A friend is overstepping and not accepting boundaries, has known about my pregnancy for 4 days.
I'm sure this is a dumb thing to complain about and my hormones are all over the place, but maybe other pregnant people might have input.
A few weeks ago, we found out we are expecting. We are thrilled to be first-time parents and are over the moon. We waited until after my first official appointment to share with family and friends.
Now, we have tons of friends and family who don't live nearby, but I wanted the chance to tell my girl friends in person. So I sent a text, and I was like, hey I've got some fun, girl, in-person stuff I wanna talk to yall about! Lunch this weekend? 2 of the 3 were cool and down.
Problem is the third one. All of our other friends we have known for 5 years, 10 years, or are my childhood friends of 20+ years. This friend I've known for a year. She followed my social media for a while and we went through our divorces around the same time, and I'm worried she's very attached to an idea of me without actually taking the time to get to know me. We've hung out a lot and there's many times where things are fine and normal, but sometimes she gets very anxious and begins to overstep. So when I sent out that text, she reaches out individually and immediately bombards me about how she's "super worried about me" and needs to know first before everyone else because of "how close we are." But we are not... so I stood on my boundary, and expressed that I wanted to talk to everyone in person at the same time and not over a text. Response: ":( :( :( :(" like.......... stop???
Ultimately we decided to call people and tell them. Including my girl friends, who were all excited. This friend seemed the least excited and was bummed she wasn't the first to know (the hormone monster in my brain screaming IT'SNOTFKNABOUTYOU) but we just ignored it.
She texts me the other night making conversation about the pregnancy and it's not really probing until: "when does your third trimester start? I need to know for secret special reasons :)"
I already knew this was gonna turn into "I'm planning your baby shower:)" and if this makes me a jerk or it's tacky, sorry, but I explicitly do not want her in charge of it. I don't know her well enough and she's been stressing me out. So I was like, I'm gonna need to know the secret special reasons. I was correct. "Google says you throw a baby shower toward the end of pregnancy so im gonna throw you one!" So I express that I actually wanted to spearhead the shower planning but have help from friends and family (she doesn't know all my friends, let alone my large family and siblings I definitely want there). I told her she is more than welcome to help and be involved.
"Oh no honey, other people plan it for you."
- RANT: I am a pregnant 30 y.o. grad student with a career and you are a person I have known for a year who doesn't respect my boundaries and you literally do not know more than me because a) it's my pregnancy and I will do whatever I please and b) you just googled it so it's not like you're an expert?? Miss me with this "oh honey" sh*t too.
Anyway she then starts bombarding me with long, long messages of apology and that she just wants me to feel loved and cared for (SHE wants to feel loved and cared for! Which doesn't make her a bad person but that strong, anxious desire is being pushed onto other people, a huge pattern with this person).
And I went to bed because I'm tired and nauseous. Anyway I'm not excited about future interactions with her and everyone else has been respectful (but we only let the cat out of the bag a few days ago so like). It stressed me out and I didn't sleep good. I'm also struggling with some hormonal anger and I know when I see her in-person next and it is discussed, my response is not gonna be warm and fuzzy, especially if she continues to push my boundaries. (Spouse's input: "do it, go off, she needs to hear it and the conversation needs to happen. If she doesnt respect your boundaries after that, that's a her problem." He is right)
thanks for coming to my hormonal rage induced Ted talk!!