Friendship (over) filled with drama

Dear Carolyn: Please help me sort my feelings about my best friend. She has been through a rough few months. She had an emotionally abusive relationship come to a head and (mercifully) end, but it wasn’t without hours and hours of best-friend duty: taking hysterical phone calls, visiting her, etc.

Meanwhile, I’m going through a lot too. I’m getting married in the fall; I just moved in with my fiance; and I’m trying to line up new work. She apologizes for not being a good maid of honor, or for dominating a conversation with her worries, and so far I really haven’t minded.

However, she just said she’s accepting a six-month position in a foreign country. Even though she said she’ll be here for the wedding, she won’t be here for anything else. I’m not wanting the royal treatment – I just want my best friend to talk to as I go through this transition.

Does it sound like she’s being selfish, or do we both have so much going on that we’re both being a little selfish and that’s OK? – Best Friend Blues

It’s fair to expect your best friend to let you get a word in edgewise, and to delegate some of her crisis-management elsewhere.

It’s not fair – OK, batpoop nuts – to expect her to decline the overseas gig just because you want her around to talk wedding.

So, I’ll tweak your observation and say you’re both being a little dramatic.

She’s also taking dramatic action to change her circumstances – and perhaps develop independence. Whether it’s the right move, I can’t say, but it arguably comes at the right time for you both. She’s too unwell, inside, to be the kind of friend you were hoping she’d be. And you’re too frustrated with her to keep doing the patient-friend dance – and too preoccupied with your own stuff to do the even harder work of choreographing a new one.