Fred Foundation

After a recent series of perceived derelictions of duty by friends, my wife and I are undertaking an audit of all our friendships.  It seems that some friends are of more use than others when the going gets tough.

I don’t judge them for it.  When my wife and I first became parents, I noticed that a natural gulf opens between those who have children and those who don’t, and i’m wondering whether something similar happens between those who have more problematic lives and those who sail through life untroubled by setbacks.  Certainly some friends are markedly better at imagining the day-to-day  pressures my wife and I are under.

Others cling to their impressions that we’re fine, based on some upbeat conversation we may have had six months ago.

Some of this is our fault.  Early on we couldn’t bring ourselves to keep everyone up to date with each tribulation we were going through, partly because we didnt have the time and partly because we didn’t want Alex’s introduction to the world to be a  hard-luck story.

Still it’s hard to understand why some erstwhile close friends have stopped making contact at all.  Do they think we’re jinxed?  Or are they convinced that we are so radically changed as people that they would no longer be able to help or cheer us up?

I’ve  had this out with one or two friends whose absence I felt especially keenly.  Interestingly, old friends deal with it less well than new friends.  I suppose more established friendships resist adjustment because of the weight of baggage and history they bear.  Old friends can feel more resentment at having the quality of their friendship questioned or being given directions regarding what is (or is not) required of them in a crisis.

I can feel some friends’ grips tighten around their perception of me.  They are unwilling to let my function in their lives change, despite the colossal alteration that fate has wrought on mine.  More than once, I have offloaded on someone how tough it is getting from one end of the day to the other, how exhausted my wife and I are, and their solution is to offer to take me out on a massive late-night drinking session.

The truest friends are the ones who identify what would actually help us, and sincerely offer it.  We never take them up on their offers.  Just feeling understood is like medicine.

Taken from About A Boy – Tom Bickerby’s diary on his son Alex, who has Down’s syndrome.  This column appears in The Times Life section every Tuesday.