Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [29]
Avoiding Betrayals Between Friends
• Err on the side of honesty.
• Keep lines of communication open.
• Ask rather than assume.
• Keep your promises.
• Apologize sooner rather than later.
• Don’t take advantage of a friend.
BLOWUPS
Friendships sometimes blow up when one or both women reach a point when they are no longer able to tolerate the other. One volatile incident (an explosive argument, for example, or an unforgivable betrayal) or the culmination of a string of disappointments results in the undoing of a close relationship in an instant. If you’ve had a blowup, you can generally pinpoint the precise moment when your friendship went awry.
Sometimes women are unable to express their feelings until they are ready to explode. They hold them in, hoping they’ll resolve themselves, but that usually doesn’t happen. Jen, age 22, had an argument that escalated into a major blowup. Jen and her friend Sara truly understood each other, but some stylistic differences between them seemed to get in the way of their friendship. Jen was far more spontaneous and willing to make last-minute plans than Sara, who liked to plan and schedule everything way in advance.
Jen would call Sara and ask her to take a walk to take advantage of the beautiful weather or to catch a new movie together, but her invites were always turned down unless she was already on her friend’s calendar. Sara would have one excuse or another about why she was too busy to get together. Jen felt like they only saw each other when she was “booked” at Sara’s convenience. “I began to see her as arrogant and selfish,” says Jen.
After being rejected many times, Jen reached her boiling point. “I confronted her about this and it escalated into a huge yelling match, filled with accusations and insults,” says Jen. The argument wasn’t merely about Sara’s unwillingness to go to the beach on a hot summer day; it was about her need to control, and her rigid and unyielding manner with Jen. “Friends simply don’t treat friends that way,” says Jen. That blowup marked the end of their friendship because there was no way to undo all the harsh words they had hurled at each other.
Blowups aren’t always in-your-face disagreements. They can take place by snail mail or e-mail as well. Unfortunately, such letters and electronic messages (that don’t allow for real-time dialogue, facial expressions, or body language) increase the risk of completely blowing a relationship out of the water. Unintentionally, the delivery of the message can turn out more hurtful than was ever intended. Caroline, age 58, shared such a story with me.
Caroline and Judy were once very close but they no longer lived in the same city. Judy e-mailed Caroline asking why they were seeing less and less of each other. Feeling that Judy had given her an opening to be honest about why she had refused so many invitations to visit, Caroline, who was divorced, wrote back and said that as much as she enjoyed spending time with Judy’s family, she felt like her friend’s husband, a psychologist, was analyzing every word she was saying.
She waited several weeks for Judy’s response, which seemed long overdue. “After that, I never heard from Judy again. But a mutual friend told me how hurt she was by the letter,” says Caroline. “I had no idea I had come across so strong. I didn’t mean to end our friendship.”
Had the discussion taken place in person, the two women may have been able to find a way to resolve their problem without either one feeling