Dear Jane,

I have a friend that I’ve known since high school who was always obsessed with having children. She got married young and was basically begging her husband to get her pregnant as soon as possible. They had some trouble, but she finally had a little girl a couple years ago.

Since then, I basically haven’t been able to have any sort of conversation with her that doesn’t involve her bringing up her kid. In text conversations, she has to send pictures of her daughter, no matter what we’re discussing. If she FaceTimes me, the camera is generally pointed at her kid for most of the conversation. It’s to the point where I rarely answer her phone calls or FaceTime requests, and will wait hours before I respond to texts.

I was recently hospitalized with bilateral pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in my lungs) and even while I’m laying in my hospital bed, dealing with some of the worst pain of my life (not to mention this being an incredibly terrifying moment for me, as someone who has always been healthy), she still sends pictures of her daughter and steers the conversation towards her.

I’m at the end of my rope. Am I being unreasonable because I’m a single woman with no children (and no real desire to have any for a while), or is she being really rude?
Please help.

Answer: She’s kind of being rude, but she’s also being herself. If she’s been obsessed with this goal since high school (yeesh!) you must’ve seen this coming, no? I mean, maybe not this version of this—which is pretty extreme—but it’s not really a surprise that she’s one of these sorts of moms.

People take to motherhood in a million ways and one of those ways is to derive all of your joy and self worth from it. Or to become obsessed with your child. Which is fine, if you don’t care about being tolerable to the adults in your life. She’s going to have to keep making babies for a long time because eventually they will all grow up and have medical emergencies and this woman doesn’t sound like she’s super into showing up during those times. But when they’re cute little babies and toddlers? Man, they’re so cute!

You also mentioned that she’s young, so I’m guessing you’re young—like in your 20s. One of the hardest lessons we get taught whether we like it or not in our 20s is that friends sometimes aren’t always your friends. Especially during major life events like marriage, births, deaths, moves, new jobs, etc. It sucks to be on your side of it because you’ve put in the emotional labor of being there for her and she’s just giving all she has to her kid right now. You must feel really lonely for her. Maybe she’ll come back around, give it time. In the meantime, since you’re not super into the kid stuff, give her a break and lean on your friends who aren’t so insufferable.