A woman feels bereft because her friend has less time for her. Mariella says stamping her foot because she’s getting less attention is not the way forward

The dilemma

I’m 32 and struggling with unwanted changes to a much valued friendship. Over the past two years I’ve been rather left behind with a friend who met the love of her life, got married and fully embraced her friendships with her husband’s friends. We spent less and less time together and when we did, she seemed disengaged. It rather broke my heart as I consider her one of my closest confidantes. I suppose at first I dealt with it very badly, getting emotional and confronting her about her “neglect” of our friendship. I would still love to get our friendship back on track. I just don’t know how. Her priority is her husband and the new family they will likely create and I know I can’t turn the clock back. I’m surprised to find teenage feelings resurfacing at my age! But I don’t know how to move on from something I feel so sad about.

Mariella replies People changing – don’t you just hate that? One minute you’re top-to-toeing in a hostel in Bangkok, the next they’re raising a disapproving eyebrow as you celebrate the end of a working week with a second cocktail!



Friends move on and journey in different directions. There’s few of us who don’t have experience of that sad sense of being left behind. That’s why it’s so important not to define your friend’s behaviour as an act of abandonment but just part of a natural pattern. There is no such thing as the status quo when it comes to our relationships, so regarding every change that occurs as an affront is simply not sustainable.

Good friends are part of our support structure, like scaffolding; not always imperative but hopefully available to tap into during times of serious instability. Your girlfriend is at a different stage of life right now, but soon you’ll get there too, or, at some point in the future, she’ll be back in your spare room. That’s the way life works.

The best friendships evolve over time and picking up where you left off should be as easy after a decade as it is after a day. The depth of a friendship can’t be judged by proximity, the regularity of your communication or occasional disappointments, but by your compatibility and the generosity with which you accept each other’s foibles. Celebrating good fortune and sustaining each other in times of trouble is the way to move forward, not stamping your foot and waving your fist when you’re not getting the level of attention you’re used to. If our days panned out on a loop, we’d all be driven crazy, so why is it that when we’re affected by forces we can neither control nor predict, we try to stand firm against fate?

What exactly do you want to achieve by confronting her? Inseparability may be a defining feature of friendship in youth, but in adulthood it’s our ability to let go that matters most. It’s no coincidence, particularly with girls, that so much merchandising is centred on the notion of unbreakable bonds and being best friends forever, forsaking all others until death us do part. T-shirts, necklaces, stickers and posters all perpetrate the mythology around being stuck together like glue.

Such suffocating definitions of friendship occur at a time when we have no clue about what a “lifetime” entails or how our paths will diverge over the decades. In adulthood, being bonded takes on much more onerous connections and most of us would fight hard not to be so irrevocably attached. As we mature so too should our friendships. Experiences become more subjective, fate takes us on different paths, and geographical distance and pesky partners have to be negotiated, too. Navigating that changing terrain means learning to celebrate the ebb and flow of experience, enjoying the periods when your paths converge and learning to stay afloat independently when you drift apart.

Meeting a partner, having children, changing job, moving location are the likeliest occurrences in an ever-changing world. Giving those you love the necessary room to achieve their potential while maintaining a connection are skills we need to become adept at as we mature. Battling Canute style against the tides will only leave you feeling frustrated.

Close-knit pals will inevitably disentangle and find other attachments along the way, but nicely nurtured they’ll remain at arm’s reach, there to reconnect when the time is right and the tides more favourable. The greatest threat to our happiness is often our misplaced determination to control our destiny. We need to learn to be shape shifters, embracing ups and downs, fulfilment and frustration and people who move in and out of our lives.

A hamster on a wheel endlessly treading the same space is the definition of hell, but we should be equally fearful about trying to control the pace of change and where and when it occurs. It’s ironic that the defining feature of all our lives – the inevitability of nothing staying as it is – is what we battle hardest against.

If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1