It has been five days since a dysfunctional friendship of nine years ended. I won’t go into the details because why it ended really doesn’t matter. What matters is that a relationship I nurtured for almost a decade is over, and the real reason it ended was because it was dysfunctional.
I have no question that the relationship was long overdue for ending. I should have ended it a while ago, but I didn’t because when I love, I love deeply. I am also a loyal friend, so I have a habit of sticking with relationships long past when they should have expired. The relationship was once very meaningful and helpful to me, especially in my early therapy years. I don’t forget that and feel guilty about pulling away when the relationship no longer fits.
I have been grieving the loss, and I have had a bunch of different emotions swirling around my head. The primary emotion is anger because of the pointless way it ended. The other person tossed me away as if I never mattered, and that makes me angry – after all I invested in this person, it pisses me off that the other person so easily brushed me aside in one fit of anger. I am also angry about the other person’s alleged reasons for treating me this way. I accept that I need to let the anger run through me and out so it doesn’t turn into bitterness.
I am also sad and have done some crying over the death of this friendship. The sadness has been secondary to the anger, but I suspect as the anger abates, more sadness will follow.
The weirdest part is the absence of the friendship. I’ll watch something on TV and think, “I need to tell __ about ___ … No, wait, she isn’t in my life anymore.” She was such an integral part of my life for so long that it feels weird not having her to talk to about X, Y, and Z. I am not talking about leaning on her emotionally. I am talking about the fact that a TV show we both like will have new episodes airing next month or something funny that happened today. It’s just weird to notice the absence as I go about my day.
My therapist has warned me that I might have regrets about how long I chose to stay in the friendship, but I don’t know if I will. I made the decisions I did for the reasons I did, and those decisions led me to where I am today. I feel no need to beat myself up for things I did or did not do before today.
I also feel no guilt about the friendship ending. She blew it up, not me, and she blew it up over something so ridiculous that I think it was an excuse to get out. I don’t think this dysfunctional friendship was healthy for either of us any longer. I wish we could have parted amicably and downgraded to acquaintances, but it is what it is.
This isn’t my first dysfunctional relationship to end, and I am sure it won’t be the last. I’ll get through it just as I always do.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Hello Faith
Over the past year I have had a very intense period of healing. In the process I lost what I would have called my two closest friends. I think I finished with my ‘best’ friend in very much the same way you describe this friend finishing with you: there was a quick argument and I asked her never to contact me again. We’d been friends for over a decade. I knew the friendship was no good for me. I am lucky in that I had so much going on in my own healing that I barely dwelt on this at all. It may seem rash to finish so quickly with a friend of so many years and, yes, one that was loved. However, I know that relationship was unhealthy for me and so I haven’t allowed myself to dwell on regret at all. The best I can hope for my friend is that she doesn’t harbour rage or bitterness or guilt or any other negative emotion, either. I’m not going to. I am much more careful in the friends I make now, when dynamics begin to feel unbalanced, I recognize it earlier. Your T is right too – I certainly do feel regret about how long I stayed in that friendship. I hope you can treat yourself as kindly as you have pledged to do, perhaps it is a little harder to accept the end of this relationship because the other person chose it but it sounds as though you recognise the dysfuncionality of the friendship and therefore will be able to let it go and move on to better times.
Hi, A x.
My situation was not so “cut and dry” as it sounds like yours is. We had this dynamic where she would get angry, and it was my job to clean up the mess even though I did not make it. The trigger each of these times has been issues between our elementary-aged children, not between us, but the result was pushing away me along with my child. I got hurt and “cleaned it up” the first two times (once four years ago and once earlier this summer). I was done with time #3.
Her side of the story is probably that I “abandoned” her because I haven’t come around to “clean things up” this time. She will wait for me to make the move to calm her down, and I am not going to do so. She will spin it that I walked out her — that’s how she spun it with other relationships while we were friends.
- Faith
Hello Faith
I hope you can just put all your energy into being compassionate to yourself. You don’t deserve to feel bad about this break-up for even a second. I’m not saying, beat yourself up if you do feel bad (sad, angry, lost) etc – but hopefully you can remind yourself you deserve to feel good at all times.
Hope you have a lovely day.
PS This is the song I love to listen to when I am needing to ‘let go’ of something or someone, beautiful singing and lyrics are powerful too.
http://youtu.be/3phaHOapBog
so sorry , Faith.
Grieving is hard and lonely work for me. It is how things become in the past for me.
I do not find comfort yet have some success in going back to where I was at the time. A why it was right for then thing.
I do not think the world in general grieves well. Avoiding situations where one has to grieve seems to often be the solution.
Grieving for me has not really become easier over all my life has become easier as I grieve rather than avoid it. For me avoiding it is a part of grieving I just to not need as much effort in the avoiding.
Sometimes I think grieving for someone who is still alive can be even harder than when they are dead…
I have way fewer real friends today than I did when I was drinking and drugging, and fewer still since I became a wife and mother and began getting serious about recovery. I guess what I’m saying is that although you may feel lonely or sad because of your recent loss, you are not alone. You have us, your cyber fam. to lean on.
