Indifference to friend's pain

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Thank you, Emor.

Dussel, that's like saying you don't lend a friend an umbrella because that won't stop the rain anyway. I'm surprised at your comments. There were a million and a half things she could've chosen from to do to help me - from emotional support to practical help, being as alone as I am and in a country where I didn't grow up, I needed all the help I could get.
Just knowing she was on the other end of the email server would've made a world of a difference to me.

Sallamandrina, I'm surprised because it's as if you knew this woman. You described exactly the way she is: "People prioritize so strangely - they hurry up to suck up to their boss or show off in front of strangers and end up with no energy left for the friends and family." If I'd been a stranger on the street, she would've made sure to comfort me and give me her condolences.

And yes, people become defensive if you call them on their crap. That's why I didn't say a word about and pretended not to have cared in the least. But I did start making her feel the consequences of her actions. I gave her zero of what she had called asking for. I'm sure she's now wondering whether I'm angry or I was colder than usual because I'm grieving. People like to be left wondering, they resent being told in no uncertain terms where they're standing. They want to be the decision-makers about whether they did something wrong or not. They want to be left alone to think whether what they did was worth doing or not, whether they lost from it or not. If you let them figure it all out by themselves, one day they'll come back knowing better than to treat you like s**t again. It takes lots of passive-aggressive acting out and carefully avoiding to talk about what's really on your mind, but with NTs it's the only thing that pays. Never ever tell a person directly what hurt you in their behavior.

Well, that thing that doesn't exist does a lot of good to most people.

Maybe it happened like this:

You had lunch with her and didn't mention your mother's death. Soon afterward she gets an email from you telling her the news. She wonders why you didn't say anything about this during lunch. She concludes that perhaps the subject of death is too emotionally upsetting for you and rather than speak of it directly face to face, you could only deliver the news to her by email - or maybe the complete opposite happened - she concluded that because you didn't bring it up at lunch you most likely were not emotionally affected by your mother's death and the email was either a formality or a way of relaying the news that would allow you to distance yourself from the emotional impact of your loss, and therefore she truly didn't know how to respond thinking that perhaps condolences would be unwelcome or unnecessary. With that thought in mind she decides it would be better not to acknowledge or talk about your mother's death at all.

Sounds a little lame, but it's another way of looking at this puzzle.

cosmiccat, your reading is very likely. It's indeed how I felt and what I did - I didn't want it to be the subject at lunch, I didn't want it to ruin her mood in the middle of work. I just happened to be 1 block from her office at noon, with an hour to kill, so I called her and said since she had to go out to lunch anyway, why not do it together and she was happy. I thought it'd be unfair to meet her a couple minutes later and surprise! it's a grieving and condolences lunch. I've done that to people in the past (not tell them on the phone that I have bad news and then ruin their time at the restaurant), and I know people distance after something like that.

So when I didn't get a phonecall from her 5 minutes after the email, I thought the same you did and didn't get upset. But then I didn't hear from her for a whole month, until all 3 of her wonderful job offers fell throught and she became desperate for a job. This was too much. Even if she thought I didn't want to talk about my mother's passing, she could've called at some point during that month just to talk, ask if I wanted to meet for coffee, reply to the email asking how I am or thanking me for the info I had offered in it, whatever. It's possible to comfort and cheer up a friend even without mentioning a death in her family if you think she doesn't want to talk about it. Not to mention, she could've offered help (in that email I related the various problems I was having). Then she calls me when she needs help, and she called me 3 times till she got me with time to talk. When it's about her, she has all the time in the world to call several times and talk and suggest to meet.

But your reading explains why I didn't get the standard condolences from her, yes. That's already a lot for me. Thank you! Things are starting to clear up.

Sallamandrina, my therapist explained that to me once. She called it "the split" - treating someone worse the closer they are to you and the more sure they are of your liking them anyway. My family are like this, and my ex husband too.

elderwanda, you're damn right, just like cosmiccat. She'd probably leave me to bleed if we went on that trip abroad together as she suggested and I got stabbed, not knowing what to do or say. Don't forget she's not an Aspie.

That is the one question I have about humans. It drives me crazy not to understand this. They treat each other badly the more loving their relationship is defined to be, thinking they'll get away with it, then everyone is alone and lonely and resentful and disillusioned of humans. My ex husband was in utter shock when I divorced him. It hadn't crossed his mind that a wife can leave a husband. When we were summoned to the final signing of the divorce, he still was like "Ok, Greentea, enough of this game, let's go home now, we're bothering these clerks needlessly." When I actually signed, he was as if he'd seen an alien spaceship. Same alien spaceship reaction I got from my brother last month when I wouldn't forgive his horrendous behavior to me of 6 years before. Same alien spaceship reaction I got from this "friend" that triggered this thread. My only hunch is that there's something in society and the media that conveys that success is being so powerful that you're able to get away with being an a**hole to those who love you and they'll put up with it But I still don't know. This friend is desperate for a job, I could help her a lot, all she had to do was reply to my email with 3 words "sorry to hear".