Do you remember your first break up? Probably. There’s something about those romantic rites of passage that stay with you. Do you remember your first friendship break-up though? Those memories are probably hazier. I remember mine- not the first friendship that ended, but the first person that broke up with me. A guy- let’s call him James. He sent me a long text basically saying “I don’t want to be friends anymore”- and you know what? I got it. I wasn’t always the best friend to him, nor him to me. I suspect some of our relationship was based on ignoring his semi-romantic feelings but also exploiting it as a basis for friendship. It’s hard to say because it’s easy to make things up when you’re looking back. I just know that he sent me a text breaking up with me.
A couple of months ago, I asked people on Instagram to send stories of their friendship break-ups. I got lots of responses, but the thing that stuck out was the confusion of it, no one knew why their friendships ended and no one really wanted it to happen. When you have a falling out with a romantic partner, it’s easy to point to the things that indicate that something is wrong- a day without speaking, an absence of touch- with friendships, it’s so much harder. I sent a message to one of my friends- a long message- explaining that I felt like something was wrong because she had been distant- and she said “I don’t speak to my friends everyday”- and I found it impossible to explain that the distance I was talking about had very little to do with speaking every day. But how do you explain that with no rules around what a friendship should look like?
I feel like you fall in love platonically in the same way you fall in love romantically. I fell in love with one of my friends. It was a friendship I poured my heart and soul into- it’s hard to say if the feeling was the same for her, I never felt like it was but I don’t know what the truth is. As I grow older, friendships are less intense, but I’m also less likely to second guess myself about other people’s feelings. Although we were friends for a good long time, the friendship started to disintegrate slowly- almost impossible to see. Even after we stopped speaking, I felt like maybe eventually, we could be acquaintances of some sort, but then I quickly realised, the way you sometimes realise that your ex has deleted all your pictures and blocked you, that the friendship might well and truly be over.
I don’t think I’ve ever been good at friendship; I do feel like I’ve gotten better at it over time or maybe what I’ve gotten better at is accepting myself and therefore my own role in the success and failure of relationships. It’s something that has always made me pretty insecure- trying to measure the quality of my friendships and by doing that, measure the quality of myself as a person.
I think in the way that you sometimes pick bad romantic partners based on something that has affected your self-esteem, the same can be true of picking friends. I’ve had friends when I was younger that I know I wouldn’t be friends with at this older age and I can look at myself in some friendships in the past and know that I was pretty shit. For a long time, I used to beat myself up about friendships that didn’t work out, but at the end of the day, it won’t always and that’s fine.
The other day, I replied to a post that my friend put up and he replied “You always have to make it about you” to me it seemed to come from nowhere, but obviously it came from somewhere. In an ideal world, that would have been the start of a deep conversation that explained the source of his angst, but it’s not an ideal world and it didn’t. Before I had the chance to overthink it, I realised three things:
1. any reflection would be completely one sided
2. we hadn’t had a proper conversation in years and had barely seen each other
3. any excavation would be pointless if the first two things weren’t addressed first.
And I think that’s the thing. There’s an absence of true communication in a lot of adult friendships because it’s embarrassing to put true feelings on the table- jealousy and hurt and all of it. Everyone tells me my feelings are valid in romantic love or even with family, not with friends. I know I’ve felt embarrassed 98 percent of the time when I’ve shared feeling hurt in a friendship and not hurt by say a fight- but hurt by distance, hurt by eroding trust, hurt by a lack of support- there are so many things that don’t have to be deal breakers if there was a template to communicate them but friendships are supposed to “just work” ,so many things go unsaid.
If I hear one more “no one owes you anything” or “friendships where we don’t speak for 3 years and pick up where we left off >>>”- we have the time and emotional energy for everything apart from developing healthy friendships where expectations are met majority of the time, and hurts and disappointments are being communicated in a healthy and open way.
I’ve had a lot of friendship break-ups after that first text and most of the time, I had no idea why- sometimes, I’m sure there is no reason, we grow in different directions but I know that there must have been situations where there were reasons and I don’t know them because my friend never talked to me about it and that kind of sucks.
I have much better friendships now with people that communicate their needs clearly. I do the same. I no longer measure closeness by the frequency and length of our conversations. I don’t hesitate to ask for things or time. I am thankful for the things and time that I am given, but I don’t see it as something less than I deserve. I deserve my friends; I deserve their best and they deserve the same too. They deserve to be hurt if they feel abandoned or not listened to, they deserve to question if I’m completely absent from the lives and forget milestones. They deserve praise and unyielding support and trust. They deserve open and honest communication when things aren’t right. I will continue to give that and expect that. You know what that is? Growth.