Not Over, Just Re-Evaluated
Ah, CNN. You’re always so timely in your lifestyle news.
So an article on ending friendships appeared today and I couldn’t resist reading it. Given recent adventures with a woman who, up until the beginning of the year, I had considered a good friend, the article was more or less timely. I have not updated my blog to report recent events, so here’s a quick summary:
Said friend contacted me to ask what the matter was; when I told her what the matter was, she told me that she had been very self-involved in the last year, did not like to open up, and had basically been a bad friend to everyone around her. I told her it was best that we start listening to each other, but I have to admit that at this point, my efforts to communicate have been very half-hearted.
I love talking to my close friends and I’m more than willing to be there for anyone in a pinch. At this point, though, I’m unsure that I could be there for her in a pinch. The thing is this: I’m always there for her in a pinch, but when I need the help or the shoulder to lean on, I’m ignored. Looking over the pattern from the past 10 years, I’ve always been the one ignored. It has always been her dramas that dominate our friendship. There is no equal give and take: there’s only take from her side and I’m exhausted. Fatigued. Battle-worn. Ready to hang up these friendship boots and focus on the people with whom I enjoy spending time. I have friends with whom I can get silly and serious, and she’s never been one who can get into either mode. It’s always been somewhat awkward. Even IP has noticed it, and when I told him that that’s how it always was – the awkward silences during dinner conversations, the inability to ask each other how we’re really doing without feeling strange about that – he observed that it didn’t sound like a comfortable friendship. It’s not. The friendship takes a lot out of me, has the ability to take out a lot from my family when she happens to visit me in one of her moods (her mood swings are infamous). I don’t know how to communicate, though, that I don’t consider her a close friend anymore.
I probably never have considered her a close friend. Why did I insist on keeping her around, though? I’ve been asking myself that question and I truly think it’s purely a martyr complex on my part. After all, only I could put up with her. After all, people marveled at my ability to do so. After all, her mood swings never had anything to do with me, and besides, I could take it because she needed a friend and damnit, I could be that friend! I would throw myself on the sword of her personality quirks and teach her how to be a kinder, gentler, more open person in the process. Oof. How wrong and arrogant of me. How unfair to her, to be her friend only to prove that she could keep a friend; how unfair to me, to not allow myself to find someone who would talk and listen. I deluded myself into thinking there was equal give and take – after all, I had put in my time and deserved to talk about me for a bit. However, that didn’t apply, never applied, because it wasn’t a real friendship. I was her sounding board, her shopping buddy, but not a true confidant or friend. When I realized that I couldn’t go to her with my problems, I felt cheated, but I now realize that I also cheated myself. By behaving like a sacrificial victim, I yielded the privilege of a true friendship. I can be as equally mad at me as I am at her.
So what to do? The obvious answer (to me, at least) is to stop thinking about the relationship as a friendship and re-evaluate it in body, mind and spirit to a pleasant acquaintance. That does take action on my part, though: this woman still believes she’s going to get together with me when I visit next weekend, still believes that she’s going to be a bridesmaid of mine. Still believes that my parents adore her (they never have, actually), still believes that my family is her family. I don’t want to be harsh and stop communicating altogether; as the article says, I don’t want to burn the person. I do, however, want to establish boundaries on what she can share with me and what she can’t. This means giving her the news that no, she will not be a bridesmaid of mine; this means telling her that I cannot have her visit me this weekend; this means that all the sharing she wants to do but has never been quite able to pull off will have to be done with another person.
She isn’t a bad person; we just don’t mesh as good friends. She did let me down, big time, but I entered that danger zone by tolerating her one-sidedness for nearly 10 years. It’s time to acknowledge that this isn’t a close friendship. I don’t believe we could work towards that because our personalities are vastly different and we really have no common ground. There’s too much history to overcome; I will always be on the lookout for my fair share. That’s not a supportive friendship on either end. And it’s okay to not be someone’s close friend.
Easier said than done, though. I’m sure that to her, we’re as close as friends can be. By losing me as a close friend, she loses out on someone who will listen to her, deal with her mood swings, be there when something bad happens. The problem is that she can’t do the same for me. At this point, I no longer expect that of her. And that’s where the deal breaker is.
