Friends? (Part 1)

[Otrere]

I have a friend who comes down every Tuesday night and has done for about 4 years. My little girl (age 2 1/2) loves her to bits and gets excited about my friend coming down to see her and my friend loves her to bits too and would happily babysit her if we asked but we've only ever asked her twice.

Well I really don't know what has happened but she's
stopped coming down. I can't think of anything that we
might have said or done to upset her ... except she used to come down every week and we'd take it in turns cooking dinner and then she started making excuses not to come down about 3 months ago like: she has to go to
Birmingham with work and will be back late, or she isn't
well etc., .... but she used to leave not telling me till mid-afternoon Tuesday and then I said if at all possible (cause I know its not always possible) I'd prefer more notice if she wasn't coming down because of organising cooking tea etc. (and we've seen her since and she's been OK - no problems - so I honestly don't think it's this that caused a problem).

Then about a week later she said the next 2-3 months she was on a computer training course and she would be getting fed so we would be better off cooking ourselves and leaving her out of it but she'd still like to come down on a Tuesday night if she could, which I said of course she could.

[Otrere]

Friends? (Part 2)

Now we've only seen her about once in the last 5 weeks
and no idea why... we only saw her about twice in 6 weeks before I said anything about the dinner thing.

She keeps saying this computer course is keeping her
late at work (do you know any computer courses using one new system that take 2-3 months to train on?) or that
she is so busy at work that she's not finishing till 6pm - so why can't she come round at 6.30pm instead of 5.30pm?

I didn't email her to ask her if she was coming down this week and so I've not heard from her at all. Then if I text her she often doesn't bother replying and then says that she ran out of credit on her phone (she is ALWAYS using that as an excuse).

I know I sound really whingey but I feel really hurt and upset because I have been friends with her for about 12 years and honestly don't know what is going on even though I have asked her I had no reply - I'd ask her to her face if only we ever saw her!

Anyway I feel like that counts her out as a babysitter
too??

I know that you don't know my friend or what is going on
in her head but what would you make of this situation?

[landie]

Not so much a question of what I think about it, more of a, what are you going to do about it?

If you value this person's friendship then you will have to take the initiative and explain how upset and perplexed you are, face to face. Explain it with the same sincerity that you have posted here, and hope for the best.

[woofgang]

otrere, are you male or female? I am assuming that you are a single parent? I am not being nosy, but some of the interpretation I might put on your friend's actions hinges on those things. Tha t is of course if you still want comments after landie's excellent advice!

[Otrere]

Woofgang - am a married mum with a wonderful husband and a 2 year old little girl and even he thinks something is right about the whole thing. My friend lives with her partner and has been with him for about 8 years so its not like she's newly in love or anything....?

Anyway she texted me last night to say "Only have 18p on phone and just switched on. Sorry not been down, on training. Just got in, (7.20pm). 4got 2 send u an email. Sorry I've not been around very stress".

So I don't know if I am being paranoid now!!! (But if my hubby thinks something is odd about all this too then I can't be completely off my rocker?)!!!!

[Otrere]

Sorry - he thinks something is *not right* about the whole thing. (Typo)!

[woofgang]

so  (excuse me for saying this) could she be cheating on her partner??

[Otrere]

Now Woofgang funnily enough my dad said exactly the same thing when I spoke to him about it. If she is I would be pretty annoyed at being used as an excuse so she could go sneaking off to meet her other man - if that was the case - I'd like to know (a) if she was having an affair and (b) that she'd ask us we mind being used as an excuse!

[woofgang]

well I know I am a nasty suspicious person (that doesn't mean that I think that your Dad is!!), but it does look like she is doing something else that she doesn't want to talk about and needs an alibi for, doesn't it? soooo its either got to be illegal or immoral....

and we're back to landies excellent advice