It sounds to me as if you've had so much to deal with yourself, you just can't handle someone else's problems too right now.  There's nothing wrong with that, everybody gets overwhelmed at some point in their lives.  Maybe you could just explain that to your friend and tell her in a kind way that you are struggling at this time yourself and you don't think you can deal with any added pressure.  You don't feel that you're being sympathetic to her problems, I think that is a kind of coping mechanism, you're already dealing with enough.  In order to be a good friend to someone else, you have to take care of yourself too.

Hi Mama.......

When my kids were little and I was having SUCH a hard time, things seemed so bleak. I had a hard time making it through each day. There was a another mom who tried befriending me but I was just on overload. I tried to explain this to her, that I didn't have time to nurture the friendship. After that, she was so hurt she could not even say hello to me at the daycare center we both used.
She could not see beyond her own feelings and issues to understand what I tried to explain.

I regret having said anything because I caused hurt feelings and there would never be an opportunity to rekindle the friendship once things calmed down in my life.

Maybe put the friendship on hold until you can sort out your feelings? A little distance? I totally get the soft outrage of her ranting about her plight in life when by comparison, is not the worse hand of cards to be dealt. Is this a friendship worth holding on to? Maybe that is the question.

Zeke and Shiny, you both have hit the nail on the head....distance makes the heart grow fonder.
Here's the funny part of the story. The whole time she was whining this morning, I bit my tongue
to keep from snapping at her. I didn't say what I was thinking, or feeling about her situation, I just let her rant, so she called me back and thanked me for being a good friend and listening to her. While I was kicking myself for 
feeling what I was feeling, eventhough I didn't say a word about it to her, she perceived it as me being
a good friend. At which point I realized that I am simply over thinking the whole thing.

Last edited by MamaSqu (10/30/2015 11:25 am)

I am happy for you both, Mama.
zeke

Sunny@Midnight2 wrote:

My friends and family know that if they confide in me I will take the information of their bad behaviour to the grave.  Of course I have never yet been tempted to spill the beans by an offer of a million dollars from a tabloid or private investigator so I may disappoint them at some time in the future.   They also know that I don't offer advice or opinions but if you ask for it you will get them.

 And I treat friends just like family.  Which means I don't care if you pout at me or cut me off because what I say does not agree with your thoughts or agenda.  I am a delight to be around so you will be back.  Or not.

Seriously - Your friend does have the right to be upset at changes she was not expecting but she has to walk it off for her own mental health.  You  have listened to her but friendship does not mean you have to keep listening to the same complaints over and over and over.  She has to get her mind off that hampster wheel of dissatisfaction so it is perfectly alright to tell your friend that you find it very difficult to sympathize with such a great chance to reshape her full future.  She needs to put her big girl panties on because this is happening no matter how much she does not like it and she needs to take every advantage that the situation is providing for her.  

Well, you put quite a bit of thought into that and I appreciate that emmensely. Thank you. 
The one bit of advice that I did give her that I hope she takes to heart is that I think she needs to get a 
membership into Pre-Paid Legal services, and let their million dollar lawyers handle the whole transaction for her.
I hope she gets that coverage. It would benefit her greatly. I'll let you all know what happens later on.

snapzz wrote:

you are being a good friend and you did the right thing just by listening to her.

Thanks for saying that, as it turned out, that's how she saw it too. Rather glad I didn't open my mouth 
and bite her head off when I was listening. That really wouldn't have been what I wanted for either of us.
It's funny, in times where I'm feeling overtly human, those are when I feel bad for my own feelings. Does 
that make any sense?

Zurich Moon wrote:

MamaSqu wrote:

I've always thought that being a friend to someone was similar to be family, in that you maintain your loyalty, you love them unconditionally and if you fight, you calm down, and clear the air then move forward. You don't end a friendship over trivial junk, right? Well, this morning a friend of mine severely tested my definition of friendship with her trivial rant, and I had to do everything in my power not to blow a fuse at her. I'll explain as best I can.

Her situation :
She is divorced, living in an expensive townhome in the best part of the town next to the one I live in. She has her own business, which she is able to work 7 days a week, as a vendor for a major snack food company. Although she struggles through her days (like most people who work) she is fairly well off. Not rich, but not nearly hurting either. She has two grown sons, two granddaughters and a couple of dogs. All in all her life, dispite her struggles, is pretty much on the upside of things. 

She just learned that the state wants to widen the road her house is on, and in so doing it, they are going to build the new part of the road where her townhouse currently stands. All the homes on her side of the street are going to have to come down. She is a basket case right now, worrying about everything that she is about to lose. She can not or will not see that for the state to build the road there, they must first buy her out of her home, at fair market value. She refuses to see that this could be a marvelous thing since right now she is upside down in her mortgage. She is bugging out over everything that she is going to have to change about her life,and absolutely will not even consider that there is a bright side to this.

Here is where I am kicking myself about being a so-called friend. I am not angry, annoyed, bothered, worried, or in any way shaken by her plight, I am unsympathetic to it. That is just plain wrong. I don't mean to be like this and if I knew how to convey that I would but damn. Here she is, she has everything she could hope for after a terrible divorce and the state is going to PAY her for it....boo frickin hoo. I realize that change is hard, I do. I understand that moving is a pain, I do. I am certain that she will have to adjust to her new place once she finds it, but that is the point, she will find it. 

In the last 20 years of my life, I have become a widow, an orphan, I lost my house in La., my apartment in Tn., everything that we had in storage from my mother's house and mine, almost everything I had inTn. (except what would fit in my car) and I am now unable to work because of my health, and am living with my son, yet I'm too young for retirement (SSA). My friend's woes fall on deaf ears by comparison. And that is the problem. How do you take the human factor out of friendship? I shouldn't be comparing my life to hers. I shouldn't be acting as if they are even remotely the same. How do I separate the two and come out still being sympathetic to her situation? This is a hard situation all unto itself. Help.

Sorry I didn't get to this in a timely manner, Mama...my 5 year old twin sons decided to have a BATTLE ROYALE over a halloween costume, and avoiding jail was my primary focus this past weekend. I am glad everything worked out for you...sometimes friends have irrational fears that prevent them from seeing what is so obvious to those around them. it's all relative I suppose...good thing she has a friend like you 

Thanks ZM for saying that. I suppose if I didn't question my own human behavior every once in a while, I would 
end up walking around like so many of my former coworkers, thinking that there is no world outside of my own world. Life just isn't like that though, so I reflect on my thoughts, feelings and actions on a regular basis and 
try to keep myself in check as much as possible. I may not always be successful, but at least I always try.

So, back to those Halloween costumes, what did they want to go as, and what did they end up going as?
How did you handle the battle? And do you have pictures?