changing friendships

[ellie1202]

hello and sorry in advance if this topic has been talked to death already in this forum.

 

i'm almost thirty and have been dating my current boyfriend for about a year and a half. before meeting him it had been a looong time in between serious boyfriends. after i started dating him my friendships changed some. some in the respect that i now wanted to spend time that i had spent exclusively with friends. not that i didn't spend time with friends as well but the amount of time changed. i had built a very happy very content single life full of friends, etc. i went out probably 3 to 4 nights a week with a small group of friends (2 other girls really). one of those girls was my roommate. before the boyfriend we spent A LOT of time together. we both moved to our current city for our job and hadn't made a lot of friends in the area. also, having each other made it very very easy to not go looking for many friends. we had our one other friend who lived close and we were happy. enter my new boyfriend. i suddenly wanted to spend some week and weekend nights with him. as our relationship progressed the amount of time i wanted to spend with him increased. i still went to events and actively tried to hang out with my roommate. it was just more planned now were it used to be whenever. i eventually moved in with him (only about 4 months ago). we now live about half an hour from my old town so that we each only have a half our commute to work.

 

the problem is my ex-roommate is acting like i'm a terrible friend. from the beginning she complained about the amount of time i spent with him and me not always being available and eventually me starting to spend some week nights at his house. she was angry mainly that we had to plan. i realize we were closer than most typical roommates/friends in that we didn't really have other people we hung out with other than our one friend. but, am i and was i in the wrong? i feel like i still question this over a year later because she continues to treat me like it was all my fault. i think in her perfect world we would have both found someone and started dating at the same time but it didn't work like that. about 8 months in to dating him my friend gave me an ultimatum of him or me.

 

how much time is it normal to expect your friends to hang out with you? is 3 or 4 nights a week not enough, even when dating someone seriously? i feel like i know that i was giving her enough and when we did hang out my boyfriend NEVER came, except to events where she invited him, and i didn't constantly talk/text to him. it was her time. i still have some anger towards her telling me that i ruined the friendship and it's all my fault because i should have hung out with her more after i met him. i now have a new set of friends that i met in my town and hardly ever talk to her a year later. we still share our one friend and she's been telling me some things my ex-roommate has been saying about me behind my back. i don't really care, it's just hurtful because i feel it's untrue.

[Crazyaboutdogs]

The big problem is that you spent a huge amount of time with her so naturally she really felt the hit when you started spending more time with your boyfriend. While her feelings of sadness and disappointment are perfectly normal, what is not acceptable is the way she is acting out. It is not like you totally abandoned her...you just couldn't spare the same amount of time. You still tried to be a good friend so I don't think you should feel guilty. Friendships change when one person is single and the other one is attached. She needs to go out and find new single friends and rely less on you. I will caution you however, that if things don't work out between you and your boyfriend, don't assume that you can simply go back to being with a particular friend all the time...start doing things on your own and cultivating other friendships as well.

[ellie1202]

i've definitely created a new group of friends, i'm just still angry and hurt that i lost her as a friend when i tried to keep the friendship going. and i guess because of that i started questioning if i really did do something wrong. even though in my gut i felt like i didn't. thanks for the response!