Fair Weather Friends

So all of this thinking about friends reminded me of something.

A little backstory - in a previous life (and marriage), all we did was play golf. All vacations had to include golf. We had no friends outside of the golf club. We ate at the golf club and if we went somewhere else for a meal, it was with other members. Every weekend we had tee times to accommodate roughly 16 players.

At one point, one couple decided to move to Mexico. There was a big party and off they went. We went to visit them in Cabo a couple of times and then we thought about moving there ourselves. It would be wonderful. I could work remotely. I'd even had a word with my manager; she was all for it. We could have team meetings there. And we had a plan for a business there. So my husband went to check it out. He was driving rather than flying so it would take a bit longer to get there and back.

Before he left, all of our friends we played golf with made a point of coming up to us and saying to him "Don't you worry about her while you're gone. We're going to take care of her." And to me, "Now if you need anything while he's gone, you just call."

And off he went. And my tee times were taken care of and I had people to eat with. But then I woke up one morning and I didn't have hot water. I suspected the pilot light went out on the water heater but I didn't know how to check it. I also didn't want to pay a service call for a plumber just to relight the pilot. I needed someone to check the pilot light and relight it if it had gone out before I called for a repair or a replacement.

I started with the couple who lived closest to us and worked my way through ALL of those people who had offered to help if I needed ANYTHING AT ALL. A few people offered the name and phone number of their favorite plumber, but most of them just told me to find a plumber, like I didn't already know that.

It was disappointing, but they weren't contractually obligated to help me. All friendships have boundaries, and apparently I'd discovered the limits of those.

Years later when I was getting a divorce, one person who'd already been through that told me, "When you get a divorce here, you'll find out who your friends are and you'll find out you don't have any." I think I already knew that.