I have a problem I thought I’d settled but I keep waffling on what I want to do about it, so I need someone logical like you to kick me in the ass about it.

Here goes:

I met my best friend when I was two years old. My mother and her mother took a self defense class together so we were put into the same daycare and then, when it turned out we lived in the same complex, we ended up spending much of our childhood together.

Being friends during those years, we had our ups and downs and we sometimes drove each other crazy (how can you not over the course of two decades?) but we’d been through a lot together (the death of a parent, illnesses, moving, financial problems) so even though we fought sometimes, I always felt like she would be there for me and I trusted her with my life. I have no siblings so she was the closest thing I will ever have to a sister.

Last fall, she ended up going overseas to school and pretty much all communication from her stopped. I knew she was in a hard program so I originally didn’t think that much about it and just kept sending my little emails, wishing her well and letting her know that I was looking forward to her return in the summer. The summer comes and goes and I hear nothing.

Finally, two days after my birthday, I get an email from her and am really excited…only to discover it’s a mass email, detailing how she had spent her summer in the city where we live and how she was now back overseas. Finally, getting the hint, I give up. The friendship is finished, sad but true.

Months later, I write about it in my personal blog, saying that while, I get that friendships have lifespans and we have different lives now, I was a little disappointed with how things ended. It wasn’t big or dramatic, I just wanted to get it off my chest and over with.

A few weeks later, I get an email from none other than my friend, referencing my blog entry (I guess she doesn’t have time to read my emails but she does have time to obsessively Google me to track down my private blog). She is angry that I would “betray [her] in such a public way” and then, she proceeds to rattle off a laundry list of instances (dating back to when we were in high school) where she felt I was being a bad friend. The list not only included events that I don’t remembering happening (I forgot the name of her boyfriend once) but events I KNOW did not happen (I apparently criticized her for being a camp counsellor and turned down an offer to join her ranks because I said it was “lame” — so not true, I would have jumped at the chance to go). After she finishes her ranting about me, she says “[she’s] only a good friend to people who deserve it” and that she thinks it’s better that we parted ways since it is “[her] lot in life to be free and young and travel” while mine is “to become domestic and settle down” since I live with my boyfriend in a city not too far from where we grew up.

Needless to say, I was shocked. I’m not going to make excuses, Sars. I know I haven’t always been the perfect friend, but I’ve always tried my best to show her what an important person she was in my life and I don’t feel like after years of throwing her ’80s-themed birthday parties, taking her out for ice cream when her mom was ill and celebrating her accomplishments with her, that I deserve all the garbage she’s trying to blame on me.

After I got the email, I had the impulse to write her back and throw all of her mistakes in her face to get even, but even though I was really angry, I couldn’t bring myself to do it, because I felt like that would just further ruin the memories of what I had once considered the greatest friendship of my life.

So my question is, what do you do when something like this happens with someone you basically consider family? I don’t want to be friends again, but is there any way I can put an end to this that would show that I still honour what we had as friends, even though it is over? At this stage in the game, is there even a point?

For years, I pictured this person standing beside me at my wedding, being the godmother to my children, so all of this vitriolic behaviour really blindsided me to the point that I can’t think straight about it. I just feel so hurt and confused any insight you have to offer is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Not into name-calling

I’m depressed. Or at least I think I am, because it’s not like I have a degree in this stuff. But for several years now, something’s been wrong with me, and it’s only become worse with time. When I was younger I’d tell myself it was stupid teenaged angst and that I’d grow out of it, but I didn’t. In hindsight I can see that there was something wrong even back then. It’s overwhelming to think that there might have been something going on with me for that many years and that I was too stupid or blind to see it and do something about it.

