I cannot be your only source of entertainment! I cannot be your only friend! I will not find something for you to do this and every weekend. And I will no longer tolerate your trying to make me feel guilty for not calling you all weekend.
That's what I really wanted to say to my friend, but instead I chickened out and ignored a couple of calls or called her back much later when it was 'convenient' for me to listen to her guilt trip me. See, she moved here last year and until we met there were few people that she hung out with. I mean, if you had mangled your hand in a blender and gotten 3 fingers amputated - that's how many acquaintances she had.
Granted, life on this rock can get boring and it is hard to meet new people sometime. However, just because we hit it off and we have a lot in common does not mean that I want to spend all my weekends with you.
Let me pause for a confession here: My name is Chevy and I have a history of strained relationships with girl friends. I have not had the typical girl friend relationship of gossiping and BFFing since my sophomore year in college. I lke my space, I like my privacy and I don't care to know about anybody else's business unless it's my own. I am the type of girl friend you call up to go get a drink, to accompany you to a staff party when you don't have a date, or that you take to the club when you both want to get your flirt on. Don't be mistakened, I'll drive you to the hospital when you get an appendicitis. I'll bring you soup every day till you get better. I'll listen to your concerns and share some of mine. But I will not allow you to hold it over my head when I decide that I need some space and quiet time.
My friend Jen is a great girl. She's funny. She's caring. She's smart. But she's also a little clingy. I admit, ignoring her calls was a mean and cowardly thing to do. For that I have apologized. I needed to 'fess up and tell her that I felt like she was crowding my space. But now, she's found other friends in an exercise class with whom she's going to get drinks and I can't help but feel proud! She's branching out and forsaking her comfort zone. She'll find even more new and interesting people on my little rock to plan weekends with. She'll have less time worrying about me and why I didn't call her on Saturday. All thanks and no thanks to me and my not-so-healthy brand of distancing myself from her.
Here's my take on friendships: You cannot expect one person to provide you with all the things you need to feel happy and whole. You have to find your joy and excitement in various people, activities and places. Friendships should never be monogamous.
That said, I look forward to hanging out with Jen again and hearing about her newly formed friendships. Even so, I can't help feeling a little guilty about the momentary tension between us - hopefully time and honesty (on my part) will heal that.
2 comments:
I had a girl like that. Thing was that we weren't friends. She was/is not the type of person I would want to spend a lot of time with. However, I was new to town and looking for cool people to hang out with. It all seemed cool at first until it was "can you watch my cats?" "can you do this?" "can you drive me to this appointment?" - she got pissed when I told her I could drop her off for an eye appointment and come back to pick her up, BUT I could not - no, would not - sit around for 5 hours wasting a day of work for... nothing. The last straw came when she signed me up as her Emergency Contact/24 Hour Care after having FIVE plastic surgery procedures in ONE day. Oh, she didn't tell me what all that entailed until the day of. Thus guilting me into spending the night at her house - on a couch too small for an average sized woman - with her 3 curious cats.
Lord, this chick is a whole post. ALL of my best friends are women, I can usually spot a bad egg from a mile away. But I usually end up giving them the benefit of the doubt.
End [discombobulated]rant.
I just had a similar conversation with two different friends-
One was in total agreement of never needing to apologize for how much tim we had to spend with each other. Our friendship is natural and easy.
The other was with a friend laying on a guilt trip for our conflicting schedules and for my never putting in the effort to make plans during my precious free time.
Guess who I'm more likely to call on a day off...
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