The Ex Friends

My posts seem to be centering around friendship a lot lately. I have awesome friends – and these people I would do anything for. I know they feel the same way towards me. (If only I could get my romantic relationships to work this way!!) But there’s a friend-dynamic that has been REALLY bugging me lately. Is it ok to throw your ex’s friends away?

I think I pissed one of my Twitter friends off the other day. This is fine. It invariably happens when one gives up proper dealing-with-people decorum under the banner of “life’s too short to fake being polite”. I’m ok with that. But the thing is – I wasn’t being bitchy and she seemed to be under the impression that I was. And then I sort of started thinking about it, I thought maybe I had every right to be bitchy in this particular case even though I wasn’t being.

A friend’s status update on facebook read that she’d sent her baby to it’s grandmother for the night so that she could get some sleep. Fair enough. I don’t hold that against her. I tweeted something like “Oh dear, baby’s barely a week old and mom has already shipped him off to gran for the night”. Actually I was empathising, although i can see now why it might not be read that way. What I really meant was “been there, done that – it doesn’t get easier anytime soon!”  Other than that I barely gave it much of an absent-minded thought, until I was mildly berated for being insensitive.

And that’s where the bitch in me reared her head a bit. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell her what I  meant instead of feeling defensive, but I guess when it comes to this particular woman and her husband I have many mixed emotions and a whole disaster mix of guilt and anger towards them, all of which should be left well alone completely. And suddenly I had no grace for either of them. I just thought “ah fuck it!” – If I managed to do all of it alone then why the hell can’t you? Stop being pathetic! You do what you have to do because you have to do it. It goes along with being a grown up honey! And then I spent the rest of the night feeling pissed off.

This particular couple has given me great feelings of un-ease ever since I broke up with my ex. Because I don’t know what to do with them. I met them on the day the ex and I moved into our first flat together (with another collegue as well). Granted we were “roommates” at the time – but the male half of this particular couple spotted the “more to the story” fairly quickly. Soon they became our “couple friends” – a new experience for me really despite having been married for almost five years. Every week we would have dinner together blah blah blah. I got along well-ish with the husband but didn’t have very much in common with the wife. We worked as two couples though and had quite a few good times together. Until I fell pregnant.

The day we found out they came over to congratulate us. They then took HIM out to God knows where to celebrate. Because I was pregnant and couldn’t drink – I was left behind. My supposedly thrilled boyfriend celebrated my pregnancy without me. I cried until he came home at three the next morning. The incident pretty much set the precident for the rest of our relationship together.

Throughout my entire pregnancy these two would show up at our place to pick him up, leaving me behind – like it was no big deal! No matter how much I begged him not to leave me alone he “couldn’t let his friends down”. I remember one night I invited them over for dinner and a movie. I thought it was a pretty reasonable compromise. We could hang out together.

They arrived, ate, and then took him out…

Now I’m not for a minute saying that they were purposely being vindictive. I don’t think they had a “stuff Nadine and her issues” attitude – but for fuck sakes it doesn’t take more than basic logic to come to the conclusion that maybe such behaviour is just a little bit incensitive!! And they weren’t the only ones who did it – which blew my mind even further – but they did do it the most. The last straw was when my boyfriend left me one night to go and visit his cousin “so that he wouldn’t be alone”. He left me alone so that his cousin wouldn’t be. And again for some reason me making them dinner and hanging out at our place was not a good enough suggestion. He walked out of the door and I had an absolute panic attack.

Two days later I went into labour. Nine weeks early.

Now I know I have vaguely touched on this subject before,  but perhaps I am hoping that releasing it into my computer will dissolve it and break down it’s hold on me a bit. These friends of HIS never once came to visit me. Not in the hospital, and not in the six weeks I spent waiting for my baby to be well enough to come home with me. They did however, take him out and get him totally trashed the night that Noah was born. I spent that entire night in tears, scared and alone. I never slept. And every five minutes I would take my sore body across the hall into the NICU to look at the teeny tiny baby that I was not allowed to touch. The baby that my stressed-out body had almost killed. I just needed my man with me, and I couldn’t wait for morning so that he could come back.

He was hungover. He arrived at lunch time…

And so them fetching him for a party continued through the six weeks I spent waiting for my baby to come home. I was exhausted and emotionally drained. I had to get up ever few hours to use a breast pump (seriously I’m quite sure the devil designed the whole milk production thing!) and I never slept much inbetween. I just couldn’t. But it would be better once he got home right? Then he would stay with me and help me with our son right?

Wrong.

And then she fell pregnant. And it all clicked into place with her. I got a message from her one day apologising for their behaviour during my pregnancy. She understood now what I went through because her husband was putting her through the exact same thing. And I was angry with him for her sake and I appreciated the acknowlegement on her side. But it didn’t really help anything. It was too late for it to be properly ok.

So now all I am left with is this mad mix of anger and guilt when it comes to these people. And I sort of think – am I obligated to stay friends with them? Just because I knew them for a year and a half, and considered them friends during that time? Do I still have to be friends with them? Really?

I go through periods of thinking of them and wondering how they are doing, and I care about their wellbeing and wonder if there is anything I can do to help. But then other times I can’t help but question why I should feel obligated to make any sort of effort, and then I am quite convinced that all I feel towards them is a misguided sense of pity. Is that a bit harsh? Am I a bad person for just admitting to myself that they are not my problem? Because really if it were anyone else (say Angela, or Ceri or Candy for instance) I would be there with mother bear gloves on, kicking some insensitive-husband ass and taking over frozen caseroles and sleeping tablets and signing up for babysitting duty. Why? Because I do know how hard the new mom thing is and I KNOW that it’s friends and family who keep you sane during those first couple of weeks. I personally slept better after Noah came home, simply because I could finally let go of the stress, but for at least a month I slept sitting up with the kid nestled on my chest! It was like sleeping in the car! I lived on pre-sleep sleep for weeks. It takes it’s toll! And after two weeks the ex stopped helping with nights. And after another two months he stopped helping with ANYTHING. So I know what it’s like. I know that it’s hard. And still i am finding it very hard to call her up and say “Hey babe I’ll come over for the afternoon so that you can get a bit of sleep”. I want to be the good person and just do it, but I can’t shake the sense of obligation. The back of my mind can’t quite shake the idea that they took him away from me – which is just ridiculous I know! But if they had been the kind of friends that you could talk to istead of just get trashed with, maybe, just MAYBE, things would have turned out a little differently.

A friend of mine once asked her boyfriend why he wasn’t nicer to people. He responded by asking her how the people he cared about would know that he cared about them if he treated everyone the same.

Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I’m seriously considering adopting this policy…