My Best Friend Broke Up With Me When I Was Pregnant & I’ve Been In Therapy Since

It started off innocuously enough — some long pauses in our Whatsapp chat and vagueness when I suggested meeting up.

It gave me an awkward feeling in my stomach, so I wasn’t overly surprised when one of my best friends, M, told me she was angry at me for something I said and needed time to process. 

Perhaps if I hadn’t been pregnant and hormonal, about to head into my first-ever third trimester (and unknowingly at the time, a pandemic), I would have handled it differently. But then again, maybe not, because, as I learned later in therapy, fear of abandonment is a big trigger for me.

At the time, it really broke me down

I panicked on multiple levels, especially because I didn’t know at the time what I’d said. I was desperate to fix whatever had happened before having the baby, but it didn’t seem to fit into her timeline for getting over it.

Through my third trimester, first-ever C-section, and the subsequent Covid-19 pandemic, M would continue her radio silence. For a friendship that had lasted over 15 years, it was very, very strange, even with the new baby and life adjustments. I felt the loss intensely.

Once the lockdown was lifted and we were all trying to get back to our “normal” lives (though no one ever did, did they?), it reminded me that there was a hole in my social life, made all the more traumatic by how lonely motherhood in a pandemic had felt.

Once the haze of new motherhood and pandemic anxiety wore off, I decided it was time to better look after myself. 

I couldn’t believe that I had spent all those months as a new mum worrying about a friendship with someone who didn’t seem to care enough to ever get back in touch during what was a really hard time for me

Maybe most people would have shrugged it off and moved on for their own mental health, but as a lifelong people pleaser, it was impossible for me to do that. Going to therapy had never seemed like a better idea.

Was it an overreaction to seek professional help because a girl didn’t like me anymore?

As a child, my parents would always blame me for being “oversensitive” when these things happened.

Therapy has taught me that this has resulted in me being an adult who can’t trust her own feelings a lot of the time. So yes, talking to someone about how I felt when this happened, how it has been a pattern of behaviour, and then learning coping mechanisms to overcome it, has indeed been very helpful.  

Of course, it took quite a few sessions for me to realise this was a behavioural pattern. That low self-esteem has often led me to second-guess my own feelings and to take responsibility for other people’s feelings way too much. By taking responsibility for how everyone around me felt, I had forgotten how to trust myself, and to look to others to confirm my opinions. 

M and I have slowly patched things up. But things will never be the same. How could they?

In the space of our silence, I’ve had two children. I’ve literally become a new person. That doesn’t mean I’ve left my pre-pandemic, single friends behind, but it seems like the lack of contact really emphasised how different we are, especially now. 

Learning to trust myself, and teaching my daughters to do the same

What struck me most about this is that I absolutely do not want this for my daughters. As a millennial parent, I think it’s important that they trust their feelings and have real boundaries.

Beyond the safety implications of stranger danger or tricky adults, it’s also about forming healthy, trusting relationships. If that is something I want them to have for themselves, then it should be something I fight for myself as well.

Therapy hasn’t been the solution to all my self-esteem woes. An hour every month is not going to undo 40 years of brain wiring (at least not right away). But now, it feels like enough to do a check-in once a month or so, and discuss issues that might be bothering me at the moment.

Friendships and navigating relationships inevitably come up a lot but if all this has taught me anything, it’s that perspective is everything and that there is never a right or wrong decision, just mine.

Karen Fong is a mum to two young girls and is surviving motherhood by applying a wry sense of humour (and a lot of eye-rolling and complaining) to the weird and wacky situations that come her way. DM her at @karentanfong to commiserate about party goodie bags, sick babies and travelling with a billion pieces of luggage (but she doesn’t have her kids on her account because this.)