u/FribTwee

I'm 34, been childfree my whole adult life, never wavered, never regretted it. Most of my family has accepted this at this point, or at least stopped actively pushing. Except my aunt Linda who operates on a different timeline from the rest of us. So we're all at Easter dinner, maybe 12 people, passing food around, normal chaos. Things are going fine. Then Linda sets her fork down with this energy, like she's about to say something she's been sitting on for a while, and goes "I've been thinking about you and I think I finally understand why you don't want children."

Everyone kind of paused. I asked her, genuinely curious, what she'd figured out. She said "I think you just haven't met the right man yet. Once you do, you'll feel differently. The right relationship changes everything." I've been with my partner for 9 years. He was sitting right next to me. He is also childfree, we decided this together before we even moved in, it was a whole actual conversation we had. He slowly put down his fork too.

I pointed this out. Linda nodded like I had just confirmed her theory rather than dismantled it and said "well maybe he'll change his mind too, you never know." My partner, who is normally very quiet at family stuff, said "I really won't though." Linda said we'd see.

We've been together nine years Linda. We've seen.

The rest of dinner was fine but I could tell she was still chewing on her theory the whole time, like she'd identified the problem and was just waiting for us to catch up.

Me (28F) and my best friend, I'll call her Dani (28F), have been close since we were 17. We've done everything together. Trips, concerts, trying new restaurants, watching each other go through breakups and job losses. I thought we had the kind of friendship where we could say anything to each other.

Last month we had a minor disagreement about plans. I wanted to try a new place for dinner, she seemed fine with it, then after dinner she was quieter than usual. I asked if she was okay and she said "honestly I just don't really like that kind of food but I didn't want to make a big deal of it." I said okay, noted, we should just tell each other these things . And then she kind of opened up and said that she's actually been going along with a lot of things over the years because she didn't want to disappoint me or make me feel bad. Not just food. Movies, activities, trips. She said she knew I got excited about things and she didn't want to dim that.

I've been sitting with this for three weeks and I genuinely don't know how to feel. Part of me appreciates that she finally said something. Part of me is hurt that she spent eleven years pretending. And a big part of me is now going back through memories and wondering which ones were real and which ones she was just tolerating.

She says she loves our friendship and wants to keep it, she just wants to be more honest going forward. I believe her. But something feels different now and I don't know if that goes away.

Has anyone navigated something like this? How do you rebuild trust in a friendship when the version of it you thought you had turns out to be different from what it actually was?