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View as: GRID LIST

Ever Been Dumped By A Mum Friend?

1
When I was pregnant with my first baby and living in London, I met Jane*. We looked similar, we were like-minded, lived only 15 minutes’ from each other. We would go out for coffees, non-alcoholic drinks, talk about our lives, our goals, our dreams, the futures that we would imagine for the little ones we were growing in our bellys. She was my first solid friend that I’d manage to make, after living in London for almost 2 years and a husband who was working non-stop. It felt lonely and hard without friends, and she and I became each other’s confidante
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2
and support system.

Jane and I were due a month apart. We ended up registering at the same hospital and taking the same antenatal classes. It felt serendipitous. We wanted to be in each other’s lives forever.

After our babies were born, we kept up the momentum of seeing each other. We would meet for coffees, we would cry about how hard breastfeeding was, we would debate the whole routine or no-routine books, we would talk about coping with sleepless nights. It felt like the same, but we had a physical extension of our previous discussions… our

SelfishMother.com
3
babies. We would be in awe at the sight of them, so fragile, and so new and exciting and confusing.

About a year later, we both fell pregnant with our second babies a a few months apart. We were terrified, and thrilled and giggly. Still, nothing changed. The only thing was that we were in the toddler-stage with our first children, and along with being tired from the pregnancy, we were also trying to figure out rules, and eating habits, and discipline. She and I had different views on all of that, which is what life is about, right? She did things

SelfishMother.com
4
differently when it came to discipline and weaning, and I supported her and vice versa. The dynamic was sometimes stressful and chaotic and noisy, but we were there for each other’s very different paths.

After our second babies arrived, we saw slightly less of each other, which we expected. My husband and I were slowly moving out of London, but still commuting to work. However, that added about 30 more minutes for the journey to see Jane, so we tried to meet halfway. And sometimes, we couldn’t meet at all. But we were there, on the phone, on email.

SelfishMother.com
5
Again, it felt good and exciting and challenging, to be on this adventure together.

At some point around the time when my second child was 2, Tom and I decided that we would move out to someplace semi-rural. He would still run his business from London, but it would make more sense for me to work from home. Jane and I met for lunch the day before I left work, and although it was a bit sad, we promised that we would make the effort to see each other as often as possible.

A year into me moving out of London completely, things started to feel

SelfishMother.com
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strained. I didn’t hear from Jane for long periods of time, and yet, she would ”like” my FB updates or Instagram posts. Odd. I would text, or email, but nothing came back from her. I figured, we’re all busy, so I left it at that. And then one day, on Facebook, she posted something about not listening to music because her kids told her not to, and me being the loudmouth music-lover that I am, I made a joke about ”mama needs to dance to as much music as she likes sometimes”, and she sent some pretty heavy-handed snark back at me.

”Everyone has a

SelfishMother.com
7
voice in my house,” she said. ”Unlike yours.”

Duuuuuuude.

Facebook isn’t real, we all know that. It can be totally misinterpreted for a variety of reasons. I reached out to her privately and asked her what’s up, and if she was okay.

The email that I got back, was not one that I was expecting. Ever.

”I don’t agree with your parenting choices. So, as much as I like you, I don’t want to hang out with you *and* your children. It breaks my heart that you use the naughty step, you should really look into ’Unconditional Parenting’ and stop

SelfishMother.com
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trying to put so many rules on your children.”

Those two opening lines not only destroyed any hope for a future friendship, it also completely undermined the friendship that we had spent 5 years building. Oh, and, it also managed to totally blast my competency as a mother. Awesome. She did an incredible amount of emotional damage just with a handful of words.

The rest of the email was just as devastating, if not more, as she listed times in the past that she felt ’sorry’ for my children. She also talked about how she silently judged her

SelfishMother.com
9
community of friends/mothers because some of them had smacked their children. I felt angry, sad, disgusted, disappointed, confused and devastated. I even started questioning whether I *had* been wrong in my parenting choices over the years. It was a horrible, insidious email to receive from a ’friend’, and I will never understand why she decided to say such vile things. And, above all, I felt truly sorry for her friends…knowing that they were being judged about the kind of mothers they are, and have no idea that their ’friend’ is doing
SelfishMother.com
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it.

For obvious reasons, that was the day that ended our friendship completely. Well, that, *and* the email that I ended up sending her in response. I won’t go into it, but my husband told me it was the email equivalent of a ”Mike Tyson knockout punch”. It was over.

What’s the lesson? Don’t judge your friends, or specifically, your friends that are mothers. And if you’re doing it, stop it right now, because every child is different, and every parent is different. Celebrate all of it, all the differences and the choices and the weird paths.

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Embrace it and debate it and discuss it and revel in it. That’s what makes parenthood interesting and tolerable and possible. And if you have a friend that you feel is judging you? Dump them immediately. Life is too short to surround yourself with unsupportive, narrow-minded idiots that are shaking their head because you let your kid watch three hours of Peppa Pig that morning.

*name has been changed not to protect her privacy but because I can’t even THINK about saying her real name out loud without breaking a plate.

