How do you know when a friendship is over? When do you just quit trying? At what point do you just say “I’m
done.”?
I’ve been contemplating these questions a lot lately. I have a friendship- well; I hesitate to even
call it that right now- that I think is beyond repair. Things have just gotten so out of whack that
I don’t know what it would take to fix it. I don’t even know if it’s worth fixing.
I don’t want to go too into detail. I don’t want to reveal
this person, and, while I’d love to, I am not going to discuss specific details
of the fall out and what has brought the relationship to this point. Believe me, I’d LOVE to, but it’d only make
things worse. And, it’d make for a
very, very long post.
I know I am partly to blame for things getting this
far-gone. My husband will be the first
in line to tell you that. I hold
grudges. Bad. But, the good part is, I do get over them… it just sometimes
takes awhile. And this particular
grudge has taken A. Long. Time. But, I
finally got to the point were I thought I could really try, really put an
effort into getting over things and work on rebuilding the relationship, but
I’m now realizing that it won’t happen if I’m the only one doing that. And I am not feeling the vibe coming back my
way.
I’ve come to realize thing were not really how they
seemed. I think I had rose colored
glasses on throughout most of the friendship. And then I started to see how things really were… how this person
really was, and some events that really blew it out of the water only
solidified my findings. And small
events from that point on have only made it truer.
On the surface, this friendship seems ok. (I guess the fact
that I used “ok” says a lot, though). We can hang out, and laugh together, and get along just fine. However, outside of social situations it
seems there is no effort on their part. There is no give and take. It’s all take. I’ve tried to keep things going, tried to reconcile things and
move past the issues that sit between us like an elephant in the room, I am not
getting the same feeling back from this person. I’ve tried to stay interested in their life… asked questions,
sent emails and phone calls and have extended invitations to do things, and the
response is short lived… the response seems superficial and is usually a subtle
decline with an excuse.
UGH. It’s so hard to
vent and release when I can’t fully do it. I’m going to try my best.
Wow… now that I’m writing it out, I’m starting to see… DUH Nicole,
isn’t it kind of all right there… spelled out for you? How much clearer can this person be? Why keep trying? I guess the only explanation is that I still care about this
person… they were a good friend. A great friend. I miss the old friendship. And I thought that maybe, while I know the friendship is forever
altered, just maybe we could come to a common ground and have a new
friendship.
So, I ask you, have you been in a situation like this? How has it turned out? How did you know it was over? Did you regret it? Is there anything you’d have done differently?
nicolebarczak.com 
I had the same thing with my friend that I had since high school. Like you, I also hold grudges for a long time.
When she extended the olive branch I threw it back in her face. It’s now been 9 years since I talked to her and I think about her every now and again. Wondering if I did the right thing. She has a daughter that is a few months older than Macy and I wonder what it would have been like to be pregnant together and have our daughters grow up together. Then on the other hand, I wonder if I had remained friends with her would we really still be friends because her life was so much different than mine and her thoughts on things were VERY different than mine.
Hey Nic. I’ve been there, let me tell ya. This girl I went to high school with…we were really good friends then well since graduation and everything, our friendship became one sided…I was doing everything, calling, trying to plan a time to hang out and do things and she would rarely call me back and when we did hang out, it seems like all we would do is talk about the past as well as past arguments we had…Finally enough was enough and I I just stopped calling, and our friendship died off. I miss her, we used to be really close. So now Im making new friends. People that actually return phone calls and want to hang out with me…its sad really.
well…im going thru a similar situation. with some of my friends from “back home.” since coming to college i haven’t really had time for them but i’ve always made attempts to hangout and plan stuff for when i was home. for example, we’d always talked like in high school about our 21st birthdays and going out and all that stuff. well now that my bday is in a month, i am trying to make plans for dinner and then going out to the bars afterwards and everyone is like “well maybe. i dont know yet.” like they’re holding off on making plans until they figure out if they’ll have something better to do that night. makes me go hmmm….i shouldn’t be the one planning my OWN birthday, they should’ve been willing and at least caring. its hard to do, but i guess i have realized i just need to move on, and i see that these people don’t have to be my friends and that my live can evolve past that point in my life and i can meet new friends who will treat me how a friend should be. so, if you let go of this friend, you can use all that energy you’re wasting to make something new and even better for yourself.
I’ve been going through this with one of my BFF too, we had only seen each other a few times in the past year until last night we had dinner. I had been meaning to talk about our friendship, but there just didn’t seem to be enough time. Who knows where it will end up?
Good luck to you!
My goodness…I looks like a lot of us are going or have gone through this!!! We can all just be friends!! Hahaha!
What you said about missing the old friendship… that’s what you mourn. But how you said you know the friendship is forever altered and yet you were hoping to have a new kind of friendship… that is a valuable realization.
I went through a similar thing with someone who was my best friend for almost 17 years. We met when we were 12 and from then on were joined at the hip. Until our lives started going different directions in our mid/early 20’s and then we had a huge ugly falling out. It hurt. I realized that we could no longer be friends like we were, but it was weird, because I had kind of a peace about it, knowing we just couldn’t be close anymore… we had no problem in social situations; we just had no relationship outside of that.
And then a few years ago I found out we were both pregnant with our first children at the same time, and that’s kind of when I fell apart. It was really sad to me that all those years we talked about having babies at the same time and our kids growing up together… that fact that we were having babies at the same time -just not “together”; that wasn’t going to happen made me really sad. And so I got back in touch with her. And slowly we felt a little more normal being friends. I think we both grew up a lot in those years. Will we ever be close? Not even half as close as we were before… it’s different but it’s good. At least I can say we’re friends.
So at least you are somewhat coming to terms with all your feelings about this friendship. And maybe someday when enough time has past, the two of you will be able to start that new friendship. And it will be totally different, or it wont work. You probably both have to be different. You know? Sorry for the post length comment.
And for what it’s worth… know that I count myself lucky that we’re such good friends!!