Breaking up (with friends) is hard to do

Letting go is hard. Letting go of an object is hard but letting go of a friend is almost indescribable. 

Reaching the conclusion that disassociating will bring peace to the heart, calmness to the mind, clarity to a twisted situation — it all sounds like a win. But there’s a cost to pulling back, pulling away, letting go. The heart that wants peace will go through pain. That calmness the mind craves will go through chaos of reliving words and experiences, analyzing each minute detail, and how the decision to end a friendship came about, why there couldn’t be a different ending.

The clarity of making sense of a situation that couldn’t untwist, that comes as we work our way through the grieving process — the loss of not sharing our life with our friend any longer.

Since the start of 2024, I’ve had many conversations with girlfriends about no longer putting time and effort into friendships where it’s not reciprocated. Conversations about not accepting bread crumbs from friends whose reason for connecting is tenuous at best. 

Friends who don’t make the effort to pick up the phone. Friends who don’t ask how our day was but always rush to share their lives. Friends who say “we should get together” but don’t initiate plans to do so, or who repeatedly cancel at the last minute or fail to show up.

Friends who put the priorities of others ahead of ours, time and time again.

Giving up on an adult friendship is hard because making friends — not acquaintances but friends — as an adult is difficult. I think trusting is harder as an adult because our life stories are longer, full of scars. Our hopes are tempered by realism and experience and sharing those dreams with another adult — someone who knows what it will cost to achieve them — are words we are hesitant to speak out loud. Who wants to be shot down? 

When we do take a risk and begin an adult friendship, when we nurture that connection, we choose cautiously and build slowly so the foundation is strong. That’s why the decision to let go isn’t made lightly. We’ve spent time and energy. We’ve shown our scars. We’ve shared those dreams. We want it to work.

Yet so many of my girls are letting go. They’ve decided they are no longer accepting half efforts. They are no longer accepting being shuffled down the list of priorities multiple times in a friendship where they’ve put their friend first. They’ve made the decision that friendship — true friendship — is a two-way street and requires mutual effort. We’ve all had, or tried to have,  conversations with these friends. Conversations about how we feel and how we are made to feel. We’ve encouraged responses and been met with reactions from lip service — promises to do better to belligerence or no response. All of these reactions have repeatedly dented the friendship until finally it breaks. When it finally does give way, we are all walking away quietly, no grand mic drop. Just an exit of grace, walking away with footsteps that are muted by an air of resignation, of acceptance. Honestly, it’s quite likely our former friends won’t notice the lack of our presence in their lives until it’s much too late to repair the damage. Our minds and hearts have decided done is done. 

I’ve listened to them grieve their loss because one of the toughest losses is the loss of someone who is still living. Some of the friends they’re loosening or severing ties with make them weep because of the loss. I’ve cried with them.  They’ve listened to me grieve my own friendship releases. They’ve cried with me.

For me I value connections and especially connections rich with history. But I find myself in the position of letting go of some of those friendships. There are friends that I inherited when I married My Favourite Husband (MFH), specifically a couple that has disassociated with me as I’m no longer part of a couple. I get it. They were his friends first. But I thought we had developed a friendship of our own as well. I’ve discovered that not to be true. 

The other friend of MFH who has disappeared is someone who avoids confrontation at pretty much all cost. I’ve tried to talk to him, to reach out repeatedly and get his thoughts on why we don’t communicate any longer but I’ve been met with both avoidance and silence. I’ve apologized for what I’m guessing the issue might be but, since there’s no dialogue from him, it’s all guesswork. Some are newer connections where I believed there to be an opportunity to make a new friend since becoming a widow only to find that my repeated efforts to grow that friendship weren’t reciprocated. Invitations to get together for coffee and conversation are not answered but shrugged off with explanations of a busy life, a life of challenges. After a year, though, the explanations get old and, no matter how much this person says they place value on our connection, there's no demonstrated willingness to grow it. 

All I know is that in each of these scenarios I’m making the effort which leads me to me believe I’m the only one who cares about the friendship.

I can’t do it any longer. Won’t do it any longer. I have neither the energy it takes nor the mental gymnastics required to foster a one-sided relationship. 

And so, like so many of my other girlfriends, I’m choosing to concentrate the bulk of my energies on the few who’ve decided we are in this together … until friends do us part.