Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [24]
• Be sensitive to different styles of relating (and parenting) and don’t try to impose your own style on your friend.
• Remember that emotions run high in many families, but they still love one another.
• Don’t try to compete with family. Remember your friend has chosen to be close with you and you play a special role in her life.
GROWING APART
Another deal breaker: as time passes, people change and they get to know each other on different levels. Two friends may realize that their values clash or that they see things so differently it creates an insurmountable gulf between them. Such was the case for Holly, who lost not one but two best friends because of emerging differences in values.
Holly, Ann, and Bev had known each other since elementary school. They lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, attended the same church, and ran in the same circles. After high school, however, the three friends went their separate ways—Ann went to college, Bev partied and worked various odd jobs, and Holly went on to complete graduate studies. By the time Holly was done with grad school, they happened to all live in the same city again, and they started to hang out together and had a great time. It was as though there had never been a break in their friendship, and they were the same group of three best friends they had been since childhood.
“I got engaged with my boyfriend of eight years, and it just seemed fitting that they would be my bridesmaids,” Holly recalls. Trouble started brewing during the year leading up to Holly’s wedding. “We all spent tons of time together and I started feeling self-conscious, saddened, and emotionally drained after spending time with them. I couldn’t figure out why I had these negative feelings.” Holly would come home to her fiancé and complain about her friends, which was totally out of character.
Then there were a series of disagreements about the bridesmaids’ dresses and other wedding arrangements. Holly felt as if Ann and Bev had opinions about everything and were ganging up against her. She wanted a somewhat modest affair. They accused her of being cheap and told her she would always regret the decisions she was making about her special day.
“As the wedding date approached, it hit me!” says Holly. She realized that she hardly had anything in common with either woman anymore. “They were superficial, and obsessed with appearances—weight, dieting, plastic surgery, and gossip—whereas I was more down-to-earth and laidback,” she says. Over the four years they were apart, the friends had been shaped by different experiences and veered in different directions.
A CLASH OF VALUES
Friendships often come to an end when one friend disapproves of another’s behavior or finds fault with her character, morals, or values. There are two discrete schools of thought about whether or not you should let someone know when she disappoints you. Some women feel that good friends should never judge one another—that the basis of any true friendship is unconditional support. “Friends may need to step back to let us make mistakes and learn from them,” says one woman. “To cut off someone because of a poor choice, even though she realizes she made a mistake and apologizes, isn’t being a good friend. Sometimes, these lapses are due to immaturity and we all learn as we grow.”
Others feel that close friendships are predicated on honesty and therefore you should tell a friend when you disapprove of something she says or does. Problems arise when the two members of a friendship have different beliefs about how honest or supportive a good friend should be. Sometimes the answer isn’t black or white, but more a matter of degree.
Cherise, age 50, was dumbfounded when her close friend ended their long relationship because of a presumed clash of values. Cherise had lived with her fiancé, Warren, for six years before they married in 1990. Her childhood buddy and best friend, Betsy, made