My concentration and focus is shot and has been for years, which makes trying to accomplish much of anything hell. I get angry and I can’t control it, and while I don’t get violent or outwardly destructive, I make myself miserable with all the anger and all the energy I spend dwelling on the things that make me angry. I swing from emotion to emotion with no control over it, and yet even as I’m sobbing over some stupid thing, I know it isn’t right, and it makes me feel even more helpless because I can’t stop it. I just hurt, so much. I’m fat and I can’t do anything to fix it and I hate myself for it; it causes health issues that take up most of my energy dealing with. I have no friends and every day is exactly the same, spent being lonely but not knowing how to fix it. I find joy in my life, but everything else makes it so hard to keep a hold of any of that. I’m terrified by the idea of losing, but I can’t stop losing — losing chances, losing loved ones, losing my health, and it’s eating me up.

I’ve let my life get to this level of crap which even I have trouble wrapping my head around. I’m only 21! I need counseling. I have to talk to someone. I need someone to help me change something because I can’t go on like this. No, I’m not suicidal, but all the same, this can’t go on, you know?

But here’s why I’m writing to you: I can’t get counseling. I can’t afford it. I have no medical insurance because I have no money to pay for it because I have no job because I cannot function enough to get a job. I try to look at my problem in steps, like you’ve told other people, and every time I come up with the same first step: get a job, but I CAN’T because it’s like I’m paralyzed. I need help to get past that, but I can’t get the help because — well, you get it. My parents can’t afford it either. Hell, they could probably both really use therapy themselves because I know they’re both significantly depressed, but they can’t even afford it for themselves.

Do you have any suggestions for how I can find a way to get help when it’s not within my means to go the traditional routes? And if that sounds weird, it’s because I really don’t understand what the traditional routes are. Which might be half the problem. I wish I could make the question more specific than that, but I don’t really have the first idea what to do beyond knowing I need help from someone, somehow. I don’t know anybody else I can ask.

Stuck on step zero

I’ve never written to anyone for advice like this before, but I thought “what the hell, I’ll give it a try.”

I’m a 30-year-old female “married” to an almost-40-year-old female. We’ve known each other for almost 10 years, had an on-again, off-again thing for about a year (she dumped me twice to go back to her psycho abusive ex-girlfriend), and now have been steadily together for almost nine years. We bought a house together three years ago, but because her credit was better, and she’s a veteran, the mortgage is in just her name. But we do have joint bank accounts, in addition to our own accounts, and we share the financial responsibilities.

Here’s the problem. She used to call this “our house.” Now she refers to it as “my house.” Even if we won the lottery she wouldn’t have my name put on it because it wouldn’t be “necessary.” We only have sex a couple times a year, and she used to be so aggressive I could barely keep up. She’s more of a “giver” and liked that aspect of our relationship. All of her friends in the last few years have been young girls (most young enough to be her daughters) she works with. She currently has a friend that she can’t get enough of, literally. She drove 17 miles to have lunch with her today, and then her friend came over tonight so they could go out to dinner. She complains when I expect just one evening a week with her, but is more than happy when her friend comes over or when they go out three or four times a week. They see each other three or four days a week at work, too, so they see each other basically every day.

I know there is nothing going on…I know she’s not having an affair. But I can’t help feel jealous of all this. I like the idea of having dinner with my wife every night. We don’t work the same schedule, so we both have two days every week to ourselves, and in my opinion, that should be enough time away from each other. But I feel like she needs so much more time than that away from me. Combine that with the lack of sex, and I feel like I’m just a friend, paying rent to live here.

When I try to talk to her about this, she accuses me of trying to make her feel guilty. She’s the kind of person who is right all the time, even when she’s wrong. I know she loves me. (A friend of mine accidentally made her think I was planning to leave her, and my wife apparently freaked out. My friend was really talking about her own personal problems, but my wife thought she was just using that as a type of code to say I was fed up and leaving her.)

I don’t think she’d go for couples counseling, and I don’t know how to get her to see things from my point of view. Am I being too sensitive? Or am I right in feeling like I am not the priority I should be in her life? Spending a day a week or every two weeks with your friends is fine when you’re married, but I think several days a week with your friends instead of your spouse is just rude and disrespectful. What do you think?

Thanks,
Seriously Confused