No matter how strong your friendship looks right now, it doesn't mean that it will stay this way forever. Kind of a grim thought, isn't it? Well, sadly, it's a realistic one. Sometimes life happens, and friends, who once were inseparable, are now very much separable.
And sometimes friends themselves kind of sabotage the friendship. Like in this story, where a woman dragged her kids everywhere she went, which drove her friend crazy, since she wanted to simply have some personal time with a friend. The situation got to the point where there was no other choice for a friend but to confront the woman.
More info: Mumsnet
Sometimes even the best of friends deal with a deteriorating friendship, which can come due to a variety of reasons
Image credits: syda_productions / Freepik (not the actual photo)
For example, when one friend decides that from a second, she becomes a mom, her whole life revolves around her kids, and no one else
Image credits: ansiia / Freepik (not the actual photo)
That meant that anywhere she went, her kids went with her, which slowly started annoying her friend
Image credits: fxquadro / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The friend just wanted to have a private conversation with the woman without a kid eavesdropping or interrupting
Image credits: EyeEm / Freepik (not the actual photo)
She kept repeatedly asking the woman to not bring kids, but she never listened
Image credits: EyeEm / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Then, one time they went to a restaurant where people don't really like to have kids around, and the woman still brought her daughter
Image credits: Holiak / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Then, the 8-year-old started chatting with strangers, who didn't want to talk to her
Image credits: tanya_terekhina / Freepik (not the actual photo)
So, the friend called the woman out about bringing her kids to places where they don't belong
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This quickly turned into a verbal catfight and made the friend doubt -- was she a jerk for calling her friend out?
The OP had arranged to have lunch with her friend at a place that was not exactly child-friendly; it was where the original poster expected to have a glass of wine along with an adult conversation with her friend.
The thing was that her friend always brought her kids with her, which made it hard to have proper adult friendship time with her friend. So this time, since they chose a place like this, the author hoped that the friend would come childless. But, oh boy, how mistaken she was.
The friend came with her 8-year-old daughter, saying they all could have “girls’ afternoon.” The OP wasn’t surprised, but she was hurt so bad that for a brief moment, she considered walking out.
Parents bringing their kids everywhere with them isn’t something new – many folks do that. The reasons for that differ from person to person. Some think it’s good for their development to experience as much of the world around them as possible, so they bring them. Others simply do not have a place to leave a kid, no one else to watch them, and so they’re forced to drag them along.
Yet, this wasn’t the OP’s friend’s case. She had to decide where to leave the girl – with her dad. In fact, the author noted that there have been instances where the friend’s husband offered to look after the kids, just so the wife could have some time alone with her friends, but the wife always rejected his offer.
And so, her conversations with friends were constantly interrupted by “Who is that mum?”; “Why did she do that?”; “What does that mean?” and things like that. Basically, it became impossible to have a proper talk.
Image credits: EyeEm / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Then, a thing happened that made matters even worse – the girl went to a group of women she didn’t know and started yapping with them. They were clearly unhappy to be disturbed, and after a couple of minutes of “conversation,” they politely let the girl know that she should go back to her mom.
Yet, this mom didn’t bat an eye that her kid was disturbing some strangers – she simply said that the girl loves “chatting to new people.” This made the OP lose it. She started telling her friend that while she, as a mom, loves her daughter, that doesn't mean that everyone does, and that they don’t want her around constantly.
Soon, this turned into a verbal catfight, and it became apparent that their friendship would never be the same. Maybe there wouldn’t even be a friendship anymore. It wouldn’t be the first friendship to crumble due to one party being a parent and another not.
Sometimes it’s because a child-free friend doesn’t want to have children in their life, and so they distance themselves from those who do. In other cases, parent friends don’t make enough time for buddies or become so invested with their kids that they can’t see anything past them. The latter is something that happened in today’s story.
Again, since people losing sight of their friends after becoming parents isn’t a new thing, netizens knew exactly what to say. The general consensus was that the girl’s mom was a bad friend, and the OP would be better off without her. And so, she shouldn’t feel bad about setting a boundary.
What do you think? Was the OP right to act the way she did? What would you have done in her place? Share all your takes in the comment section!
The netizens expressed their opinion that she wasn't a jerk and that the only jerk here was the woman for not considering others' feelings when it came to her kid
