They Keep Trying to Be Friends Again
Is It Time to End That Friendship?
In that location's no real protocol for cutting off a friendship—which can lead to a whole lot of confusion. Barbara Graham shines a light into the mist.
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I have this friend, Sarah. Since meeting in our thirties, we've shared many of life'southward essentials: hairdressers, domestic dog-walkers, phobias (airplanes and mice), health scares, worries over our kids, and indisposition acquired past husbands who snore. But lately I'm aware that whenever Sarah calls I feel a tightness in my chest and, more often than not (thanks to caller ID), I don't pick up the phone. I feel guilty, but that's preferable to spending hours listening to Sarah complain. I've been meaning to tell her how I feel, simply I haven't quite worked up the nerve. Virtually of the fourth dimension I feel like a bad boyfriend.
Then there's Natalie, whom I fell in love with when I was 9. We became inseparable and, at ane betoken, I secretly tried to notice out if it was possible to be adopted by your best friend's family if your own parents were still alive. It wasn't until college and postcollegiate life on opposite sides of the state that we drifted autonomously. But we never lost touch and, years later, when I moved with my married man to the urban center where Natalie lives, she seemed thrilled. She threw a dinner party in our honor and did everything possible to make us feel at habitation. And then, after about six months, Natalie all of a sudden stopped calling, and whenever I tried to make a engagement she claimed she was too decorated and got off the phone, fast. To this 24-hour interval—10 years subsequently—I have no idea why she gave me the boot. Now when our paths cantankerous, we greet each other like distant acquaintances and I feel hobbling all over again.
Information technology is strange that friendships, which nourish and sustain usa and oft provide our deepest source of connexion, lack the sort of standards that are routine in romantic relationships. If your significant other stops calling, makes impossible demands, or treats you like roadkill, yous deal with it. It may not be easy—you may put it off—but eventually you'll find out where you stand. Not and then with friends.
"You don't gather and say, 'I'm really mad at you lot, I'm not going to see you anymore,'" says Ruthellen Josselson, PhD, a Baltimore psychotherapist and coauthor with Terri Apter, PhD, of Best Friends (3 Rivers Press). "To the extent that we accept a ritual, it's not calling, non getting together. But that makes it difficult to know when someone is distant because she doesn't want to exist your friend or because something's going on in her life that's keeping her from beingness in bear on."
So how do you know you're being fired? And what do you practice when you're at your wit's end—as I am with Sarah—and ready to consequence a pinkish slip of your own? "It's a complicated trip the light fantastic. We start learning the steps when nosotros're quite young, and they don't change all that much," Josselson says. If nobody calls or makes a motility, if you see each other and say, "Let'due south do luncheon," but don't, if i person is suddenly booked until 2013, sooner or later the message gets through.
Luckily, near friendships have a natural life wheel. Ofttimes we're drawn together by circumstance—piece of work, the single life, kids—and as our situations change, we gradually migrate apart. On a deeper level, our friendships mirror our internal life. "Equally we gain a stronger sense of cocky, what used to affair no longer does, and we're jump to outgrow certain friendships," says Florence Falk, PhD, a New York Urban center psychotherapist. "Once you're aware of that, without beingness cruel or feeling guilt-ridden, you can begin to let go of relationships that no longer nourish your virtually authentic self."
Occasionally, though, a friend all but forces a clean intermission. My pal Nancy reports, "I'd been close to Anne for years, merely at a certain indicate I felt overwhelmed by her need for me. She acted every bit if I belonged to her and became resentful when I socialized with other people. I felt drained, suffocated. When I tried to talk to her well-nigh it I got nowhere, so I wrote her an electronic mail explaining that I merely couldn't be friends with her anymore." Anne was predictably enraged and fired off a response accusing Nancy of beingness selfish and uncaring. Just even though the exchange was painful, Nancy emerged feeling as if a great weight had been lifted.
In my own life, I seem to accept a knack for attracting needy friends. Even though I joke about my nonpaying "caseload," I struggle to set limits.
