I honestly think that losing a friend can be more painful than losing a romantic relationship. (Of course this totally depends on the depth of each, but I still believe it’s true.)
I got a long and teary phone call today from one of my friends.
Her best friend “broke up” with her today and she is utterly devastated. It has been coming for awhile, and I saw the writing on the wall but I didn’t want that pain for her that I hoped it wouldn’t be true.
I felt for her.
I lost two of the best friends I’ve had in my life in in the last couple years and another one has much more difficulty than a friendship should.
It has been painful.
I’m not writing this to point fingers, not at all. I full on admit to my end of responsibility.I ABSOLUTELY had so much responsibility in these friendships ending, I just find that I can talk about it now a little bit. It was too painful to even think about for awhile.
Friends are precious. Some of the most unbelievably lovely, needed and joyful things in your life.
But…
Friends can also be also hard.
I used to live and need my friends like air. I have far less good friends than I used to. I am not sure if it is because I am more focused on my family or if it ‘s just that I am gun shy and much more afraid of being hurt. Or all of the above.
Friends can hurt.
And frankly…If I start to get close friends with someone who is my friend long enough they will usually hear my life story. I don’t feel it’s fair to keep secrets. Plus…I am an open book. I can utterly keep other people’s secrets until the death. My own? Yeaaaah….I’m not built that way. I’m pretty much an open book. And they will have an awful lot of material that they could definitely use to hurt me with.
And the process of actually ending is so awful.
Sometimes you end abruptly…there is a fight, an incident…for whatever reason you fracture so quickly and so hard you can’t be put back together.
And then there is the gradual loss. Where you used to talk all the time, it becomes much less frequent. You’re texts are returned less and less, you do most of the initiating, they tell you less and less about their life. They are too busy for you an awful lot of the time. After a while it FINALLY sinks in that it’s time to go.
And then there is the mutual drifting away. There isn’t really any ill will…in fact, of all the situation this is the one with the highest chance of a renewal of the relationship down the road, but your lives are in different places and you both stop making time for the other. (Which is, in my opinion, one of the biggest relationship killer of them all.) It’s also just least likely version for either party to get ultra needy out of panic of losing the relationship.
I’ve had friendships end that were a good thing for both of us and I’ve had them end where there is true regret they didn’t work out.
Either way it is painful and I feel so much sorrow for my friend. I wish she lived here. I would be her friend. I still am her friend.
Before she hung up she said something that many of us say when we are in pain. “I’m never having a friend again. It hurts too much.”
I can certainly understand that.
But I hope she is wrong.
Because while friends and losing them can hurt, friends can be so, so precious and beautiful. They can bring comfort and love like no one else and to have a true friend is like a rare and beautiful gift. I have some friends that I adore to bits. I do not know what I would do without them, even though it’s hard sometimes.
I just hope that she comes to feel and think about the good things of her friendship instead of the pain. As more time passes, that is how I feel.
And I hope that both of us don’t get to the point where friends mean more hurt than love and kindness. Because that would be a horrible, horrible shame.
