Auntie SparkNotes: My BFF Keeps Flaking Out On Me

Hi Auntie Sparknotes,

I have this really awesome best friend (I’ll call her K). I’ve known K since high school and we became really close during my senior year because I had social anxiety and fell into a suicidal depression and felt she was the only one I could confide in (which I was right, she was super supportive and encouraged me to go seek help). I am now in college and have since sought help and am currently getting better.

The problem I have is that she is really flaky when it comes to planning. Before I go into it, I want to say that she has social anxiety and as someone who has went through the exact same thing in high school (and slowly, painfully overcame to some degree in college) I know generally how she’s feeling and empathize when she tells me that’s why she cancels plans. The problem is sometimes she cancels plans last minute (like the day of or night before) not for anxiety but for other reasons (she didn’t realize it conflicts with other stuff she already plans, she changed her plans last minute, etc.) and/or when we make plans she doesn’t solidify what time we are meeting until the morning of (she’s confirmed it an hour or two before meeting).

Most times I’m alright with it but recently my schedule has been really hectic because of papers, exams, extracurricular, applying for programs in the summer and trying to find housing for the next school year. So when I go out of my way to plan to hang out with her and she cancels last minute, I feel like she really doesn’t care about me or my time.

Auntie, she really is awesome and I love hanging out with her but this makes me feel like she doesn’t care about hanging out with me or respect my time (even though it may not be true because she has told me before that she does care about being my friend yet does stuff like this). I want to tell her this issue but at the same time I don’t know how to bring it up without her feeling attacked because I haven’t really differentiated the moments where she’s cancelled due to anxiety or due to other things and she might feel like I’m getting mad at her for her anxiety and I’m not. I also feel really guilty, like I’m a bad friend for getting upset for something this petty when I know she’s going through a really tough time trying to manage her anxiety.

I guess what I’m asking is: What do I do about this situation? Do I tell her? How?

Allow me to answer your question with a question, Sparkler: Are you asking this question because you don’t know how to say, “I’m sympathetic to your anxiety, but it hurts my feelings when you keep me on the hook for plans and then cancel at the last minute”?

Or are you asking because you know your friend won’t let you say that without turning it around on you?

Because truth is, an emotionally mature and reasonable person should have no trouble telling the difference between being attacked versus being politely called out for inconsiderate behavior. It’s an easy enough distinction to make. But if your friend isn’t emotionally mature or reasonable, and if she’d rather go on the defensive than admit fault, there’s no magic way of making her receptive to criticism.

And as much as Auntie SparkNotes doesn’t want to drop this whole debacle back into your lap, this is your best friend we’re talking about, which means you know better than me whether she’s likely to twist a genuine request for consideration into an attack on her mental health issues—and for that matter, whether she thinks those issues give her a free pass to be flaky and unreliable. So if you want to talk to her about this, your years of experience as her friend will be the best guide when it comes to choosing your words.

Of course, they’re also a guide when it comes to choosing your battles. Which is why, even if you do talk to her, I’d also like to gently suggest that if this friendship is important to you—and it sounds like it is—then it might also be time to look past the various manifestations of your friend’s flakiness and simply make peace with the fact that she is flaky. You’ve been friends for a long time; how many times have you seen her behave this way, not just with you, but in general? Do you have any evidence that this isn’t personal, but rather just the way she is? You say that she claims to care deeply about your friendship, yet still cancels plans at a moment’s notice; have you considered that perhaps these two things are both true, and not even related? What if your friend is just a flawed, complex human being, one who is loyal and sweet and supportive and scatterbrained and really bad at schedules, all at the same time?

Don’t get me wrong: None of this is to say that it’s not annoying and frustrating to be repeatedly canceled on by a person who can’t get their shizz together. And if your friend is unaware of the effect her behavior is having, then that’s a good reason not to hold back on letting her know how disappointing it is when she bails on you, especially when your time is scarce and precious. But at the same time, you can mitigate that disappointment by accepting that her unreliability is just part of the package. You don’t have to love it, or condone it, to make peace with it. Maybe you pencil in a backup, solo activity on days when you have plans with Flakey, so that you have something to look forward to if she cancels; maybe the two of you can mutually acknowledge her flakiness, and come up with a priority system for your dates (e.g. if you haven’t seen each other in more than three months, she’s not allowed to cancel.)

If you think about it, you might even realize that being a flake is the flipside of some traits of hers that you love, like spontaneity, creativity, flexibility. (Informal poll: Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a space cadet friend who can’t keep a calendar to save her life, but who you still call first when something goes wrong because she’ll always come through for you in a crisis.)

Because yes, you can ask your friend to please try to be more reliable, and you can hope she’ll do her best. But what you ultimately control is not her behavior, but how you react to it. And on that front, you can make an enormous difference in your own life if you can make even a small allowance for the ways that other people are, particularly people you love.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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