh it's all good", me saying something along the lines of "i hope it gets better", and then nothing).
I've been chatting with listeners here and I finally mustered up the courage to decide that the next time we spend time together, I'm going to confront her about it. I'm going to tell her how I've been feeling, and I'm going to tell her that unless things change, she can't expect me to keep putting effort into this friendship.
I've made the decision to do that, but I just feel so insecure about it. I'm worried I'm blowing all of this out of proportion. I'm sure that this entire post has been biased towards my side of things, so I'm worried that even if people who read this end up supporting me, it'll be wrong and it'll be my fault. I'm worried I'm just being a baby about this and what I really should do is man up and stop being weak. I'm worried it's all a skewed perception on my part because I honestly do have bad self-esteem. What if because I'm so anxious, I'm overthinking everything and in reality she's doing nothing wrong? Plus, this is a friendship. Is it normal to get so fired up over a friendship? Is there something wrong with me?
I just don't know what's right anymore. I feel stupid, weak, and clingy. I've made the decision to talk it out but since I can't actually see her until after the new year due to personal circumstances, I have to wait for a while. I'm fairly sure I'm going to chicken out in that time.
That's partly why I'm making this thread. I hope there will be people who will take the time to read this long and exhausting post to tell me what they think is really going on, and to keep me motivated. If you've read this far, thank you. I'd very much appreciate if you could let me keep you updated, but I understand if you don't want to do that. Thanks again for listening to me rant, and I hope you have a wonderful day <3