Our friendship started at school. We become fast friends, always getting ourselves into trouble at parties, quality time with our families and day trip adventures. She has suffered from low self esteem and depression, and I’ve always been there when she needed it and there was always a light at the end of her tunnel. Always moving forward.

This continued well into our twenties... I then got married and moved 2hrs away.... we used to talk monthly, meet when I visited Home a few times a year.... it slowly whittled down and now we meet yearly and she doesn’t really do message conversations anymore.

Last year, a close family member of mine passed away, whom she is also familiar with..... I received a ‘very sorry about the news message’ but hadn’t heard from her again in months and she never attended the funeral.

I also asked her a favour related to the family member passing away, something very personal to me, she listens but doesn’t follow through or contacts me to say she’s unable to help me. Let down without a word...

Since then I have messaged to arrange a catch up, and for the first time since moving she wants to visit me. Then she stops responding, she probably has stuff going on and I leave it... it’s been 2 months and I heard she got an exciting job lined up and I congratulate her... she responds, and I then ask about having a meet up soon but she goes quiet again...

It’s a cycle of only myself maintaining the contact. I never receive messages or calls. I know time and distance has made our friendship fade, yet I expected more from the more than decade of friendship and experiences we’ve shared.

I’m now pregnant and have told my family and a couple of friends, I want to tell her before she hears it through the grapevine. But I’m also frustrated because I feel as though she doesn’t want to maintain this friendship any longer even if her occasional responses are optimistic but very vague about catching up.... I’m also pretty hormonal, so I could also just be overthinking this.