Hurt

This hurt has been building for, well, years, but the past few weeks have been especially intense. Then today I read something Julie wrote that broke it all open for me, so I've got to post about it to get it out into the open.

My friend, the one who was told she'd never conceive on her own, but who is now in her second trimester of a miracle pregnancy, was my best friend in college and for years after that. We are very different, but were supportive of each other, although we could never really get to a point of complete honesty about things. I'm very open and transparent, but she's got a reserve that I never felt like I could breech. Our other good friends and I used to talk about it occasionally, that there was a part of my friend that she'd never expose, and that we were afraid of what would happen if we were too open with her. Strange, I guess, for women to feel this way, but that's the way it was.

When I got engaged to El Grande, things started to change between us. I knew that my friend was convinced that she'd never find someone to partner with. She worked long hours and traveled a ton for her job (which she's great at and derived real pleasure from), and that didn't leave much time for a personal life. Plus, she had that same thing I think most of us have, that "Who would want to be with me?" voice in the back of our heads. So my getting engaged and then married was hard for her.

In addition, she makes four or five times as much money as El Grande and I make together. So she was off living the fabulous life going to bars and restarants and traveling, while El Grande and I were hanging out with each other at home most of the time. Then I got pregnant with El Chico, and had a horrible first trimester. She was distinctly unsupportive of me (basically telling me I shouldn't complain about things like thinking I'd miscarried and then going through severe depression and nausea), but I tried to not be hurt by it, since I realized she was having a hard time with this new "thing" I had that she feared she wouldn't. When El Chico was born she didn't make any effort to hide her disappointment that he wasn't a girl. The first few months postpartum are very rough for every mother, and she almost seemed relieved that things weren't all happy and rosy for me. We were talking more, and she'd come to see El Chico, and I thought we were getting past things. Except that she told me flat out (I would never even have asked her) that she wasn't ever going to babysit for El Chico because she "didn't want that to be her role." As if I'd start using her as a free, unlimited babysitter. As if I had been lying in wait for years and years just to have a kid to take advantage of her. Never mind that I was desperately trying to keep my head above water, and her taking him for 10 minutes while I took a walk around the block would have been a huge mitzvah. She still felt that I somehow had the upper hand over her.

Then her fertility problems surfaced. I didn't know what to do or say, but I wanted to be as supportive of her as I could. I honestly think that most of my desire to help her was to try to bring us closer again, but I know that some of it was because I needed to feel that I had done all I could in the friendship. I think part of me still feels that I caused the initial rift by falling in love and getting married and having a child. And if I could be Super-Friend, The Fertile Who Knows What To Say And How To Be There (TM), then I'd be doing all the things she wouldn't do for me. So I started reading the IF blogs.

But it all became really one-sided. I was learning so much about IF, but my friend still wouldn't talk to me. The dueling emotions began a world war inside me. Allies: She's feeling too scared and hurt to talk to you. Axis: She doesn't trust you enough to talk to you. You're not good enough in her eyes.

Two failed IVFs, I forced myself to make it all about her and not how untrustworthy and expendable I am in her eyes. Then I got pregnant and agonized about telling her. When I finally did, she told me about the miracle pregnancy. I later found out that she told our other friends about it a week before she told me. If I hadn't made a huge effort to talk to her that day, I don't know if she would have told me by now, even. But I've been trying to make excuses for her about why she didn't tell me. I can't really think of any more.

Since that lunch, I haven't talked to her. I've called and left half a dozen messages. I've sent a few emails. She doesn't respond. I don't know what else to do, so maybe I'm finally getting the message. It wasn't the infertility. It was just me.

And then I read this at Julie's:

Don't count on your friends. They mean well. They wish you the best. They want to help. They truly do. But they can't.

Sure, you helped them — painting the nursery for their first, taking casseroles over in their earliest muddled days of parenthood, or offering cleverly designed babysitting certificates as a shower gift. And you did it without thought for reciprocation, as you are far too big a person to keep score. (Okay, well, pretend you are, anyway.) But now that you need help, where are they?

And I almost burst out crying. Because when I needed my friend desperately, she wasn't there for me. It was almost as if she was deliberately holding out her help just where I couldn't reach it. And now that I'd do anything to help her (help her find a new OB since she doesn't like her current one, come over to keep her company and wash a few dishes when the baby's tiny, babysit a few times a month) she's gone. And the only thing that I can guess about this is that since I never suffered from infertility, I'm not good enough to be her friend anymore.

And it hurts.

Comments

[Erica]

I'm so sorry. I know that feeling so well, and I'm just...I'm just sorry.

[Brooklyn Mama]

Your post is so heartfelt, and so sad. I'm not sure I have anything constructive to say, but just wanted to tell you that your account of this difficult friendship really moved me. I can feel your hurt.

[JenL]

I just have to say this...

I'll be your friend!!! Pick me! Pick me!!

Sending virtual hugs--totally have/had (?) a friend like that, know how badly it sucks.

[chris]

It sounds like your friend has a pretty big wall up around here to begin with. Infertility makes that even worse. It's easy, when you're in the middle of all this, to find some subtle dig in anything a fertile friend says, especially one who's pregnant.

