A close friend was unsupportive after my father died. Can we have a more superficial relationship?

No matter the reason your friend let you down, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes, if you want an ongoing relationship, you’ll have to forgive her

A friend who I thought was a close friend has been unsupportive following the recent death of my father. We have been friends for 15 years and while we don’t live in each other’s pockets, we are close friends, who confide in each other. I was the bridesmaid at her wedding. When my father died recently, while she did call to commiserate and send a kind text about him, she did not make the effort to come to the funeral (it is a two-hour drive away) unlike my other close friends.

While I can forgive that, what I am struggling with is that almost two weeks later she has not contacted me to see how I am doing or whether I was OK after the funeral. My father died close to Christmas, and all my friends except her texted me to say they were thinking of me, which I really appreciated.

I don’t expect my friends to get me through my grief, I know everyone has their own life demands, but I would have expected my close friend to be more supportive. My mother and sister think I should cut her some slack as she is a good friend in other ways. I just don’t know how I can pretend that things are the same with her when I see her again. Please don’t say have a conversation with her, as conversations of that kind always affect a friendship anyway.

Is there a way I can have a more superficial friendship with her?

Eleanor says: You’re right that Serious Conversations always affect a relationship, so I won’t just say “communicate”.

I will say this isn’t a failure unique to her. Many close relationships struggle after a bereavement, each side of finding the other impossible to reach.

One explanation is the one that you gave: death reveals that you’re not as close as you thought. Another is that people just don’t know what to say to someone bereaved. Really, literally, they don’t know what to say – people who are otherwise loving and perspicacious can get totally dumbstruck in the presence of grief. I think it’s because death is so unflinchingly permanent.

Nothing we can say will take it away, and it’s hard to know how to help other people when we can’t take away the source of their pain. So many people just retreat; at least that way they didn’t fail. A lot of people have found themselves standing where you do now – bereaved and wondering why their friend doesn’t call – while the friend is wondering how it would possibly help if they did.

So the explanation for your friend’s behaviour might not be that she doesn’t grasp the enormity of losing your dad. It might be precisely because she understands it that something inside her has decided to run.

Of course, it’s only so useful to you to know why she’s done this. Maybe she’s felt paralysed in the way that I’ve described – or maybe she’s just being callous – either way she didn’t show up, and that sucks. That’s a fact, no matter what explains it.

But if, as you write, you want to have an ongoing relationship with this friend, you’re going to need a way to forgive her. No relationship can survive the slow simmer of resentment, least of all one that’s trending into superficiality. If you want to keep her in your life without smarting every time you see her, it might help to interpret her actions here in the more generous way.

That interpretation might not be true – but on the other hand, it might be, and sometimes that possibility is enough for us to forgive when we’ve been hurt.

Another thing you might try is to initiate some of the interactions you might have had if she’d stepped up when she should have. If she had called, for instance, you might have talked to your friend about your dad – often after we lose someone it’s nice to talk about them, instead of the fact that they’re gone. So you could initiate that the next time you see her; not with any nod to her absence on the topic, just, “Can I talk about my dad for a bit?”

Perhaps you can just use the chance to tell her who he was, what you shared, why you’ll miss him. That’s something she can listen to without feeling compelled to fix anything, and it might give your relationship the sense that your bereavement has been heard.

Friends fail us – surprisingly often, especially with grief. If we want to stay friends, it helps to focus on what’s next.

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