My blogging has been fairly superficial as of late. There's a reason - I've been dealing with heartbreak (I know, I can hear you now - "again"?!). A different kind of heartbreak - I broke up with my best friend. Two months ago now. It was a crushing blow on top of a series of unhappy events at work and in my personal life that had already kept me in the depths for - well, the better part of a year. And I have been letting it all fester. I've been petrified that it would come out in a rush of words as I blogged about the latest neighbourhood mishap, and so I kept silent.
And I'm tired of it.
In the interests of getting it off my chest, I'm putting it out there. Because I don't want it to fester anymore, I don't want to carry it around every day. My own baggage is heavy enough.
Things had been weird between my best friend and I for a couple of weeks. Less-than-frequent checkins from her, and weird, passive-aggressive, "I don't deserve you" and "I haven't been a good friend to you" comments that appeared to be coming out of nowhere. My best friend got out of a seven year relationship almost a year ago now, and had been careening from disastrous date to disastrous date since I got back home. I finally couldn't deal with the constant emotional meltdowns over various love affairs and "situations" where I felt my best friend was allowing herself to be treated badly, in the sole interests of finding a man to be with. I felt she was not ready to date and should spend some time figuring out who she was OUT of a relationship, and what SHE wanted in a partner, rather than hoping that this time, she would be what HE wanted; she disagreed. She felt the rest of her life and her identity were in perfect order, and this was the only missing puzzle piece, and she was single-minded in her mission to find The One. I thought my refusal to support more dating adventures that left my friend in tears on her couch for evenings on end was the reason for the weirdness between us.
Around 4 pm on Tuesday at the end of April, I got a message from her. “Dani, I need to talk to you about something. Can you meet me at Starbucks?”
I was immediately freaked out by the formality of the invitation, but said I would meet her.
I had already been at the Starbucks for 15 minutes when she arrived and sat down across from me.
“I have been lying to you,” she said. “I have been seeing someone, and I’ve developed pretty strong feelings for them. We want to date, and it is going to happen. And, it’s X.”
I just stared at her. X was someone that I have known casually for about three years. I'd always had a little crush on him, which my friend knew well enough about, and which I'd really made no secret of to anybody. I thought he was charming, but he had always been in a serious relationship, until very recently. Since his breakup, we had talked a few times, and met up once for coffee. I wouldn't have called it a date, but I knew this was someone I wanted to get to know in some capacity. My friend had been more excited than I was - jokingly planning our wedding and calling for "updates" on the situation a number of times. My friend had known for literally, years, how I felt about this guy. Things with X had stalled in recent weeks and it appeared that he didn't even want to be my friend. I felt maybe I was stepping into a messy situation - perhaps there was unfinished business with the girlfriend who he still claimed to be in a "complicated relationship" with on Facebook - and so I hadn't forced the issue with him. I had introduced my best friend to him. We had fixed her up with HIS best friend, who she dated briefly for a period of six weeks at the beginning of the year.
“I got in touch with him to talk about you, to help you get together, but then things just happened.”
I said nothing.
“We think we could be really happy together,” she continued in the silence. “We didn’t mean for it to happen, but I really feel like I have no choice.” Tears welled up in her eyes.
Privately, I thought "You always have a choice." What I said was: “I don’t know what you want me to say. Is he THE ONE?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed. It was a stupid question for me to ask, because every guy my friend has had feelings for over the past 5 months that I have been home to witness, have been over-the-top. Of course X now seemed to her like the only person she could be with, ever. In my opinion, my friend is desperately afraid of being alone. It would never occur to her that there are other possibilities out there. He was here, he liked her, it was a done deal. Of course he was It.
The rest of the conversation is a blur to me. She was distraught, but was not offering to not date him, or asking what she could do to make it up to me for breaking my trust. The way she had presented it to me made it clear that she wasn’t asking for permission, she had made her choice and it was X. What she was looking for was for me to be okay with it, forgive her, and be her friend anyway. I don’t think she understood that her lying, and the fact that she got herself into this mess in the first place (which showed no consideration for my feelings), had broken my heart. It had very little to do with him - it was her choice to lie to me, and to not put me first, the way I would always put her first, that was the problem. There was no way I could be a friend to her in the same way, ever again, when it was clear that she could not reciprocate - I would have done anything for this girl. One of the great comforts of my life was my belief that in her, I had found a friend who would have done anything for me. I was reeling to suddenly find this was not so.
Outwardly, I was very calm.