I don't think that fertiles can ever really "win" with infertiles, at least from my own perspective. I'm always looking for the slight, the wrong comment. I hate that I'm this way. I'm sure some handle it better. But even when a fertile takes the time to take you aside and tell you about their pregnancy before they tell everyone else, so you'll not be broadsided by it, it feels condescending. It feels like you're being treated differently, which you both want and do not want.

There's a woman in my mother's group who got pregnant right after my 3rd miscarriage. We were good friends, but for some reason, she liked me more than I liked her, even from the beginning. It was kind of flattering--she's a very dynamic person--but still perplexing. When she got pregnant, she said a lot of the wrong things to me. Frankly, for a long time, NOTHING she could say was right. It wasn't her fault, although she can be clueless, it was just that she was pregnant and I was not. As much as I try to be her friend, I'm just not comfortable around her for. I wish it wasn't that way. I don't think I feel this way around all my pregnant friends, but for some reason, she just pushes my buttons, even though she doesn't mean any harm.

[Kinky]

Oh, Moxie. I know how hard this is. I lost my best friend, whom I'd known since college, who was my Maid of Honor. It's so hard to not have her in my life. I think about it all the time, and still puzzle over what went wrong. These kinds of hurts and distances are quick to snowball. This is not advice, but rather the words of regretful experience: If I had it all to do over again, I would ask my friend to go to therapy with me. She was as dear to me as any boyfriend or family member, and I should have found a way to help our relationship to move forward. Love, K

[persephone]

Moxie, I think a lot of it is what Chris said. It's not you. In so much of this, no matter how sensitive you try to be, there is just no way you can get it right. My husband reminds me of this every time I complain that someone has said the wrong thing to me about my infertility. Was there something they could have said that I would have liked better? Not usually.

And from the way she made that announcement that she wasn't going to be your babysitter, before you ever brought it up, I am even more convinced that this wasn't anything personal about you. It was because she had set you up to represent Fertile, and she was going to take out all her insecurities about being Infertile on you.

I've had the same worries she had, about how fertile people see me. But I know enough to know that most of it is in my head. Your friend sounds like she didn't realize how much of this was emanating from her, and it sounds like she did a good job fooling you too. I'm sorry.

[Christine]

My sister, who just failed her first IVF and is preparing for her second, won't return my calls. And I'm trying to give her space, but I know on some level we are still forced into a life-long relationship with one another. But it hurts. I don't want to talk about my pregnancy with her, I want to talk about what she's going through, and I don't think she gets that yet.

And I just want to say that I love when you comment on my blog. Your comments have always been insightful, sensitive, and above all, helpful. It's not you.

[s]

I'm a fertile who worries about the feelings of some friends struggling with IF. I really can't imagine what it's like, but by reading blogs, I'm trying. The bottom line is that in any friendship you have to try, and it sounds like you really have. And that's all you can do -- the rest is up to her. You are a wonderful friend, you truly, truly are...but you can't make a friendship work alone.

[wavery]

Moxie, I'm sorry you're hurting.
I wrote about this same this recently. I'm on the other side of the spectrum but it's just as perplexing. The differences between us (I reference the larger differences, not specifically fertility) are sometimes so difficult to recognize. Therapy helped me get some perspective on my own prejudices. I can hope that perspective is enough to save an at risk friendship. Best to you. I'm thinking of you.

[Alana]

It sucks that (in)fertility can drive women apart. From what you've described, I'm not sure this friend of yours was such a good friend to begin with, if she was always envious and distant. But it still hurts when we grow apart.

[Kristine]

What a sad story. I know it's not about taking sides, but it does appear that you've done all you can do to be a supportive friend, and she's not open to your support. What can you do? Not much. But yeah, it hurts, doesnt it?

[Toni]

While I think it's really crucial emotionally here that you "get" that it's not about you, but her, the pain is no less real. I could really empathize with what you're feeling, so much. Loss of a friend is always hard, especially when you really tried so hard.

I wish I could drop by with some hot chicken soup or sour lemon drops and a box of tissues. I'm sorry you're having to go through this, and I hope the cold subsides, too (lazily commenting 2-for-1 here).

[shannon]

Late to this (been out of town) but I just want to add that it is up to a person to decide how she takes what is said to her. People say the STUPIDEST things about our adoption. But most of the time it doesn't phase me much, because, for one thing, people are just ignorant, and for another, they almost always don't mean to be jerks. They actually want information so they can share my enthusiasm, they just don't know the PC way to ask for it.

For that matter, well-meaning straight people say stupid things to me about being gay, like calling themselves "normal" in relation to me. But if I know they're on my side, but just inarticulate, it's really and truly okay.

My point (I think I have one) is that you are not inherently guilty because you are lucky enough to be fertile. And I doubt you have ever even said a dumb thing to this friend, given how articulate you seem to be here. So it's pretty much on your friend, I think, how she takes you. And it sounds like one of those things where she may not have been the greatest friend all along, and a little hardship has just brought that out.