Breaking Up With Friends
Where Things Fall Apart
In Arabic, there are thirteen words for friend. They all describe relationships ranging from someone of the same age to soulmate. There are so many ways to be a friend, and so many reasons for why we include people in our lives. There are so many flavors and types of friendships -- and this is something I had to come to understand. I take friendship seriously so I had to come to terms with the following:
Not all people take friendships as seriously as I do; or seriously at all.
Not all people want intimate friendships.
Sometimes a friendship doesn’t serve one person or the other, or you have grown in different ways. Maybe there is a hurt that is difficult to forgive or needs time to heal. It can be easy to take friendship for granted, we have friends that we have had since before we were able to talk or came out of circumstances for which we had little control. Friendships are relationships, and relationships take work. Friendships do not have to be static if you are not static, but you need to let the other person know what is changing and why. It is OK to:
Set expectations
Set boundaries
Discuss triggers
Discuss needs
Ask for help
Just like in a romantic or familial relationship, friendships can be toxic, enabling, or abusive. I have found myself in a number of friendships that were emotionally draining. When you are a good listener, people want to tell you things and sometimes feel closer to you than you feel to them. I cannot tell you how many times I have found myself in dynamics where the person will have me listen to their problems for hours, but never ask if I have the capacity to do so or even ask how I am doing.
I had a friend’s partner sexually harass me, and when I told them how it hurt me, they told me I was hurting them.
I had people who thought friendship meant they could expect sex from me. When I told them no, they expected even more emotional labor.
I had a friend who would only call me to tell me they had a new romantic partner, or to tell me they had broken up with a romantic partner. They rarely, if ever, asked about my life.
I confided in a friend that I had unprotected sex and was worried about the consequences. They told me they were disappointed and never spoke to me again.
I had a friend who acted helpless and said passive things about how they wished they had help, and then when I helped them, would never say thank you. On one occasion I told the person how much this hurt me, and they confided that I was not the first person to tell them this!
Breakups & Grief
I am a pretty anxious person, and being ghosted exacerbates my anxiety. I also do not want to put other people through that pain however, I understand why people do it. When I am beginning to sense I am growing apart from a friend, or there has been a painful or triggering moment, I will usually take some time with the person to disclose what I believe is the issue and see if they agree and want to work through it. If I’m honest, my straightforward disclosure has not had a high rate of success. This is where I have to remember that not everyone wants that level of intimacy or work in relationships, or they don’t want that level of intimacy or work in a relationship with me. And they’re allowed, I’m not for everyone and not everyone is for me.
What I think is really difficult about friend breakups is the lack of cultural dialogue around the concept and process. There are depictions of friction and reconciliation within friendship in popular media, but there are few depictions of how friendships end and the associated grief. The justifications and grief around romantic breakups are very easy to access, and while these breakups are often very painful, I think that grieving romantic relationships is made easier by the constant cultural feedback of why a breakup was justified and how to grieve.
Friendships are so varied in terms of their depth, it is hard to imagine one right way to grieve. I have lost friendships and been angry, ashamed, and sad for several years. In some cases it really just takes time to get over the loss of a relationship. I think it’s really important to recognize and accept that it is normal and completely justified to mourn and grieve the loss of a friendship, even if it was toxic, abusive, or enabling. There was something that brought the two people together at some point, and made it valuable in some way. If nothing else, one can consider that a relationship ending is an opportunity to learn what you will not accept or tolerate in a relationship.
I think that many of my friendships that have ended did so because we were mismatched in terms of our ability to communicate feelings and needs which created misunderstandings and frustration. My most durable friendships have been those in which we work on our communication and have made an effort to understand one another across many phases of life. A common saying with romantic relationships is that 99% of their success is timing; people have to be emotionally and physically available to participate in the relationship for it to work. I think this is also true of friendships even though they can be less intimate from the outset than romantic relationships. People are also sometimes unable to communicate their feelings or needs because they either do not have the self-awareness, or have not yet learned how. It has been comforting in some instances to hold onto this idea when grieving the loss of a friendship -- our timing was unfortunate, and perhaps we can revisit it down the line when we have had time to mature on our own. I think that part of getting older and going through this type of pain is accepting that sometimes there will not be closure or an acknowledgement of the other person’s grief (or lack thereof).
There is no right or wrong way to grieve, the sadness, shame, and pain you might feel when a friendship ends is very real and you are not alone in these feelings. I have almost always grieved the end of friendships more deeply and for longer than romantic breakups. Be gentle with yourself and others as you heal.