“Thank you for finally telling me, and for doing it face to face. That takes guts. I hope you will be happy,” I said sincerely. And I meant it. I also told her that she had broken my trust. And the Girl Code. And that it wasn’t about X (which was the truth). It was about her conduct. I could say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have gone within 100 yards of any of her love interests, past or present, if I had even an inkling that I might have feelings for them. In fact, when I had first met her and her previous partner, I had been very close to him first, and thought that, but for her, we might have been good friends, or more (I did not ever share this with her). I told her that I was disappointed that she had not been able to do the same for me. That I have always done everything I could to be a good friend to her, and was sad to find out that she could not reciprocate. However, I told her that I understood that she needed to have a partner in her life and would not be happy any other way. I just didn’t know why the only partner for her was suddenly a person who could potentially destroy our friendship. And that I was sad to realize that her need to have that partner surpassed even the strongest loyalties.
She asked me if I wanted her to not date him. I said I didn’t realize it was an option, based on the way the situation had been presented to me as a fait accompli. But I said, yes, if you’re asking me, yes. I would ask you not to do this. Beg you, even. She said she would "take it under consideration." In her skilful and lawyerly way, my best friend rebutted that if the damage done was indeed what I had said, that SHE had broken my trust, that it was about the hurt SHE had inflicted by lying and choosing to make a choice that would hurt me, that wouldn’t be fixed by her not seeing X, and so she might as well keep seeing him (it was masterful, really).
“No, it might not fix the damage,” I said. “But it would be a start.” I needed her to choose me over him, as a sign of good faith. To say that she realized that losing my friendship wasn’t worth it, that she understood that there were plenty of opportunities for her to find love again. I don’t think she understood that I was not trying to tell her to be single, for me. I was telling her to date someone, anyone else. To have consideration for my feelings. To have maybe mitigated the damage very early on, if it was completely unavoidable, and come clean right away. To have not made it a choice between him and me.
“You and I have been so unhappy together for so long,” she said between sobs. “I feel like now I’m leaving you there.”
I realized then how differently we thought. For one, I didn’t know why her being in a relationship, meant that our friendship suffered (I have never understood that when other friends have disappeared into the ether when they fell in love. My parents have been married 35 years, are still in love, and have always had lots of friends, together and apart). However, now our friendship was suffering, because of the person she chose and the way in which it happened, but, in an ideal situation, I always felt that you could balance friends and lover. Further, which I said to her sadly, I was not unhappy when I was with her. Spending time with her was a break from the unhappiness. But I realized that I was only someone to pass time with until she could find a new partner. That was maybe the most devastating part.
“You can’t give me marriage and babies,” she said. As if somehow this justified her actions. As if choosing not to date X, and to do the work it would take to repair my broken trust, meant she would never find anyone to settle down with. I had no response. I repeated over and over again that I really hoped she was happy. Because this train-wreck sitting in front of me was not happy. I wanted her to make peace with the choice she had made.
“So, what, am I just going to see you at cocktail parties from now on?” she said. “Yeah, that’s probably the most you can expect,” I said sadly. It was crystal clear to me then, if it hadn’t been before, that she wasn’t willing to work on fixing what had broken between us. What she wanted was to have her cake and eat it too. To have X and to have me be okay with it. She wasn’t offering any other solution. “I can’t deal with that,” she said.
“Well,” I began…and trailed off. The unspoken words hung between us. You should’ve thought of that sooner.
“I just can’t believe that I am such a shitty friend,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, the tears welling up then. “I really can’t either.”
At that point I got up to go. I made her stand up and hug me. I told her I loved her. She said she loved me. She sat down and began crying uncontrollably. I leaned down and kissed her on the head. She grabbed my hand. I took my hand away gently and said, “Be happy. If anything changes, give me a call.” And I walked out the door.
It’s been two months now. I haven’t really slept well since, although of course I’ve had to go to work. My heart is broken. I feel like someone has died. I’m loathe to tell any of our mutual friends how sad I am because it’s not fair of me to speak badly of her to them. I deleted my best friend (not to mention X) off my Facebook account because everytime I logged in I was astounded not to find a note from her saying, “What the hell is wrong with me? Please let me make this right.” I became obsessed with reading her old Facebook statuses to see if I could tell just when this secret business with X began. So, for my own peace of mind, I just cut her loose.
Last week, after two months of zero contact and stories from mutual friends of all the "lovey" photos my best friend has been posting on Facebook of her and X without a care in the world, I got a Facebook email from her asking what she could do to make this "even a little better." She said she was "willing to do whatever it took." I cried from relief, that maybe the purgatory was over. I'd been so lonely without her. You get used to living without your right arm, but that doesn't mean you don't miss it.
