Supportive Friends

 I have three main female friends. My best friend is my cousin. She’s a psychiatrist, and she’s actually getting married today!  I didn’t attend, because I didn’t want to run into other family. There’s no wedding party so she didn’t need me to stand. I’ll be attending virtually. More on her later. 

My other female friends are T and D. 

I’ve been careful about how I share details of my new relationship and basically my new life with Kevin in Waller. I’ve had three relationships in the past, and no one I know has ever been supportive of them. It’s always been an expectation on me to stay single. 

I was devastated when T sent me this text - 

Yes she is showing concern for my well being, but she’s never even met Kevin. She’s just assuming we are going to break up and I will “have nowhere to go.”  I feel like saying- I can “go” anywhere I want. Are you just not supposed to ever be with anyone because you might break up?  I don’t say anything like that back to her, because I don’t t want to be combative. I view the narrative in that text message to be unsupportive but disguised in concern. 

I was so worried about D’s true opinion that on her birthday (May 1), I went to the store and bought a small cake good enough for three people (her, me, and her husband), a few packages of kitchen towels, a gift bag with tissue, and I called to see if I could come over and give it all to her. We do this often. She’s a little bit of a shut in, so people often visit her in her home. Thankfully, she is working now though!  So that’s good. But while sitting over cake and coffee, she said “So tell me about this guy”. I told her everything. She was extremely supportive. I was so glad. I don’t think I could handle cutting T off if she gets really unsupportive if I didn’t have D or my cousin the shrink. 

I did ask my mother, why are people not mad at me for this relationship?  She said basically because of my age. I’m 45 now, and I’ve had so many life experiences according to her. I said if I was with Kevin 20 years ago, everyone would have slaughtered me. She said yeah, because when I was 25 I didn’t have as much life experience as I do now. I said ok, and when I’m 65, I’ll have even more. So I don’t get your point. 

My daughter turns 17 next month and is going to be a senior next year. She’s never dated or had a relationship. I hope she doesn’t go through the crap I went through. We all don’t want our kids going through what we did.