Dear Charlotte,

I have a friend I've known since university: brilliant, funny, the person I'd call my closest. Except she only ever calls when something's wrong. A breakup, a redundancy, a row with her mother, and suddenly I'm her lifeline for weeks. Then the crisis passes and she goes quiet. When things are good for her, I seem to stop existing. I've started to dread her name on my phone, and then I feel monstrous for dreading it. Do I say something and risk losing her, or accept that this is simply who she is?

Sincerely,
Dread, Then Guilt

Dear Dread, Then Guilt,

The dread is not monstrous. It's information, and you've been treating it as a symptom of your own bad character rather than as a message about the shape of the friendship.

Notice the role you've been given, and have quietly accepted. You are the reliable one, the steady harbour she rows back to when the weather turns. It's a flattering part to play, and being needed has its own grip; it can feel a great deal like being loved, and it asks nothing of you that you don't already know how to give. But you've never once asked her for anything back. "This is just who she is" is a way of keeping the arrangement intact while absolving yourself of changing it.

The question isn't whether to confront her or endure her. It's whether you can bear to be a fuller, more inconvenient friend, one who occasionally needs things too, who interrupts the script. Try it in a small way before any grand conversation. Call her when nothing is wrong. Ask her for something. Watch what happens to the dread when you stop being only useful.

Yours,
Charlotte