Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [75]
But because the relationship was important to her, Linda sent Kathy holiday cards each year and invitations to special events that they had attended together in the past. “Recently, she took me up on two invitations and mentioned that she was able to do this because she knew I was there waiting for her,” says Linda.
Make allowances and be patient. You never know what’s going on in another woman’s life and when she’ll be in a position to boomerang back to you.
FORGIVE AND FORGET
If the friendship is meaningful and the fracture was relatively minor, make a conscious decision to get over it. There are bumps in every relationship. “We are all human, after all, and no one can be perfect all the time,” says one woman. It’s easy to get angry when you were looking forward to eating lunch out with your friend at the office and she tells you that she can’t go because she forgot about her lunchtime meeting with her supervisor—this, after recently breaking a date to go to the movies together because she realized she had to babysit for her niece that night. You know that your friend was never very good at planning and scheduling, but she’s proven that she’s as loyal as they come and would do anything for you. You swallow and buy her a leather-bound calendar for Christmas.
Unintentional hurts are one of the risks of close friendships. Because you are close and respect each other, you both become more vulnerable and exposed. So when small hurts occur (as they often will), you need to talk about them, forgive, and move on. If you’ve had a falling-out or even if you haven’t seen someone for a very long time, you don’t want to wait too long before you do. As one woman says, “Fresh wounds are easier to heal than scars.” Many other women agree that apologies are more difficult with the passage of time. “If you want to save the relationship, do it fast,” says another one. Hopefully, relationships with once-close friends are flexible and forgiving enough so both parties can adapt to change and recognize the other friend’s constraints.
Tips for Making Your Apologies Work
• Step back and think about what happened. You can’t sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened because it will affect your friendship. Examine your own motivations, the consequences, and how you can undo it.
• Take responsibility for what you did wrong. It doesn’t help to offer feeble excuses if what you did was hurtful or offensive, in both your opinion and your friend’s. Make a clear-cut apology.
• Acknowledge the effect of your mistake. A plain-spoken but sincere apology—without qualifiers—is often the best strategy. For example, “I’m so terribly sorry that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. I wish I had been by your side.”
• Explain your motivations, assuming they were well-intended. We are all prone to making errors in judgment, and sometimes we simply fail to predict how our friend will react. But if she is interested in hearing your thought process, try to explain to her what went wrong. Make an effort not to be defensive—remember, you are doing your best to win her back.
• Try to find some way to make amends. Perhaps you can treat her to dinner, bake her a cake, take her for a massage or pedicure. Small gestures may seem, well, small, but often they add up into something meaningful.
• If your friend doesn’t immediately forgive you, follow up with a personal note, restating what you said in person or by phone. This gesture will allow your friend time to mull over what happened and hopefully come to the decision that she wants to save the friendship too.
• Be sensitive to timing. While you might be ready to apologize, your friend may still be seething or feel too hurt to respond. Give her time before you attempt to apologize again.
• Don’t let too much time pass so that the friendship drifts apart. Ask her to get together to talk or to go to the movies to show her you hope for reconciliation.
APOLOGIZE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IF YOU WERE AT FAULT
If you made a big blunder or blurted out something