The Friend That Needs a Daytimer

She is always late, or cancelling at the last minute. I have to add an extra thirty minutes to an hour to my plan for the day while I wait for her to catch up. It’s as if she doesn’t start getting ready to go out the door until at least five minutes after she said she would be there. You know it’s going to happen every time, yet you keep scheduling things with her. I should probably send reminder texts three days before, the morning of, and one hour before we are supposed to hang out. But then I would be carrying the friendship, the burden of effort on my shoulders. And what kind of friendship is that?

I stop scheduling things with her and then she sees me out one day and has the nerve to say something like, “where have you been? You just kinda disappeared.”

I didn’t disappear. I stopped reaching out to you because I find you disrespectful of my time. She is likely afraid to set boundaries around her time. She struggles with the ability to make a commitment. She can’t phone in advance or ask me to meet her somewhere where I won’t be inconvenienced by her tardiness. She rarely apologizes, yawns on the phone when she giggles over her forgetfulness and tells me it will never happen again, “can we reschedule?”