Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [52]
• She always initiates get-togethers, calling, texting and IM-ing you.
• She contacts you multiple times a day for the slightest problem.
• You feel like you can’t breathe on your own.
• She’s dependent on you for everything.
• She’s constantly seeking your validation.
• You feel like you are being stalked.
• She treats you like you and she are both the same person.
3 : THE FRIENDSHIP HONEYMOON IS OVER
“If there is love at first sight, there is friendship at first sight, too,” says one woman. Like a romance, it’s as easy to be infatuated with someone at the beginning of a friendship as it is to be blindsided by a new friend’s shortcomings. Over time, you may begin to see an unappealing side of your friend that you never noticed before and the stark reality of what you’ve gotten into hits you: you’re really not that into her. This is reminiscent of the story at the beginning of this chapter that described what happened when Carol finally realized that she wasn’t comfortable with her friend Kate’s values and behaviors.
Crystal, 24, met her friend Margo in college. The two women were roommates who became fast friends. Crystal tended to be somewhat of a loner and Margo was a Queen Bee who attracted both men and women. She thrived on attention and being in the spotlight. She had a leading role in a campus production and was very active in her sorority. Through her association with Margo, Crystal was invited to pledge for the same sorority and became part of the same circle of friends. For the first time in her life, she felt popular, like someone on the inside rather than on the periphery.
By their junior year, the two were best friends. But Crystal had also realized that Margo was prone to picking petty arguments with people that would escalate into vendettas that consumed her waking life—and eventually Crystal’s. She held grudges and obsessed about the injustices done to her, talking about them incessantly. Crystal took a very conciliatory angle in her relationship with Margo, always compromising and thereby saving herself from big fights. But even though Crystal avoided being cast as the enemy herself, she was now seeing an unappealing, abrasive side to her friend.
When they left college and both moved back to Los Angeles, the back-and-forth phone calls and blow-by-blow e-mails about these dramas were endless. Margo was obsessive about guys, only making time for women when she needed or wanted something. “I just couldn’t stand these traits any longer,” says Crystal. “Even though Margo wasn’t at her worst with me, I couldn’t take her anymore; it drove me nuts to be around her and I eventually bowed out by telling her I needed time alone.”
Crystal learned that her Queen Bee friend had another side to her. Perhaps it had been there all along, but she never noticed it for what it was. At one point Crystal may have enjoyed being a sidekick but now that she had matured, she desperately wanted to be independent and make her own life.
4 : A FRIENDSHIP FELONY HAS BEEN COMMITTED
It’s easy to ignore little disappointments, but some are so big and hit you so hard that they are impossible to forgive or forget—sleeping with your husband, maligning your reputation, betraying your trust, or duping you. Author Florence Isaacs calls these kinds of disappointments “friendship killers.”
Although true friends don’t ordinarily keep an accounting of who did what for whom, there are certain times when you want your good friends to be there for you—to understand, empathize, and/or offer concrete help. It may be when you are going through good times (pregnancy, childbirth, engagement, marriage, a milestone birthday, or promotion) or bad times (fertility problems, a serious illness, a divorce, a sick parent, a death in the family, or the loss of a job). If your friend is so self-absorbed that she has no ability to recognize the peaks and valleys of your life, the friendship is pretty much doomed, no matter how close you think you are.
Close friendships are also built on a foundation of trust. In order to remain close,