What’s Left When a Friendship Ends?
I guess I’ll find someone else to play bridge with when I’m 80.
Several years ago, I adopted a kitten from the ASPCA on East 92nd Street in Manhattan. I was overcome with excitement and nervousness. Because I’d anticipated the latter emotion, I had brought a very good friend along with me to the ASPCA. During the subway ride home, I remember saying to her that this cat could live to see my future marriage, and potentially even the birth of my children (this was astounding to me then, as a single 23-year-old who felt lost and hopeless in the NYC dating pool). What I couldn’t have predicted was that my new feline companion would eventually witness the end of that very friendship.
To be completely honest, I think I used to take having friends for granted. Not that I took my actual, individual friends for granted. But the concept of having friends, having “my people” — that is what I took for granted. I was an outgoing kid. I made friends pretty easily throughout my childhood and in high school. College wasn’t very different — though it may have taken me a bit longer to find where I fit in, I figured it out eventually.
But now, here we are, in 2023. Loneliness is a widespread crisis (just ask Ezra Klein). Attribute this to social media usage, COVID-19, or whatever else — people simply aren’t connecting the way they used to. It’s a lonely world out there. Which makes it a scarier world, too.
Many people have lost touch with some of their friends — I know I have. It’s hard, and it hurts. Often, it’s due to circumstances like geographical distance, or being in different stages of life (e.g., when your married friend doesn’t want to be your wingwoman at nightclubs any longer). It can leave you with regrets, asking “what if?” and wondering about how your old friends are doing. But what about friendships that end differently? Where there isn’t an obvious cause, and it’s not simply “losing touch?”
She was my best friend for eight years. We’d seen each other through drunken college nights, questionable dating decisions, fights with parents and siblings, and of course, my acquisition of one very cute cat.
She ended our friendship via Facebook Messenger (*cringe*). To say it was unexpected would be an understatement — I vividly remember waking up to her message (which came in response to me asking, in a routine manner, how she was doing) and being truly shocked. I won’t bore you with the details of the message’s contents, since they don’t really answer any questions. There was no clear reason given. She didn’t say that she needed some time, that she would talk to me later. She didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. There was something about a gap that she felt she could not bridge.
It’s not like we’d been super close constantly for eight years. Like most friendships, ours ebbed and flowed. We had times when we didn’t talk as often, and times when we were texting all day, every day. At one point, I went through a bout of depression where I stopped talking to almost everybody, including her. Once I’d been able to get my bearings (i.e., treatment from a psychiatrist and a therapist), I had sent her a long note, doing my best to explain what had happened and how I was feeling, as well as expressing how sorry I was for not being able to prioritize our friendship at the time. It was well received, and our friendship continued — I would argue it was better than before. We’d learned to support each other more.
But apparently, we could not support each other enough to get through whatever she’d been thinking about when she ended our friendship. I’ll never quite understand what she was thinking, and I’ve decided it’s ok for me not to understand. I’ve been through enough romantic breakups to know that, as a victim of a breakup, you’ll likely never completely comprehend why the other person in your relationship no longer wanted that relationship. And that’s okay, I think. “Closure” is a lie we tell ourselves to justify reaching out to exes who we know we shouldn’t reach out to. We never really get closure — if we did, Taylor Swift wouldn’t have so many fans. But I digress.
Though I came to terms with not knowing why our friendship ended, it still hurt. It hurt much differently than romantic breakups did. I felt like nothing I’d ever been through had prepared me for it. It left me with a lot of weird feelings and questions that I would get no answers to. Was I not a good enough friend? Why didn’t she just say that she needed time to herself — why did she close the door on our friendship so resoundingly? How long had she not wanted to be friends with me? What, if anything, was she telling our mutual friends about why we weren’t speaking anymore? Will I ever speak to her again? Remembering any of the good times from our friendship caused me emotional pain. Actually, screw the past tense — it still does cause me pain. All the good times from our eight-year run feel tainted now, no matter how hard I try to look past the hurt.
That’s not to say that everything has been awful since that fateful Facebook message. In the time since this friendship ended, I learned to lean on my boyfriend for support more, though I was nervous about the strain it could put on our relationship. But we figured it out, and in the process, I have begun to consider him both a romantic partner and a friend, which I think is a really beautiful thing.
I have also been able to have deeper conversations about friendship with my mom. I’ve gotten to see my usually even-tempered, good-humored, and people-pleasing mom get quite worked up on my behalf regarding this friendship breakup of mine. Seeing her protective instincts come out has reminded me that though I’m no longer a child, she’ll always be my mom, and she’ll always be my biggest advocate and defender.
There have been new friendships, too. But these have not been without difficulty — namely, insecurity. This breakup left me with a lot of second-guessing. Am I being a good enough friend? Does this person actually enjoy spending time with me? Do they really want to be my friend? Do I have enough friends? How do I make more friends? Will I ever have someone that I feel that same level of close friendship with like I did with her?
At the time of the breakup, I’d been friends with her for over 30% of my life. By my next birthday, our friendship will be part of 28.6% of my life. When I turn 40, it’ll be just 20%. How do you reckon with the fact that someone is inevitably becoming a smaller and smaller part of who you are, but their impact will still matter forever?
I suppose that question is relevant for many types of loss, including the death of a loved one. But what strikes me in my circumstance is that we’re both still alive — we both could, feasibly, be in each other’s lives again — and I’m also becoming a smaller part of who she is as time goes on. And it’s because of a choice that she made, that I felt I never had a say in.
I do know that I’ll have new friendships in the future, and I look forward to them. But I won’t have a best friend who knew me in college. A best friend who knew me before I started dating my partner. And I do find myself mourning those things sometimes — especially when I see longtime best friends depicted in movies or books or TV shows. I cried watching Firefly Lane on Netflix (but then again, maybe everybody did?) and find myself jealous of protagonists in the novels I read who have that sort of friend that can finish their sentences and is just there for them, no questions asked.
I’ve learned to embrace all these emotions rather than resist them. The best thing I can do now is try to take this entire experience and all the feelings around it and use it all to make myself a better and more compassionate friend to others. And on the days where I feel I’m not strong enough to do that…I’ve still got my cat, who doesn’t care how good of a friend I am, as long as she’s fed.
