Boyfriends and girlfriends come and go, but friendship – that one is supposed to last for life. Right? No one starts any relationship with the expectation it is going to end, but sometimes they do and honestly that’s okay. There are so many metaphors I could put here about friendships – they come in seasons or tides. Bottom line is that you don’t have to feel guilty about outgrowing a friendship. Sometimes letting someone go is the greatest act of love that you can show them. Even if the price of that is missing them and being hurt for a while.
I grew up in a small town, so small in fact, “Little” is 6 out of the 9 letters in the name. Which meant there were 50 kids in my entire grade and around 300 kids in the entire school district K-12. The kid who made fun of you in 2nd grade very likely would be your bestie come 9th grade and vice versa. Everyone knew everyone, which is great, except if there was a fight because that meant there would inevitably be sides. Entire friend groups would be divided over disagreements that did not typically involve everyone. However, the bright side of being in such a small social pool meant some of those friendships become thick as thieves. A lot of parents (of my generation) are still friends with their childhood buddies as they all stayed local. As for myself, I have found that some of my closest childhood friends have migrated back to my inner circle as an adult. Then there are some relationships I’ve had since I was as young as 6 that crashed and burned brutally in my adulthood. Reflecting back, those hurt the worst, perhaps from the amount of history I had with these people.
Every friendship starts and ends in different ways so you can’t necessarily compare situations but you can certainly relate to the emotions of it all. Anger, sadness, loneliness and simply missing them. Sometimes it’s just a matter of falling out of touch with someone – as an adult, life gets busy and it’s easy to lose track of people you don’t see every day. In that same hand, distance can pull people apart. I think social media gives us a false sense of keeping up with our friends. I have recently understood that posting “Happy Birthday” or “hearting” a promotion when Facebook and Linkden prompts me to is not maintaining a friendship with someone. That’s not to say long distance friendships don’t work out – two of my closest friends are literally halfway around the world from me and we make it work by putting a lot of time into communicating with one another. There are times there is a massive fight that leads to friends walking away with little to no closure. The biggest key to recovering from a friend break up is ultimately one thing – forgiveness.
Frankly, I do not care how dirty they did you. Until you fully forgive them and yourself for the shortcomings and ultimate demise of the relationship – you will not have inner peace. As an adult I lost my friend who I genuinely considered a sibling. We had been friends for as long as I could remember and in the end it boiled down to angry text messages and just like that we never spoke again. I was so hurt and angry from the whole situation for the first couple days I didn’t think I would be able to hear their name without my blood boiling. But soon after I was able to come out of that angry state, (which is blinding. I can’t process anything when I am mad) and realize we were both to blame. We had both neglected our friendship while we grew our separate ways. As each of us grew we adopted different passions, boundaries and expectations for the role of a friend in our life.
I remember one of my mentors saying “the first thing to break down is always communication. Without communication the whole thing will go down in flames.” It does not matter the scenario, that saying is applicable. At the end of the day we had stopped communicating long before we got into that last blow out fight. Communication goes two ways, I was equally to blame. I worked on forgiving myself first and realizing that I was also responsible for this ending. I journaled and processed what it meant to be a good, present friend and reflected on how I was not showing up as that person for this particular friendship. While this relationship ended quickly and there was no final closure I knew I needed to find forgiveness so I wasn’t living in a constant state of anger and sadness over it. I didn’t delete our pictures or playlists, I didn’t erase them from my past. Instead I made it a priority to appreciate the good memories and times we had together and I let go of the hurtful emotions I felt so heavily in the end.
Now, I can look back and appreciate the friendship for what it was when we were both showing up as good friends to each other. It wasn’t fair to either of us in the end, we were both subconsciously hurting one another daily by not being the friend either of us needed. Through healing from this I have learned that communication is key. Outgrowing past relationships is okay. And at the end of the day, no matter how bad it hurts in the moment – one day you will be okay. You might even have a sliver of gratitude for setting one another free. You both deserve happiness – even if it means not sharing your lives anymore.
Love,
Susan
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