Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [76]
When there’s been a big hurt—even if a heartfelt and appropriate apology is accepted—there’s been a breach of trust. Because of this, you will need to make renewed efforts to strengthen the friendship, but it often can be done.
When you and your friend share a reservoir of goodwill based on history and trust, minor missteps are usually forgivable with an appropriate apology—unless the missteps have been repeated once too often. However, when the hurt you’ve caused is big, apologies generally require more effort.
“My ‘friend’ wants me back in her life desperately but doesn’t want to talk about what happened to us; she does not want to own up to the things she did and they were so devastating to me that there is no way I could be friends with her again by simply pretending none of it happened, and sweeping it under the carpet,” says one woman.
TAKING A BREAK
Some women insist that they would never formally end a friendship; they would just back off. Others aren’t philosophically opposed to ending one, but aren’t ready to make the decision. One option that works in both situations: you can consciously decide to place the friendship on hold and take a friendship sabbatical, even setting up a specific time frame to wait and reevaluate its merits. It can be explicit, where both parties mutually agree they need a break, or one-sided, something you decide and implement yourself without making it overt.
This option is more likely to work if there hasn’t been an argument or disagreement between the two of you. The sabbatical may give one or both of you the time you need to defuse negative feelings and work out the kinks in your friendship constructively.
Sue, now 24, and her friend Fern were close friends with another girl in high school. “I honestly got sick of the third friend,” says Sue. “We were very similar and it drove me crazy.” So while away at college, Sue stopped talking to her and saw her only on rare occasions when the three women came home for visits. During their senior year of college, Sue and the third friend started to hang out together and became closer again. “We discussed our ‘time off ’ and how we just needed some space,” says Sue.
Sue was wise enough not to alienate the friend, which paved the way for her to be able to befriend her later on. Sometimes a relationship becomes so strained over time you feel like dumping the friend completely, but backing off can be a viable alternative.
Lori, 47, had such an experience. Lori had been single and unattached most of her life while her friends always seemed to be in relationships that worked. Once those progressed into marriages and eventually children, she had less and less in common with these friends, so the dynamics changed considerably.
“Some of my friends had acquired lavish lifestyles that were far different from my own,” says Lori. At some point, it became difficult for her not to be jealous of both the emotional and material riches of one particular friend. She says, “While I was sitting on a pity pot of a lonely life in a job I hated, I took a sabbatical from the friendship—I didn’t phone to say hello or make any plans. Part of my MO was to find out if she’d walk away completely, which she didn’t.”
Now the two women seldom see each other, but they have come to accept the differences in their current lifestyles, treasure their shared past,