I responded that I was at a loss to know what it would take to fix this. Me having “time” to get used to the idea was not enough, because it wasn't about her and X. It was about her conduct. And her not being the person I thought she was. I thought that I could perhaps forgive, but not without serious effort from her. I thought I would like to know that she recognized that she is so insecure in herself, she threw away her fiercest ally to date a man she’s known for less then 3 months. And I wanted her to promise that she would try to work on whatever it is in her that allowed an otherwise lovely, caring person to be so hurtful and selfish. The sad part is, I didn't think this is what she was offering. Because she found her fix. She found her man. And while she was "willing to do whatever it takes," that did not include parting with X. It became clear as we corresponded last week that she was really looking for a way to close the book on me without feeling guilty. "Should I leave you alone?" she asked repeatedly. "Should I go away? Does it just make you angry to hear from me? Can you ever be happy for me?"
I didn't want to give her the out. I didn't want to say, "Yes, leave me alone now" and let her head off into the sunset with a clear conscience that she had done all she could and I had remained bitter and unforgiving. I told her again that I was happy for her (and I am, as weird as it sounds and despite all I've said here), and that I loved her so, so much. And I said that I honestly did not know how to fix this. "You made a choice," I told her. "Yes I made a choice, as you say," she responded. "I just didn't think it would be forever." But I knew with certainty that I could not be around her and X, and I asked her if she didn't think it was slightly unfair of her to ask this of me. To be constantly reminded that she chose to hurt me and lie to me in order to be with this person - well, I'm not that much of a masochist. "That's hardly fair, is it?" I asked. She never responded. So, it's very clear, if it wasn't already, that she has chosen X over our friendship. She really wasn't willing to do whatever it took to have me in her life, and choose me over him, and it wouldn't be fair of me to ask that. Which is why I didn't. Which is why it's over. And it sucks.
Losing a friend, I've concluded, is a great deal worse than losing a lover. This was the woman that I wanted to grow old with, not any old husband. I pictured us in matching rockers bitching about our husbands and our children over our knitting. I pictured us having kids at the same time, who would grow up to be best friends, like us. To have lost that is devastating. It's lonely. It's disorienting.
And I'm tired of it.
In the interests of getting it off my chest, I'm putting it out there. Because I don't want it to fester anymore, I don't want to carry it around every day. My own baggage is heavy enough.
Things had been weird between my best friend and I for a couple of weeks. Less-than-frequent checkins from her, and weird, passive-aggressive, "I don't deserve you" and "I haven't been a good friend to you" comments that appeared to be coming out of nowhere. My best friend got out of a seven year relationship almost a year ago now, and had been careening from disastrous date to disastrous date since I got back home. I finally couldn't deal with the constant emotional meltdowns over various love affairs and "situations" where I felt my best friend was allowing herself to be treated badly, in the sole interests of finding a man to be with. I felt she was not ready to date and should spend some time figuring out who she was OUT of a relationship, and what SHE wanted in a partner, rather than hoping that this time, she would be what HE wanted; she disagreed. She felt the rest of her life and her identity were in perfect order, and this was the only missing puzzle piece, and she was single-minded in her mission to find The One. I thought my refusal to support more dating adventures that left my friend in tears on her couch for evenings on end was the reason for the weirdness between us.
Around 4 pm on Tuesday at the end of April, I got a message from her. “Dani, I need to talk to you about something. Can you meet me at Starbucks?”
I was immediately freaked out by the formality of the invitation, but said I would meet her.
I had already been at the Starbucks for 15 minutes when she arrived and sat down across from me.
“I have been lying to you,” she said. “I have been seeing someone, and I’ve developed pretty strong feelings for them. We want to date, and it is going to happen. And, it’s X.”
I just stared at her. X was someone that I have known casually for about three years. I'd always had a little crush on him, which my friend knew well enough about, and which I'd really made no secret of to anybody. I thought he was charming, but he had always been in a serious relationship, until very recently. Since his breakup, we had talked a few times, and met up once for coffee. I wouldn't have called it a date, but I knew this was someone I wanted to get to know in some capacity. My friend had been more excited than I was - jokingly planning our wedding and calling for "updates" on the situation a number of times. My friend had known for literally, years, how I felt about this guy. Things with X had stalled in recent weeks and it appeared that he didn't even want to be my friend. I felt maybe I was stepping into a messy situation - perhaps there was unfinished business with the girlfriend who he still claimed to be in a "complicated relationship" with on Facebook - and so I hadn't forced the issue with him. I had introduced my best friend to him. We had fixed her up with HIS best friend, who she dated briefly for a period of six weeks at the beginning of the year.
“I got in touch with him to talk about you, to help you get together, but then things just happened.”
I said nothing.
“We think we could be really happy together,” she continued in the silence. “We didn’t mean for it to happen, but I really feel like I have no choice.” Tears welled up in her eyes.
