Words from the Outlier

You want advice? We got advice right here.

All advice courtesy of guest columnist The Lawyer Formerly Known As Sorcha, Now Known As The Outlier.

The Disclaimers: Miriam usually agrees with TLFKAS, but there's always the possibility she doesn't, so opinions here in the advice section do not necessarily reflect the opinions elsewhere on this site, and vice versa! And unless you count years of giving advice to various friends, nobody here has training in any kind of counseling situation, so take all advice with the grain of salt it requires. Not responsible for the results of advice. Unless the advice resulted in a monetary windfall, in which case we'll take a 10% cut.

Dear Outlier,

I have a problem - or I think I do. I'm not even completely sure this is a problem, so I hope you can help me figure it out! I've been friends with someone for four years now. Initially, we were pretty close, but at some point in those four years, we stopped being close, and now hardly see each other anymore. There wasn't a big falling out - nothing happened, or nothing that I know about anyway. It just felt to me like she stopped putting effort into our friendship - and so, after a few tries, I sort of gave up on her. I know some friendships drift apart, and that would be ok with me in this case, but every time I run into her, she seems really interested in getting together and catching up, and she seems so sincere about it that I've started wondering whether the drifting apart was all in my head, or if maybe she thinks I'm the one who stopped putting effort into the friendship. On the other hand, I've had about six or seven parties in the last couple years, and she hasn't come to any of them, and her excuses have been pretty lame - I figure if she really was serious about getting together and catching up, she's had chances. Still, we have a lot in common, and we got along really well. So I'm not sure if I should just write her off, or if I should try to patch things up - and if I try to patch things up, how do I figure out if they need to be patched in the first place?

Do I Have A Problem?

Dear Not Really,

I think your friend just seems to have prioritized other things. It's not necessarily anything having to do with you. How you should proceed depends what you want out of the situation. Do you want: 1) closure (hate that word, but I haven't found a good substitute), or 2) do you not want to feel bad about writing her off, or 3) do you not really care? If you want closure, I would invite her out for coffee or something equally casual and just ask if something did happen (maybe nothing happened between you two, but that doesn't mean that something somewhere else didn't cause her to change her behavior). If you have plenty to do and don't really need to revive the death rattle that is the friendship, I hereby give you permission to let her go. Be nice to her when you see her, include her in the e-mails on the get togethers if you like, but from now on expect nothing and feel no disappointment if nothing happens. If you don't really care either way, call her and leave her a message and if she doesn't return it, consider that a sign and move on.

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