Friendship

What makes a friendship? How do you know when someone is a good friend? This is a bit of a waffle about my experiences with friends.

I'm a girl with very few friends. I have two girls I consider to be my best friends, both I've known for nearly 20 years now. I can tell them anything and know that they won't gossip. We can go weeks without seeing each other, but it never alters our friendship. In fact, one of them moved 200 miles away when we were 14 and we remained best friends, having weekly phone calls and taking turns to stay at each other's house in the school holidays. She moved back home 5 years ago and it's great to have her back nearby.

Whilst it's fantastic that I have a few good friends I can rely on, none of them really know each other, so I don't have that group of girl friends that a lot of people seem to have. I see old acquaintances from school post pictures on Facebook of their girly weekends away, nights out,nights in etc, and wonder if I'm missing out? Should I have made more of an effort to stay in touch with my old crowd of friends?

You see, I did have lots of friends. Or people I considered friends at the time. We went on holidays together, every weekend was spent at one of their houses. But when I met my now husband, things changed. I still had occasional nights out with them, probably once a month rather than every Thursday, Friday and Saturday! I tried inviting them over for dinner, or out for dinner, but none of them were interested unless it was a going out and getting plastered invitation. After all, they were still young, free and single. I had met a man twice my age with children and suddenly my weekends were spent doing family stuff. Day trips to the zoo instead of wild nights out. I became the boring friend. We still had regular contact though, text messages and phone calls. Just increasingly infrequent meetings. It all came to a head when I was planning my wedding 6 years ago. I sent out my invites and not one of them sent a reply. When I chased them up, I got a well rehearsed response, the same one from all of them. 'We get back from our holiday 2 days before, so I won't have enough money to come to your wedding'. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I haven't seen any of them since!

3 of them have since settled down and started families of their own. I find it quite ironic how all of a sudden I'm useful to them again. I used to get frequent messages asking for advice, parenting tips. Am I being too harsh in telling them where to go? I don't see why I should forgive and forget when they marred what was one of the happiest times of my life! Yes, I am bitter, I thought they were my friends, but clearly only on their terms. As far as I'm concerned, I don't need selfish people like that in my life.

Then I've got my virtual friends. When I fell pregnant with my eldest, I joined an online parenting forum. I 'met' a group of women with one thing in common. We were all due a baby around the same time. In the past 6 years, I've formed firm friendships with a few of them. I consider them very close friends, and a few of them, I've gone on to meet in person. Initially at big meet ups arranged by the group as a whole, but those I got on well with have become close friends of mine. We have little meet ups together and have had a couple of good nights out. It makes me a bit sad that there is so much distance between us, the downside to making friends online. It would be nice to have more frequent get togethers, but at the same time it's great to make a few days of it and have them to stay at my house.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me! Sorry it was a bit of a nothing post, thank you if you got this far!