Dear Author

I read an advice column with terrible advice. Let me tell you about it.

The writer was a woman who said she had always been there for a friend of hers. Her friend had cancer, and she had been there with her to visit, help with chores, bring food, and just be there for her. When the writer had a hip replacement, her friend was nowhere to be seen, and she cites multiple moments of being ignored and shunned. She’s so confused. Why isn’t her friend there for her?

The agony aunt wrote back and told her to have an open conversation about what was happening. Surely, if she explained her hurt, her friend would understand.

I’m here to say what the agony aunt couldn't say. Here it is.

No, the friend will not understand. The writer can go ahead and explain to her friend what happened, but no… the friend will not understand.

Here’s why.

This friend had cancer. She believes that cancer is a trump-all physical problem. She views herself as THE most pitiable person in the room or out of it, and therefore, she does not need to help anyone with their issues, health or otherwise.

If our writer sat down and explained the hurt and unhappiness she experienced over her friend’s lack of attention, the friend would sit there and stare at her in utter confusion. “I’m sorry, you expected ME to take care of YOU when you got your hip replaced? I’m sorry. I’m unwell myself. It’s not my responsibility to care for people. I’m the sick one. If you needed help, you should have asked for help from someone who wasn’t sick.”

The conversation goes on with our writer asking questions she wrote in her letter. “You didn’t necessarily need to DO anything for me. You could have just visited, called, or done something to let me know you were thinking about me.”

At that point, the friend just stares. She has no idea how to answer. Her cancer has caused her brain to be wired so that she only thinks about herself and her own needs. She has been in that mode for so long that what her friend is saying to her is alien and annoying. I think there's a good chance she'll bite back because what the writer is saying implies that she's not a good person. She can't stand that. She gets mad, and what could come out of her mouth next might be non-fun in a big way.

“So, are you telling me that you only helped me all those times because you wanted me to pay you back? If you did that, I’m really sorry, but I CAN’T PAY YOU BACK! Not ever. And now you’ve shown me what kind of friend you are, greedy and scheming. You’re only nice when you think you can get something in return.”

It doesn’t matter if the friend knows somewhere deep inside her that she’s wrong. She’s not going to back down. As I said before, she has the cancer card that she can play whenever things aren’t going her way. She has probably been playing it relentlessly since she got sick. It was the silver lining to having cancer. Now she’s got this thing she can use against anyone whenever she wants. She can use it to make friends help her out, make her family do what she wants, get accommodation when making arrangements with people, and more. She’s not going to stop using it now, and she’s not going to think for one one-hundredth of a second that a hip replacement is comparative, even if (depending on what type of cancer she had), it is.

I only think this negatively because of what the writer wrote about how their friend was treating them. This doesn’t mean that everyone with health issues behaves like this. They don’t. This behavior is reflective of this particular person’s values.

The writer needs to make a choice. If she confronts the friend about her bad behavior, it will come off as blaming, and this woman isn’t accepting blame at this point. She’s the victim. She has cancer. Seriously, if this ‘friend’ was capable of thinking of others and doing something to help, she would have done it already. She thinks of the writer as a caregiver for her, not someone who needs her care. She cannot fathom the roles being reversed. So, I say again, the reader needs to make a choice.

Does she want to hear it from the horse’s mouth or not? This woman’s actions have made her lack of friendship extraordinarily clear.

Statistically, it is remarkable how many caregivers drop dead before the person they're caring for.