Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [33]
In addition to the dangers that lurk within, friendships are also subject to insults that occur from outside. A new lover, partner, best friend—or even a change in circumstances, such at income, career, lifestyle, or neighborhood—can rattle a very close friendship to the core. The loss of a friendship, however it occurs, whatever the reason, is almost uniformly unpleasant. Yet the one common upside to these breakups is that they provide an opportunity for reflection that may lead us to better friendships, better choices, and better endings in the future.
CHAPTER 4
GETTING OVER GETTING DUMPED
“Men kick friendship around like a football and it doesn’t seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it falls to pieces.”
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
She’s gone. Your once-close friend hasn’t called, returned your calls, responded to your e-mails, or otherwise acknowledged your existence in hours, days, weeks, or months—depending on the frequency of contact you have come to expect. She was a close friend, perhaps even a best friend, and now you’ve suddenly been defriended. It’s almost as if she clicked a big “DELETE” button that eliminated you from her IM list, cell phone contacts, and e-mail address book. She may have done all that, too.
Being dumped by a best friend doesn’t hurt just once. On many levels, emotional, social, and physical, you are reminded continually of your former companion by her absence. You’re reminded of her when you have a fight with your mother—you would usually call your ex-friend immediately, and now there’s no one who quite knows the situation or characters well enough for you to share your frustration. Or you had been hoping to catch that new movie and she was the one most likely to go with you. Now what do you do? She was such an integral part of your life that the hole feels gaping. To top it off, each gape is a reminder that something you were taught was sacred—your best friendship—went terribly wrong. The wash of strong feelings is almost exactly what a woman experiences when dumped by a lover: embarrassment that she wasn’t good enough; anger at the dumper for her callousness; sadness for thwarted dreams of a future together. When it comes to friendships, the more significant they were, the harder you fall. The pain, fury, and shame at having been dumped lessen only gradually.
There’s no way around it. Getting dumped really hurts. Like Randi, you may not have even seen it coming. Randi, who is 32, recently phoned her girlfriend Nicole, just to see how she was doing. “She hit me with a bombshell,” says Randi. “She told me politely, but in no uncertain terms, that there was no point in continuing our friendship.” Since the last time they had spoken, Nicole had decided to make some “positive changes” in her life. Ending her friendship with Randi was part of that plan.
Randi was dumbfounded at Nicole’s pronouncement. The two women only had one prior disagreement over the six years they had known each other. In a moment of anger, harsh words were exchanged between them, a disagreement that was, at least on Randi’s part, insignificant and long forgotten—until now, as she struggled to understand what was happening.
“We were both Americans living abroad, and we found creature comfort in talking to a fellow countrywoman,” says Randi. They shared joys and tears and supported each other through difficulties. Because they were busy moms who lived in different towns, most of their interactions had taken the form of long phone calls when the kids were napping or asleep for the night. Randi had three sons under the age of five and her husband usually worked long hours, while Nicole was a single mom with an only child. Randi often babysat for Nicole’s daughter, Chelsea, whenever she was