I know you know that, but I just wanted to say it.
One step at a time.
Peace,
mia
I hate to admit it, but it took the onset of Alzheimer’s for a dysfunctional friendship to end that I’d had for about 15 years. I never could figure out a way to disconnect from someone who kept me on the phone for hours and was one of the worst energy suckers I’ve ever known. She finally became so disoriented with the disease that I suspect she forgot my number or fantasized that I’d demeaned her in some way or the other, or who knows…? She called one final time to tell me she missed talking to me, but I’d let the message go to my call notes and did not call her back. I did everything I possibly could to in earlier years to help her get a job, help her do something about the back taxes on her house, listen to her endless complaints about the various people in her life, etc. I just couldn’t do it anymore. At times, her sense of humor had made me laugh; she’d been truly generous (but with strings attached) in our very early relationship; and I’d always hoped that if she could “get back on her feet,” things would get better as far as our friendship. That never happened. I did my best to get her help with the Alzheimer’s by calling her long-estranged son, got told all kinds of horror stories about how awful she’d been as a mother, and after going through a huge loop of trying to get her some help from the state department of human services and winding up exactly where I started, accomplishing nothing but a gigantic waste of time, I admitted to myself that I could do no more. Especially since I’m a single mother and am barely able to keep my own head above water. So, I guess what I’m saying is that I empathize with those feelings of loss of a long-standing friendship. I still think about her and pray she’s all right.
I agree with Mia
It is very common for victims of abuse to be re-victimized because it is how we are wired, programmed. :
I think this is one of the hardest parts of healing. It’s been a few years since my best friend and I “broke up.” I know she blamed me for everything, but I was finally able to refuse the blame for what was clearly a two way dynamic.
Despite that, I still felt angry and guilty, but one of the things that became clear to me for the first time was that I don’t have to feel bad just because the other person thinks I should. Huge epiphany there.
It’s been a couple of years, and I still think of her. I am grateful for the parts of the friendship that worked well, and I often think of her and wish her well. At the same time, I can see all the dysfunctional parts of the friendship, and I am grateful and relieved that those are over.
I have noticed lately that the idea “love is forever” has some glitches in it. Interactional dynamics are always changing – sort of the definition of “dynamic”. But it is truly sad when the awakening is so abrupt that there is a severance. I had a friend tell me she had not been interested in being with me for a long time but I made her feel guilty so she didn’t want to tell me. I was blindsided and still can’t understand it, but she sure left me an out by blaming her guilt on me. That was clearly dysfunctional; just the same I did not see any other major indications other than the normal personality foibles that come with being human. I was sad, and I grieved.
So, you will grieve, Faith. It sounds like a death, for sure, where your brain trace patterns have to undergo major rearrangements while you slowly put that idea into your head that that person is out of your life now.
As for the “love is forever” idea, I have to agree with what I have heard therapists and others say. As you get mentally healthier, old relationships start to fall by the wayside – unless the other person is getting healthier, too. I guess you grow out of the old slot you were in and it is just too uncomfortable to stay there.
[...] Grieving Loss of Dysfunctional Friendship « Blooming Lotus Tags: Friendship, friendship bracelet designs, friendship is magic [...]
Hi faith, hope you are well. In your blogs, and what I have heard from other survivors you often describe healing as a fight. And I have never understood this. To me, fighting is how I got through the abuse as and when it happened, to me healing is a process of stopping fighting (even retreating) which can be really hard and scary when you have fought for so long and you think the ‘enemy’ might still be close but is none the less stopping not starting the fight. I would be really interested in your thoughts on this, and wether you feel that survivng your childhood also involved some degree of a fight or not! Sorry if you don’t like the question, I am only curious x
[...] my blog entry entitled Grieving Loss of Dysfunctional Friendship, a reader posted the following comment: In your blogs, and what I have heard from other survivors [...]
I’ve had dysfunctional friendships end before and I know how much it can hurt especially if you knew each other for a long time.
I’m really sorry for your pain but I hope the end leads to better emotional health for you.
Thanks, tb0316.
Each day gets a little easier. I am very busy with a new part-time job (and juggling my “old” one), so I don’t have much time to sit around thinking about it. It’s been over a week now, and I am OK.
- Faith
Good for you Faith. I’m glad.
I’m often comforted by how often what you choose to write about on this blog closely corresponds to what I’m going through at the time. Serendipity.
At the moment I’m going through the upheaval of realizing that a friendship I’m been working desperately to try to keep alive is dying even as I try to hold onto it–while also beginning to suspect that perhaps it’s better off that way.
The friendship started its downhill slide with a fight, like many of the other commenters have talked about, that brought the issues of the friendship to the forefront. Neither of us was able to really deal with those issues then, and further attempts on my part to try to reach out and figure out what went wrong between us only result in her pulling further away.
I’m principally confused. On the one hand, I know in hindsight that I spent the entire time that I knew this girl–most of my teenaged years–just as terrified of her as I was devoted to her, and I know that’s a bad thing. But on the other hand, I don’t know whether that’s just me and I have to find a way to get over it if I’m going to save the friendship, or whether she’s got a part in it as well. I feel like I’ve done everything I possibly can to try to make this work, and did so even before the fight, while she refuses to give anything back–but I don’t have quite the faith in my ability to read people that I once had. I could be wrong. And the confusion is making it hard to let go.
