There is a saying about friendship. I am not going to be sappy enough to add the quote in but you know the one about friends, seasons and all that other stuff. Some stay forever. Some don’t. Some are there for a reason.
Sometimes you don’t know what that reason is either.
So what do you do when a friendship dies or is in the its final stages of death? Do you code it a DNR or do you move on and realize that your world as you have known it for a very long while is not going to be the same?
I want to hear from my readers – what do you do when a friendship dies? How do you know when one is over? Have you had some good experiences that were positive when you stuck a fork in a friendship or did it all go terribly wrong?
*image from sadmuffin.net
I went through this really dark time last year when it became clear that I needed to leave a group of friends. It wasn’t emotionally healthy for me. It really sucked and it was hard. It’s funny, because I was randomly thinking about it today. I’m so much better now. Happier, truer, lighter really. I miss them sometimes. But mostly, I miss who i thought they were.
Jodifur, how did you go about breaking off that connection? It’s like a death in some ways isn’t it?
It was. It was complicated because it involved a group, but I just did. Email me if you want details.
I think it depends on the friendship. I have friends whom I’ve known for years and have been in my life through multiple “seasons.” They have stood by me as I and my life have changed. While we don’t necessarily talk often, as soon as I am with these women, it’s like a breath of fresh air, a sigh of relief, we pick up right where we left off and re-enter each other’s lives. I am better because they are in my life. So I would – and will – fight to keep those friendships alive for a lifetime. However, there are other friendships that were somewhat unhealthy – codependent, even. And so space and time and distance feel much more significant and damaging. I think that these friendships, if left on their present course, just eventually die. The hurt factor enters when one person wants the relationship to continue, and the other doesn’t, for whatever reason. And I guess there’s no way around that. I’ve got enough trouble trying to make my marriage work…it’s exhausting having to work so hard to make friendships survive. Sometimes they just don’t…and that has to be okay, I guess. The memories are happy.
I hear you Ann! I have some friends who I can always just pick up as if no time has passed. It’s amazing how connected we are despite time and distance. I love and cherish those friendships.
Then there are those that feel stilted, stale and hard like an awkward conversation. You see gaps in conversation and unease when together and it is time to end things. No matter what it is hard.
To be honest I have lost plenty of friendships. They never really had this big dramatic ending. They just kind of…fizzled. Most of them were because they just were not the type of people I wanted around my husband and my kids. Or even myself. partying and drugs were their thing..not mine.
But another friend…she just was just to judgmental and negative for me. There wasn’t a time where I didn’t feel bad about myself when I was around her. She would slam me as a parent and question my every move. Another one that just fizzled.
With both of these I just honestly didn’t care.
Out of all the friends that I have ever had I have been able to keep two of them. One we see eachother a lot and we talk on the phone. She has been there through EVERYTHING. She is an amazing friend and I love her very much. The other friend is sadly in the midwest…im on the east coast. We have been talking a lot more recently and I am so excited to get to see her in less then two weeks. She is also someone I love very much. If either of these two frienships ever ended I could see myself feeling upset
I’ve gone through this and I think that the best thing to do is let it take it’s course to see what happens. If a friendship or any other realationship is going to die, it will happen. Sometimes, the more we try, the worse it gets, and the more we are hurt. I wrote something sort of about this on my blog about a week ago. It wasn’t so much about friendship but relationships in general.