On the end of a friendship

The end of a romantic relationship has always been a story.  A romance (essentially) has heart; its end, heartbreak.  A romantic relationship, be it a coupledom, an engagement or a marriage, lasting two months, two years, two decades . . . the end of a romance is always a thing.  


“What happened?” you’ll hear people say.  


“I heard he cheated.”


“She said she fell in love with someone else.”


“He needed some space.”


There is always a story to the end of a couple’s relationship.  There is always solace.  Someone holds your hand (or your head, or just your whole self) while you cry.  Someone brings you ice cream or dinner (or wine).  Another someone will take you out to a club or a pub or a band.  Invariably, someone will encourage you to have a quick fling, “get back on the horse”, find someone for a little fun.  And, eventually, you’re likely to find another someone, develop another relationship, become another couple.  And everyone understands that story.


Friendship, however . . .


The end of a friendship, particularly a long friendship, often feels fairly similar to the death of a romantic relationship.  At least to you.  The end of a friendship, like the end of a romance, can be a sudden surprise; it can be a long time coming.  There can be something akin to infidelity (“why are you hanging out with her so much?  Fridays at the park are our thing!”); there can be a slow drifting apart, ending in something that sounds like, “We’re just such different people now.”  There can be the friendship equivalent of, “it’s not you, it’s me.”  And yet there is rarely the solace, the kindness, the compassion that you get at the end of a relationship.  Even though we all understand on some level that a good friendship should have many of the hallmarks of a good romantic relationship, we rarely think about that when someone is mourning the end of a friendship.


In the relatively recent past, a friendship of mine ended.  The events which transpired to end it are unimportant in their detail, but important for me to determine that it hadn’t actually been a two-sided friendship.  From my point of view, we were mates; not people that necessarily hung out much, but people who got on well together, who enjoyed chatting and catching up; people who liked and respected each other and were buddies, without being best friends.  For example, we weren’t close enough that I’d have asked her to babysit my kids, nor expected her to ask me to mind hers, but we were friendly enough that I’d have been perfectly fine with her texting to say she was running late to school pick up, and could I please just hang out with her children till she got there.  Or walk them to her car, or something similar.  And I thought she considered me in roughly the same fashion.


Anyhoo, something happened.  In the course of what happened, she said a number of things that clearly indicated that she had very limited respect for me personally.  Many of the things that she said could have been due to her having had a crappy day, but she never apologised for the way she spoke, never even acknowledged that what she’d said may have been inappropriate or rude.  At the time, I thought I might have been being a bit sensitive (I’d had an epically crappy day myself and my judgement may have been off). Having recounted what she said to three people whose judgement I trust, I’m pretty confident that it wasn’t (just) me.  What she said was rude and disrespectful.  And I was completely, horribly hurt by the fact that she would speak to me like that.


It was at that point that I thought back upon our friendship.  And when I thought about it clearly, I realised that essentially any time that we’d spoken, I’d been the one who instigated the interaction.  I was the one who asked how she was going; I had wanted to know what they’d got up to on their holidays; I was the one who admired her new hair cut or asked after her kids.  To test this theory out, I decided to stop being the one who started the conversations.  I figured that we saw each other around enough that if she really did want to chat to me, she’d have plenty of opportunities to do so.  And if she actually didn’t want to speak to me, I’d know that pretty quickly too.


It’s been over six months, and she hasn’t spoken a word to me.  I see her at least three times a week, but she’s not spoken to me since.  And it’s not like she’s going out of her way to avoid me; she just doesn’t start a conversation.  She clearly has no interest in doing so.  And I am okay with that.