Money Changes Everything

Tonight I write with a heavy heart. I've lost a friendship that was once very important to me. There weren't any fights or disagreements, or tearful goodbyes, just a gradual parting of ways. What drove us apart? Sadly money, quite simply because she has it and I don't. I don't mind that she has money, I have other friends that do too. I also have family with money. How it drove a wedge between my friend and I isn't so much that she has it, it's that when I met her she didn't, and when she got it, it changed her, and suddenly every conversation revolved around her (husband's) money, the opportunities it gave her, and little reminders to me that I didn't have money. I'll never know, because I'm too phobic of conflict to ask, if her digs were intentional, or if she never realized she was making them at all. At the same time she was experiencing this new country club lifestyle Mr. Timewarp and I were scaling back. He lost his steady job and was working for a couple of friends for very little pay (he's still on the hunt for a steady job). It was hard to listen to all the talk of what this friend was spending and how she decided to stay home instead of return to work after the birth of her child. I found her comments (including that a fellow friend's husband making a quarter of a million dollars a year didn't do "that well") self serving and obnoxious. (For the record I think $250k is a LOT of money and it would take far less than that even for me to live comfortably). She put down the place I had my baby shower, the fact that my car wasn't brand new like hers, and made me feel like I wasn't good enough to hang out with anymore because I wasn't a "stay at home" mom. My children recently had a birthday. Financially I could not afford a big fancy party so I kept it to a few friends and family in my small home. I didn't invite her because I feared it wouldn't have been a good enough party for her. Naturally I saw she just had a large party for her child and I wasn't invited. I guess I could expect that but it really drove home the fact that this friend and I are really done. She's now building a huge house, and though I'm sure coffee with her would probably mean endless chat about this house and how fantastic, and expensive it will be, part of me wishes we could get together like we used to. We used to have a lot in common. We both worked in the same industry and planned our families and were pregnant at the same time. Unfortunately,now that those families are here there's just no more common ground to stand on.