Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [37]
At the time, Amy told Alexa that she wouldn’t intentionally do anything to hurt her. “I realized that I cared for her so much that her feelings were more important than arguing the point that I hadn’t done anything so wrong,” says Amy. “Anyway, I thought we’d cleared that up. Part of me wonders if she held on to it, or some other resentment. This is the only conflict I remember.”
It may well be that geography, marriage, and Alexa’s coming into her own personally and professionally changed the nature of their friendship, irrespective of that remark. For a while after Alexa cut off contact, Amy even wondered if something had been wrong with Alexa’s baby or with her marriage, or whether her once-best friend was at some other difficult place in her life. Amy realizes that when someone is suffering, it’s sometimes painful to talk to people, even good friends. “That’s why I persevered in contacting her, on the off-chance that she might reply one day. Finally, I took the hint and gave up.”
The friendship had started to fall apart roughly around the time the two women both married. Although they had connected in the workplace and maintained a relationship as singles, they weren’t able to sustain their friendship afterwards. Breakups often take place for idiosyncratic reasons that can be unfathomable to outsiders, and often remain beyond the conscious awareness of the two former friends themselves—especially the one who is dumped. Perhaps Alexa married someone who she worried wouldn’t bless her relationship with her old friend, or perhaps she feared that her old friend wouldn’t bless her new husband.
All Amy could figure out was that something toppled the relationship between the two women—a relationship Amy hadn’t realized was at risk—and the breakup left her dumbfounded. Unfortunately, “three’s a crowd” thinking is common when a woman feels that a friendship is threatening to her allegiance with her life partner. In this case, as often happens, Alexa resolved the conflict by dropping the less significant relationship, her friendship with Amy.
Being dumped like Randi, Stephanie, or Amy is far more common than you may think. Yet it always comes as a shock. Whether it’s by the friend of the moment or the friend you walked to school with on the first day of kindergarten, it is always painful and embarrassing to be unceremoniously dumped—because dumping is one-sided, unexpected, and generally comes without a clear explanation.
FROM SHOCK TO ACCEPTANCE
When they realize they have been dumped by a friend, women typically experience a range of reactions that include shock and denial, loss, self-blame, embarrassment and anger before they reach a state of acceptance and relief. Not every woman goes through every stage, nor do all women go through these stages in the same order, but eventually most will move from utter shock to reluctant acceptance.
STAGE 1 : SHOCK AND DENIAL
When the ending of a friendship is one-sided, it often comes out of the blue for the friend who has been dumped. The jilter may have been trying to find a way to extricate herself from the relationship for weeks or even months, but when she drops the news on you, you’re caught totally off guard and unprepared. Or there may have been problems festering for some time that both friends conveniently buried beneath the surface.
Because of the element of surprise (this occurred on your friend’s timeline and not yours), you’re likely to be baffled. The last few times you’ve asked your friend to get together, she responded that she was too busy with this or with that. You cling to the fantasy that she really is and that it has nothing to do with your relationship. Face it: you are in denial.
When you finally realize you’ve been dumped, it’s natural to try to figure out what led to the breakup. You replay