The underrated gift of a friendship break-up

Many years ago, a dear friend from law-school broke up with me. 

My unfolding new relationship with a man - her ex from a few months ago - was the undoing of my old and comfortable friendship with her. 

Early in the day, I had spoken to her about it. She had said there was no way a man would come between us.

A few weeks later, she cut me out for good. 

I couldn’t understand why she did this to me. In the ten years prior, I had witnessed three big friendships die. Each time, I had miserably weathered the storm that followed - feeling small and unworthy of love. Being suddenly and abruptly abandoned by this friend was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. 

I grieved break-ups with friends more than any with boyfriends. I listened to the Big Friendship podcast on repeat, spoke about it in therapy, and read everything I could find on the heartbreak and healing called for by the death of a platonic relationship. 

In that big intense sadness, I realised that all I wanted was to be wanted.

I dreamt of my law-school friend especially often. Scripts of her and I reconciling. Vignettes of us laughing together over meals and shared projects. Life as we knew it, together again. 

“But why on earth does she owe you continued friendship?” an acquaintance asked casually, at a party. 

The iron fist of social acceptance suddenly relaxed its chokehold on my neck.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t control how others felt about me.  

“She doesn’t have to be fair or reasonable to you just because you were honest with her. She’s hurt and wants to have space from you – and that’s perfectly fine,” my party-sounding-board had remarked.

To me, I had been upfront with her. To her, who knows what it looked or felt like. To me, we had shared a familiar - even familial - bond, built on long conversations over chai and bus rides: a kind of determination to see each other through our aspirations. To her, who can really say what we had shared? 

I had measured her boundary against my inner world, not hers. In my need to be wanted, I was living by a story that was entirely self-serving. 

I felt liberated. Her inner world was not my responsibility at all. 

I’ve now lived longer without her than I had with her. Still, the phantom visions of my friend from back-in-the-day persist. I look upon these dreams with a mild twinge of sadness for the way things turned out. Mostly, I feel grateful for my first lesson in self-awareness. Striving for social acceptance is more self-serving than it is sociable. 

Last weekend, a friend sat beside a dying campfire and said she wants nothing to do with us - her high-school friend circle. She brought up empty, undirected banter over drinks and board games from the last few years, and told me that several comments had felt like veiled attacks on her. 

My reflex was that she was holding us responsible for a narrative made up in her head. Until wisdom prevailed.

She was free to draw her boundary based on things made up in her head.

We were free to take responsibility for the part of it that wasn’t.

---

Feedback is the greatest love language. Thank you to David, Chris, and Charu for thoughtful comments on this piece.