ASK PROFESSOR TANYA BYRON
An old friendship has become toxic. Is it worth saving?
The Times
Q My wife and I have been happily married for 30 years and have good relationships with our adult children, who sadly have had health issues and are not able to have kids of their own. The problem lies with close friends from our student years. They too married and had children. We all went into similar professions, and the husband of the pair in particular has always been very competitive. By the time we retired I was further up the career ranking. This was seldom alluded to other than in throwaway comments.
They now have many grandchildren, and our circumstances seem to have made our friends think that they have succeeded where we have failed. They show no interest in our family other than
