Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [39]
When Randi began to think about why she was dumped, seemingly out of the blue, she realized that her friendship with Nicole was imperfect to start with. While the two women were both expats, they had fundamentally different lifestyles (a single mom of an only child versus a married mom with three little ones), and lived in different towns with few opportunities to see one another face-to-face. While none of these differences are necessarily relationship killers, there weren’t enough shared interests or solid emotional ties to bind them to each other (at least from Nicole’s perspective).
The inconvenience of their friendship was a major factor that contributed to a mismatch, putting the relationship on shaky grounds almost from the start. Randi mentioned that she liked being her friend’s “Dr. Freud,” which suggests that she was on the giving end of the relationship and implies there was not enough give-and-take. When relationships are tipped too much in one direction, they are often prone to fracture.
Randi’s life had become increasingly constricted. Her husband had long working hours; she was still adjusting to living in a foreign country away from old friends and extended family, and she had limited childcare options. Her desperate need for the lost friendship was greater than Nicole’s, who had more time and opportunity to pick and choose the people with whom she wanted to socialize. Nicole wanted to barhop and look for male companionship and preferred being with women who shared the same pursuits. Randi took the loss especially hard because she knew this was a tough time for her to make new friends and carve out time to be with them. For her, having a “phone friend” was convenient.
Of course, feelings of guilt and sorrow are exacerbated when you recognize that something you did, perhaps inadvertently, played a role in ending the friendship. You might remember the story of Karen, who missed her friend’s father’s funeral. After her friend dumped her, Karen realized that she should have been there when her friend really needed her. Letdowns such as this one take many different forms, but all of them can lead to guilt and feelings of responsibility. It may be an offhand remark you made that you can’t take back, a lapse in judgment that can’t be undone, an insensitive joke that hurt her feelings, or an irreparable breach of trust.
We all hope that our friendships will be strong enough to allow forgiveness, but that isn’t always the case. For example, Kat, 22, accidentally revealed a secret to a group of mutual friends that her best friend, Luisa, had been hiding for year. When Luisa was younger, she had been obese, and became the butt of painful jokes from all the kids in her middle school. It was an exceptionally painful time in her life. She attended a new high school and slimmed down considerably, so no one knew anything about Luisa’s past. In casual conversation, in Luisa’s presence, Kat mentioned her friend’s metamorphosis to a group in the lunchroom, not knowing that it would embarrass her friend or that it had been told to her in confidence. Luisa turned beet red and tears welled up in her eyes. She refused to speak to Kat until months later, and despite her acceptance of her friend’s apologies, the damage was irrevocable, and their relationship became that of somewhat distant acquaintances rather than close friends.
Kat wished she could have taken back her remark when she saw her friend’s face, but there was no undoing it. She had no one to blame but herself.
STAGE 4 : EMBARRASSMENT AND SHAME
When you are the one who has been dumped, it’s also a natural tendency to worry about what others will think of you and the role you played in bringing the friendship to an end. It’s common to evoke negative reactions because of the ubiquitous myths associated with female friendship. Couldn’t you keep a friend? What did you do to make her run in the other direction?
Outsiders (very often, boyfriends, fathers, brothers, and husbands) who have a hard time relating to the strength