Hi, Piper.
My therapist says that a healthy friendship has an overall balance of “give and take.” While one friend might need more than the other for a day, week, or even a month, there should be balance over time.
It sounds like this friendship is similar to the one that just ended for me. If I wanted it back, I could have it by doing a bunch of back flips to get it back. i have to pour, pour, and pour energy into it while she sits back and waits for me to do it. I’m done doing that.
- Faith
A little late in the discussion . . . but I’m sure the pain remains.
Is it something about abuse survivors that we do this? Forgive endlessly the trespasses of friends, and hang onto our loves ‘forever’? I know we are more apt to get into dysfunctional relationships – to an abuse survivor ‘any friend is a good friend’ – and we’ve had LOTS of friends – and lost plenty.
I know our wife (and others) ‘freak out’ and can’t understand how we forgive people who have lied to us, stolen from us, and/or betrayed us – and still be friends with them. Heck, I’m even friends with the guy who abused me in PR last July (love him like my brother – but just want to keep it at a distance – see http://wp.me/p1t0dv-kN & http://wp.me/p1t0dv-lA).
I remember a friend teaching us about being friends during our teenage years. We had been taught that friendship was a matter of “give and take” – and we kept track, keeping the scales balanced. One day the friend wanted something minor done (I think it was opening a car door) – and we pointed out that in the game of “tit for tat” he was tipping the scale in his favor, and we refused to do it. He told us that friendship isn’t about favors … it’s about friendship..
But nevertheless, the truth is sometimes people will take advantage of you, and despite your love for them the best thing is to distance yourself from them – for your own good. When the “bad” begins to outweigh the “good”, when you find yourself agonizing for hours about something your friend did instead of pleasantly reflecting on time spent together – then, perhaps, it’s time to reevaluate the friendship – and take a good firm look at it intellectually vs. with one’s heart – and ignore what the heart wants to do because you KNOW this friendship isn’t any good for you …. but what a hard thing to do!
We can only hope that you can find another friend – not to replace the old one (for there is no such thing) – but to comfort you through your dark periods – without ‘demanding’ or asking anything – and that you will be able to do the same for them.
Sincerely,
Jeff & Friends,
et all
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[...] I shared here and here, I mutually ended a nine-year dysfunctional friendship in August and have been grieving it [...]
[...] second woman I have cut out of my life is the friend I blogged about here. She was a good friend for the most part for nine years, and she was there for me during the early [...]
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Faith:
I think you did the right thing….which is often painful, in the short run. Very painful. I can only share with you my experience, which may bring some clarity.
My oldest “best” friend of almost 30 years recently said and did some things I finally realized were a pattern. It took the death of my ex spouse to bring the issues to the fore…so it was sort of a one two punch for me as I was already coping with the disenfranchised grief of knowing my ex of 16 years had died, after my leaving her and cutting off all contact. Talk about mixed emotions and regret.
When I found out my ex had died, I did what most sane, sensitive people do….I called my oldest dearest friend to talk, and to seek support and love at one of the worst emotional crises a person can face, the death of someone we love, or in my case, once loved very deeply. Well, my “good friend” just balked….backpedaled, wouldn’t talk about it and actually got hostile. Somehow the conversation on my end was “my God, I feel awful…am I supposed to feel this way about my ex’s death” along with all the usual grieving feelings everyone has. And my good friend, stonewalled me. I couldn’t really fathom why….but, I’m fairly sure it was because she felt strongly that I should have contacted my ex (whom my good friend had been “friends with” on Facebook). I will always hate Facebook….months previously, my good friend and I had argued over this contact, but left it at my saying “I don’t like it that you are in contact with her, but it’s really none of my business”. Incidentally, my “good friend” didn’t tell me about this “contact” until it had been going on for more than a year.
Well, leaving out the gory, sad details of my trying to get me friend to talk to me, meet me, email me….I began to see it as somewhat pathetic on my part. I called her one day and we got sidetracked in the discussion somewhat and for some reason she popped out with “your Dad was never a very good father”……well, you know, when your “best friend” insults your father….let’s just say for me it was the final hard slap in the face I probably needed. I woke up, and I realized…this person is not your friend. It was a dysfunctional friendship. I realized in that moment of clarity that I had been trying to have a very one sided friendship, with a very unhappy and angry person, who was not the person I met in my teens, and was so close to throughout my twenties and thirties.
Sometimes, people die. Sometimes people get lost, in drugs, in alcohol, in keeping up with the Jones….and at some point, we need to let them go. The relationship dies, but the love lives on. It hurts, a lot. I find solace in believing that my capacity for love is in direct relation to the pain I feel over losing those I loved. I would much rather have loved and lost, though. Life is too short not to have that joy. Keep loving, choose wisely, learn from mistakes, and never apologize for having to put yourself before someone who doesn’t really care.
Much luck and love to you,
HN