Being spoiled by my rich friend makes me feel like a charity case

Walking through the Westfield shopping center in West London has never been more surreal. Headlines about inflation and energy bills ring on my phone as I jostle with shoppers laden with shiny bags from Ted Baker, Charlotte Tilbury, Russell & Bromley and the like.

But while my jaws drop at the sheer excess of consumerism taking place, my husband is seeing a completely different side. “I wonder if all these people are here,” he muses, and his eyes fall on all the families slumped in the rest areas, “because they’ve left their houses without heat to come looking for free heat.”

It seems that the stark contrast between rich and poor has never been more evident than at this moment. Even for those of us who don’t live on extremes, whose floors aren’t moldy from damp, or who are wondering whether to take their yacht to Monaco or Antigua, that contrast is becoming increasingly apparent in our own social circles.

I reached an age, 54 years old, where the gap between rich and poor is particularly marked. My best friend is a very successful businesswoman born in the United States and married to an equally successful British businessman. They just sold part of her telecommunications company for a bundle. Now, as the cost-of-living crisis deepens, I fidget as she floats by.

We have shared financial ups and downs our entire lives. In our 20s, I was a successful novelist (not rich, but faking it and doing it) while she worked as a copywriter. At 30, I was in Hong Kong, living large as a banker’s wife, while she was in London starting a business.

Then, when we hit 40, my husband lost his job and I had to go out to work, while his business began to pay dividends. But these were parenting years for both of us and there’s nothing more leveling than worrying about getting the MMR shot or making the kids eat peas.

It’s only in the last decade, as our children have grown and started to drift apart, that I’ve felt the cracks between our two lifestyles widen.

At 50, it seems, the die is cast: Unless we win the lottery, most of us know roughly how rich or poor we’ll be by now. Increasingly, it’s obvious that while my best friend and her husband are flying professionally, we’re still in the middle lane.

The income gap between us has become an abyss, and I’m starting to feel uneasy. Do they judge our apparent inability to radically change our balance? More and more, I feel like they do.

His kindness knows no bounds: the dinners are subsidized, the support is constant. But, in my head, this is starting to feel like charity; as if we are holding them back from what they really want to do, which is enjoy their hard-earned success with treats and expensive trips. After a lifetime of going in and out of my friend’s life, I’m suddenly not sure we fit in anymore.

Last summer, this feeling of inadequacy came to a head.

My friend has a holiday home in Spain to which she has always invited us. Her generosity has always been immense, and in the early years I felt that she earned my livelihood by cooking, bringing the bread in the morning, taking care of the children at dawn.

Little gestures on my part to ‘sing for our dinner’, but she was happy and I was happy. We both made our way through the financial turmoil with our usual enthusiasm.

In recent years, however, she has hired a housekeeper who does the cooking and fetching the bread, and is understandably not as interested in drinking the cheap Rioja we brought to the party anymore and wants to spread her wings beyond the bar. of local tapas. All the little tricks we had at home to camouflage the differences between us: inviting them to dinner instead of going out, meeting them for a walk instead of going to the theater, pretending we’re too busy to go out on expensive weekends. . They were exposed on that holiday.

We had missed our chance to ‘level up’ and that felt wrong, especially when a failed attempt on my part to try to contribute to running costs was met with an agonized frown and the words: ‘Oh, I really thought they were beyond having to talk about money.

Because of course this was making her nervous: she was on vacation and she just wanted her guests to have a good time.

Suddenly, despite being the kindest and most generous host any of us knows, the taboos of money, of talking about money, had come between us and I felt like I was getting everything wrong. I felt horrible: on the wrong foot, I was no longer equal to her.

Now, when I think about this summer, I confess that I have started making excuses in my head.

After our years of navigating life together, her being my family when mine let me down; of me guiding her through her traumatic first marriage; her being there for me in every crisis I’ve had; of the simplest moments, like hugging each other in hysterical laughter over some shared joke. . . After all these high points and tipping points, is money really going to tear us apart?

Amanda Clayman, a Los Angeles-based financial therapist who helps wealthy people negotiate their relationships with less fortunate friends and family, is having none of it.

“We’ve created a society where the hallmark of wealth is frictionless comfort,” he tells me. ‘Your friend would probably say that she simply wants you to share that ease, while you try to show her how hard you’re working to earn a place there.

“But it’s like she’s speaking French and you’re speaking Spanish and so much is being lost in translation, including the honesty that’s been the touchstone of your long friendship.”

Amanda was one of the first professionals to work in financial therapy, discovering, two decades ago, the need for someone between a financial advisor, who advises on debt management, for example, and a therapist who deals with debts. anxiety issues around those debts. .

His clients have a common denominator for their anxiety: a financial mismatch between themselves and others. Amanda advises couples seeking a prenup, new couples carrying debts from their old life, the mid-grown children of wealthy parents struggling to launch into a world very different from their cloistered upbringing.

One of the biggest increases in Google searches in recent years has been the search for the interface between “money” and “feelings,” says Amanda.

“Money has become the representative of so many things in life that are emotional and difficult, the pain point among so many problems of alienation and insecurity. Combine that with the traditional apprehension when talking about money and that makes for a tricky spot. But the thorny places are also where true intimacy and connection happen, so therein lies our chance.’

Amanda sympathizes with my agony but is clear that it is my insecurities that are at stake, and that it is up to me to grasp the thorn and address that opportunity.

“You have to communicate your feelings of inadequacy, but not in a way that makes her feel bad,” she says. ‘You also have to remind yourself that you may be poorer than her, but you’re still hers just like hers. Money is just a currency between you; don’t let it devalue the basic equity between the two of you.

As I was writing this article, there have been thorny moments between my friend and I when we were faced not with the elephant in the room but with the cash cow between us. He has struggled to understand why I feel so guilty about not being able to keep up, going to a fancy restaurant or paying for my vacation.

With a little help from my friend and Amanda, I’m realizing that my insecurities are rooted in pride and, even worse, a little envy. Fortunately, I’m smart enough to know that this is ridiculous and has no place in a friendship.

I’m not envious of those Westfield shoppers and their flim-flam designer, so why should my friend’s hit be? Better to go to the warm spaces of a friendship where money has no currency.