"Women seem to be both hardwired and socialized to exist nurturing," says Sandy Sheehy, author of Connecting: The Enduring Power of Female Friendship (William Morrow). The issue is that many of the states get stuck in draining relationships. Sheehy tells the story of Martha, a graduate educatee, wife, and mother who felt sucked dry by an emotionally dependent friend. After unsuccessfully trying the usual stop-calling-and-drift method, Martha plant a fashion to extricate herself while assuasive the other woman to preserve her dignity. She said, "I tin can't be the friend you want me to be." Sheehy says, "Martha took the brunt of inadequacy on herself." Information technology'southward like a boyfriend telling you, "I can't honey you the way you deserve," instead of maxim, "I don't love yous."
Sheehy also recommends explicitly calling it quits if y'all have what she terms an enabling friendship. "Mayhap you started out as drinking pals or shared a shopping jones, only now yous want to stop the behavior that brought y'all together," she says. "It'due south more responsible to admit that you lot don't think you can maintain intimacy and not rampage than to pretend you can't see her because you've suddenly taken up scuba diving."
Although the troublesome twins—green-eyed and jealousy—are at the root of many breakups, they're more difficult to address gracefully. Ruth, a moderately successful painter, remained silent on the occasion of her friend Carolyn'southward get-go solo fine art show. When Carolyn asked her why, Ruth said she thought it best not to respond because she hated the work. "It was obvious that she hated me for getting a one-woman evidence before she did, but she couldn't admit it," Carolyn says. The former bosom buddies haven't exchanged a word since.
Sadly, many friendships end needlessly because we're afraid to acknowledge conflict. "If y'all notice you're withdrawing from someone who actually matters to y'all, you accept to enquire yourself why," Josselson says, adding that we conceptualize tension in our relationships with men, but not with other women. But at some point, any meaningful friendship is bound to provoke difficult feelings. "Once you accept that, you tin talk about things every bit they come and there's a expert adventure you'll go closer," she says.
Sometimes the conditions of a human relationship change, especially ane forged during a time of mutual crisis, but the unspoken contract on which the friendship is based stays the same—which is what happened to my cousin Paula and her all-time friend, Elaine. The two women became joined at the hip when both were having marital problems. "It was virtually like another wedlock," Paula says. "We did everything together." Eventually, Paula and her husband resolved their differences, while Elaine and her husband parted. "I was terrified to tell Elaine that even though I however loved her, our friendship could no longer be every bit all-consuming," Paula says. "Just I knew that if I didn't say something, I'd withdraw completely." Fortunately, Elaine was able to adjust her expectations and the pair plant a new way of relating that was comfortable for both.
Despite our best intentions, talking doesn't ever repair the rift: Not everyone is able to listen without becoming defensive or blaming the other person. Feelings stirred upwards by a close friend oft repeat unresolved issues from childhood, similar sibling rivalry or fearfulness of abandonment, and unless those feelings are acknowledged, no corporeality of discussion can save the relationship. "My friend Gail seemed to have me confused with her older sister, whose attention she'd always craved," says Joan. "I spent years trying to convince her that I really cared, but eventually I threw up my hands. I told her I didn't have the time or energy to give her the constant reassurance she needed." Gail felt hurt and rejected, and a 20-yr bail was severed in a single phone phone call.
Bottom line: There's no single template for friendship. Some people are in our lives considering they comport a precious shard of our history, while others reflect our passions and priorities right now. Nevertheless others are in danger of becoming ex-friends because we're either likewise preoccupied to pick upwards the phone or too scared to speak our minds. As Virginia Woolf said, "I have lost friends, some by death—others through sheer inability to cantankerous the street." Which brings me dorsum to Sarah: I'chiliad non sure where this friendship is headed, but I realize I still care enough to cross the street and allow her know why I've been and so out of affect. Every bit for Natalie, I hope that one twenty-four hours she'll do the same.
Barbara Graham, a regular correspondent to O, is the author of Eye of My Heart.
More on Friendship
- More ways to say farewell (and good riddance!)
- The friendship quiz: Good friend, bad friend?
- What to practise when yous're feeling left out
From the August 2001 effect of O, The Oprah Magazine.
Source: https://www.oprah.com/relationships/how-to-end-a-friendship-cutting-off-a-friend/all
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