A Letter To Women Who Feel Unworthy Of Friendship
Trigger Warning: Female Relationships
Dear Women Who Feel Unworthy of Friendship,
Ease your mind. It’s not you. It’s them.
A friend recently dumped me after our first argument. Like many women do, I went through a full-range of emotions. They started off as negative, self-damaging thoughts and painful emotions. In the end, I realized I am worthy of friendship — and so are you.
I had one bad altercation. The other person had far more issues exposing a lack of compassion and understanding on her part. She transferred these traits to me to ease her inability to be a good friend. This, unfortunately, happens more often in female relationships than we care to admit.
The argument started with another friend who, over the course of a week, kept saying we upset her husband because the group notifications kept going off. This happened many times. I made a snide comment about her husband. She replied that her husband saw the comment and accused her of badmouthing him. I admit to being wrong since I made that comment.
What I wasn’t wrong about is that this group must be a safe space. It is a women-only group for a book club that, for the last five months, has been reading and doing the assignments in the Warrior Goddess Training book and workbook. We shared many concerns, trials and traumas that we wouldn’t (and even mentioned we didn’t) want our husbands or other people to hear. For this reason, I insisted that the group should be a safe space.
She explained her husband only saw the message because her phone is broke and she is using his phone. This was the first I heard of her phone problems. Although I understood that, I still insisted that the group needed to be a safe space.
Women need safe spaces where they can feel comfortable sharing things with other women. People who claim they are your friends must understand this. Why? According to the National Domestic Violencehotline:
Every minute 24 people become victims of intimate partner violence.
15 percent of women obtain injuries due to this violence.
One in three women are victims of intimate partner violence.
At this point the woman, who has since broken off our friendship, inserted herself into the argument with her boxing gloves swinging, insisting she was entering the argument in “the spirit of moderation.” Then she proceeded to verbally beat me. Moderators are impartial, and friends should be understanding. She was neither.
My trauma buttons became triggered. I am a survivor of domestic violence. My ex’s worst and most frequent tactic was to start an argument with me as soon as I got home from work between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. If I didn’t react to his verbal barrage, he threw things at me, goading me to respond to him. When I did respond, he’d grab my hair or shirt and shake me until I was crying in pain or my shirt ripped off my body. Once that happened it was slaps and hits to parts of my body that a shirt can cover. The verbal attacks didn’t stop.
This didn’t go on for minutes or even an hour. He would do it until 5:00 in the morning so I only got one hour of sleep before going to work. Then he’d scream at me on the 10-minute ride to work. If I tried to get out of the car before he was done yelling at me, he’d step on the gas as I started to put my leg out the door.
As you can imagine, I don’t do well with confrontation. Sparks flew. She admitted her husband has seen parts of the messages from our group and insisted that my need for safety was disagreeing with her marital dynamic and disrespectful to her and her husband.
If you are domestic violence victim or survivor, and your friend(s) thinks that their marital dynamic is more important than your need for safety, reconsider your relationship with this person. One’s marital dynamics have nothing to do with keeping a confidence for a friend or maintaining a sense of safe space. Not offering women safe spaces reinforces the abuser’s assertions that no one cares for the victim.
The harm to victims of domestic violence does not end once they have left the abuser. In her Psychology Today article, Domestic Violence: Power Struggle With Lasting Consequences, Susanne Babbel, Ph.D, M.F.T., says victims of domestic violence can develop chronic PTSD and depression.
If your trauma buttons are triggered in certain circumstances, you are not unworthy of friendship. You are coping with internal trauma. The person unworthy of friendship is the one who makes you feel ashamed of your feelings and experiences or puts their wants and comforts above your safety.
Other women who feel unworthy of friends are women with anxiety, depression, or any other mental health diagnosis. If you don’t always feel able to join your friends, it’s okay. If you woke up one morning, tried your hardest to be a functional member of society, and failed, your effort is enough. If you put your head back on the pillow and covered yourself with a blanket, you are not ignoring your friends. You are taking care of yourself so you can be a better person and friend later.
Approximately 60 million Americansexperience mental illness each year, yet there is a stigma in America regarding mental health. Worse, this stigma complicates your ability to find friends, but it’s quality, supportive friends that you need.
You are not unlikable, even if you have a panic attack or react poorly when you feel attacked or unsafe. You have much to overcome. A good friend will help you work through your struggles. An undeserving friend will not. Don’t waste time on those who won’t try to understand you.
Possibly the hardest thing to overcome when a friendship breaks up is when they dump you for an offense you never knew you committed. With the friend who recently broke up with me, she said I made her feel unwanted and disliked. She never mentioned this before. I have invited her to join me for outside book club activities. I didn’t think I could be any clearer that I wanted to spend more quality time with her. I was taken aback, as anyone walloped with an unpleasant surprise would be.
I had to find out from my other friend. What cut me was that she took offense to my having a panic attack on the day we did a circle together. I told both friends I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do coven work again. I was once a coven member, and it was not a positive experience. They insisted a small circle was not a coven, but friends. My now ex-friend, wanted to her husband to join so he could experience his first circle. He arrived at my home, and upon hearing which goddess I was calling in, insulted her, tried to discredit my research and said he would not work with her. I had a panic attack, and that is what made this woman feel unwanted and disliked.
A friend who values you will let you know if you hurt or offended them and allow you the opportunity to rectify the situation. I never knew she found my discomfort with her husband’s behavior offensive. Thus, she denied me the chance to remedy the situation.
If a similar situation happens to you, don’t blame yourself. You are not to blame for perceived offenses someone refuses to address.
Some people want easy relationships requiring no effort. Yes, they’ll buy you things and claim they want to spend time with you, but when you invite them to do things with you, they’re preoccupied. These women never give you the opportunity to get close to them. Regardless of your attempts to know them better, they remain guarded.
It’s not you. It’s their insecurity. When an altercation happens, and they insist you don’t understand them and therefore are not worthy of their friendship, don’t blame yourself. Let them go. Nothing you do will ever be enough for them.
There’s a fatal flaw with easy relationships. An easy friendship only offers easy things. They come easy. They go easy. They are easily forgotten. There is no substance to an easy friendship. They are an empty facade.
Do not allow yourself to feel unworthy of friendship because you have trauma or a mental diagnosis or because someone wants to shift the blame for their inability to be a quality friend onto you. You are not to blame, even if you are a trauma survivor or have a mental health diagnosis. You can designate safe spaces where you can communicate with your friends and expect privacy.
Your challenges can make you empathetic, a quality few people have. Continue to work on yourself, love yourself, and agree that taking the time to find the right friends is better than suffering the pains of a fake friend.