 

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- 1 Mar 16

When I was pregnant with my first baby and living in London, I met Jane*. We looked similar, we were like-minded, lived only 15 minutes’ from each other. We would go out for coffees, non-alcoholic drinks, talk about our lives, our goals, our dreams, the futures that we would imagine for the little ones we were growing in our bellys. She was my first solid friend that I’d manage to make, after living in London for almost 2 years and a husband who was working non-stop. It felt lonely and hard without friends, and she and I became each other’s confidante and support system.

Jane and I were due a month apart. We ended up registering at the same hospital and taking the same antenatal classes. It felt serendipitous. We wanted to be in each other’s lives forever.

After our babies were born, we kept up the momentum of seeing each other. We would meet for coffees, we would cry about how hard breastfeeding was, we would debate the whole routine or no-routine books, we would talk about coping with sleepless nights. It felt like the same, but we had a physical extension of our previous discussions… our babies. We would be in awe at the sight of them, so fragile, and so new and exciting and confusing.

About a year later, we both fell pregnant with our second babies a a few months apart. We were terrified, and thrilled and giggly. Still, nothing changed. The only thing was that we were in the toddler-stage with our first children, and along with being tired from the pregnancy, we were also trying to figure out rules, and eating habits, and discipline. She and I had different views on all of that, which is what life is about, right? She did things differently when it came to discipline and weaning, and I supported her and vice versa. The dynamic was sometimes stressful and chaotic and noisy, but we were there for each other’s very different paths.

After our second babies arrived, we saw slightly less of each other, which we expected. My husband and I were slowly moving out of London, but still commuting to work. However, that added about 30 more minutes for the journey to see Jane, so we tried to meet halfway. And sometimes, we couldn’t meet at all. But we were there, on the phone, on email. Again, it felt good and exciting and challenging, to be on this adventure together.

At some point around the time when my second child was 2, Tom and I decided that we would move out to someplace semi-rural. He would still run his business from London, but it would make more sense for me to work from home. Jane and I met for lunch the day before I left work, and although it was a bit sad, we promised that we would make the effort to see each other as often as possible.

A year into me moving out of London completely, things started to feel strained. I didn’t hear from Jane for long periods of time, and yet, she would “like” my FB updates or Instagram posts. Odd. I would text, or email, but nothing came back from her. I figured, we’re all busy, so I left it at that. And then one day, on Facebook, she posted something about not listening to music because her kids told her not to, and me being the loudmouth music-lover that I am, I made a joke about “mama needs to dance to as much music as she likes sometimes”, and she sent some pretty heavy-handed snark back at me.

“Everyone has a voice in my house,” she said. “Unlike yours.”

Duuuuuuude.

Facebook isn’t real, we all know that. It can be totally misinterpreted for a variety of reasons. I reached out to her privately and asked her what’s up, and if she was okay.

The email that I got back, was not one that I was expecting. Ever.

“I don’t agree with your parenting choices. So, as much as I like you, I don’t want to hang out with you *and* your children. It breaks my heart that you use the naughty step, you should really look into ‘Unconditional Parenting’ and stop trying to put so many rules on your children.”

Those two opening lines not only destroyed any hope for a future friendship, it also completely undermined the friendship that we had spent 5 years building. Oh, and, it also managed to totally blast my competency as a mother. Awesome. She did an incredible amount of emotional damage just with a handful of words.

The rest of the email was just as devastating, if not more, as she listed times in the past that she felt ‘sorry’ for my children. She also talked about how she silently judged her community of friends/mothers because some of them had smacked their children. I felt angry, sad, disgusted, disappointed, confused and devastated. I even started questioning whether I *had* been wrong in my parenting choices over the years. It was a horrible, insidious email to receive from a ‘friend’, and I will never understand why she decided to say such vile things. And, above all, I felt truly sorry for her friends…knowing that they were being judged about the kind of mothers they are, and have no idea that their ‘friend’ is doing it.

For obvious reasons, that was the day that ended our friendship completely. Well, that, *and* the email that I ended up sending her in response. I won’t go into it, but my husband told me it was the email equivalent of a “Mike Tyson knockout punch”. It was over.

What’s the lesson? Don’t judge your friends, or specifically, your friends that are mothers. And if you’re doing it, stop it right now, because every child is different, and every parent is different. Celebrate all of it, all the differences and the choices and the weird paths. Embrace it and debate it and discuss it and revel in it. That’s what makes parenthood interesting and tolerable and possible. And if you have a friend that you feel is judging you? Dump them immediately. Life is too short to surround yourself with unsupportive, narrow-minded idiots that are shaking their head because you let your kid watch three hours of Peppa Pig that morning.

*name has been changed not to protect her privacy but because I can’t even THINK about saying her real name out loud without breaking a plate.

 

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Tetyana is a Ukrainian-American mum of three, married to an Englishman, living in NY. She's written for Elle and Vogue magazines, and her first novel 'Motherland' is available at Amazon. She hosts a YouTube show called The Craft and Business of Books, translates for Frontline PBS news, and writes freelance.

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