Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [41]
There’s no harm in calling or writing a personal note to the woman who dumped you to tell her that you are sorry about the loss and to do what you can to repair the fractured friendship. If the friendship is important to you, it is always worthwhile to give her another chance to rethink her decision. She may have misunderstood or misperceived something you said or did. Perhaps she’s waiting for an apology or just needs some time off to realize that she wants the relationship as much as you do. In some cases, you may actually be able to reconnect.
However, if you have tried to contact her repeatedly and she won’t respond, at some point you need to back off and begin to accept that it’s over, at least for the time being, and realize that there’s nothing you can do to turn back the clock. If you came on to her boyfriend or husband, there may be no way she can forgive you. If you let her down or ditched her when she needed you emotionally, your transgression may be irreparable.
Speaking of the breakup of a significant friendship, one woman told me: “What has been a constant source of peace to me is that I left lovingly, even if she wasn’t able to do the same. I think that has truly allowed me, all these years later, to deeply forgive myself and her.”
Most breakups are difficult to get over because they are extraordinarily painful and uncomfortable for both parties. The precise reasons why someone wants out of a long-term friendship are often elusive, even to the woman who decided to end it. You can try to understand them in hindsight, which is sometimes helpful in working through the pain and avoiding a repetition of the trauma, but the reasons usually remain vague or even inexplicable. Overanalyzing the situation becomes an exercise in futility because you only know one side of the story: yours, not hers.
When long-standing friendships end, it comes as a shock not only to the person who experiences the unexpected loss, but also to people around her (other friends, family, colleagues, etc.). Believe it or not, it often rattles the life of the very person who precipitated the breakup and who may feel incredibly awkward about ending the relationship.
Many times, when the reason for the split is totally baffling, you have to entertain the possibility that it has more to do with her than it has to do with you. Something totally unrelated to you may be going on in your friend’s life or consciousness, something you don’t know about or couldn’t possibly understand. She may be reeling from her husband’s job loss or her own. She may be overwhelmed with caregiving responsibilities for a child or parent with a chronic and debilitating illness. She may be having emotional problems, like depression or anxiety, that aren’t permitting her to function as she would like to but are too embarrassing for her to talk about with anyone.
I’ve personally been in this position, when a good friend simply had things going on that I didn’t understand. I thought I had been dumped when she stopped returning my calls, but found out much later that my friend was struggling with a serious family health crisis. Her teenage daughter, Lee, was anorexic, out of control, and engaging in impulsive and self-destructive behaviors. She was absent from school more often than she was there, spending most of her days asleep and chatting online through the night.
Each morning was a strain for the entire family, who were left wondering whether Lee would make it out of the house. Her mother, my friend, also found superficial cuts on her daughter’s wrists that were clearly self-inflicted. Obviously not having the energy or inclination to talk about her problems to other parents who might not understand, my friend distanced herself from friends and neighbors. She may have been