Privately, I thought "You always have a choice." What I said was: “I don’t know what you want me to say. Is he THE ONE?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed. It was a stupid question for me to ask, because every guy my friend has had feelings for over the past 5 months that I have been home to witness, have been over-the-top. Of course X now seemed to her like the only person she could be with, ever. In my opinion, my friend is desperately afraid of being alone. It would never occur to her that there are other possibilities out there. He was here, he liked her, it was a done deal. Of course he was It.
The rest of the conversation is a blur to me. She was distraught, but was not offering to not date him, or asking what she could do to make it up to me for breaking my trust. The way she had presented it to me made it clear that she wasn’t asking for permission, she had made her choice and it was X. What she was looking for was for me to be okay with it, forgive her, and be her friend anyway. I don’t think she understood that her lying, and the fact that she got herself into this mess in the first place (which showed no consideration for my feelings), had broken my heart. It had very little to do with him - it was her choice to lie to me, and to not put me first, the way I would always put her first, that was the problem. There was no way I could be a friend to her in the same way, ever again, when it was clear that she could not reciprocate - I would have done anything for this girl. One of the great comforts of my life was my belief that in her, I had found a friend who would have done anything for me. I was reeling to suddenly find this was not so.
Outwardly, I was very calm.
“Thank you for finally telling me, and for doing it face to face. That takes guts. I hope you will be happy,” I said sincerely. And I meant it. I also told her that she had broken my trust. And the Girl Code. And that it wasn’t about X (which was the truth). It was about her conduct. I could say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have gone within 100 yards of any of her love interests, past or present, if I had even an inkling that I might have feelings for them. In fact, when I had first met her and her previous partner, I had been very close to him first, and thought that, but for her, we might have been good friends, or more (I did not ever share this with her). I told her that I was disappointed that she had not been able to do the same for me. That I have always done everything I could to be a good friend to her, and was sad to find out that she could not reciprocate. However, I told her that I understood that she needed to have a partner in her life and would not be happy any other way. I just didn’t know why the only partner for her was suddenly a person who could potentially destroy our friendship. And that I was sad to realize that her need to have that partner surpassed even the strongest loyalties.
She asked me if I wanted her to not date him. I said I didn’t realize it was an option, based on the way the situation had been presented to me as a fait accompli. But I said, yes, if you’re asking me, yes. I would ask you not to do this. Beg you, even. She said she would "take it under consideration." In her skilful and lawyerly way, my best friend rebutted that if the damage done was indeed what I had said, that SHE had broken my trust, that it was about the hurt SHE had inflicted by lying and choosing to make a choice that would hurt me, that wouldn’t be fixed by her not seeing X, and so she might as well keep seeing him (it was masterful, really).
“No, it might not fix the damage,” I said. “But it would be a start.” I needed her to choose me over him, as a sign of good faith. To say that she realized that losing my friendship wasn’t worth it, that she understood that there were plenty of opportunities for her to find love again. I don’t think she understood that I was not trying to tell her to be single, for me. I was telling her to date someone, anyone else. To have consideration for my feelings. To have maybe mitigated the damage very early on, if it was completely unavoidable, and come clean right away. To have not made it a choice between him and me.
“You and I have been so unhappy together for so long,” she said between sobs. “I feel like now I’m leaving you there.”
I realized then how differently we thought. For one, I didn’t know why her being in a relationship, meant that our friendship suffered (I have never understood that when other friends have disappeared into the ether when they fell in love. My parents have been married 35 years, are still in love, and have always had lots of friends, together and apart). However, now our friendship was suffering, because of the person she chose and the way in which it happened, but, in an ideal situation, I always felt that you could balance friends and lover. Further, which I said to her sadly, I was not unhappy when I was with her. Spending time with her was a break from the unhappiness. But I realized that I was only someone to pass time with until she could find a new partner. That was maybe the most devastating part.
“You can’t give me marriage and babies,” she said. As if somehow this justified her actions. As if choosing not to date X, and to do the work it would take to repair my broken trust, meant she would never find anyone to settle down with. I had no response. I repeated over and over again that I really hoped she was happy. Because this train-wreck sitting in front of me was not happy. I wanted her to make peace with the choice she had made.
“So, what, am I just going to see you at cocktail parties from now on?” she said. “Yeah, that’s probably the most you can expect,” I said sadly. It was crystal clear to me then, if it hadn’t been before, that she wasn’t willing to work on fixing what had broken between us. What she wanted was to have her cake and eat it too. To have X and to have me be okay with it. She wasn’t offering any other solution. “I can’t deal with that,” she said.
“Well,” I began…and trailed off. The unspoken words hung between us. You should’ve thought of that sooner.
“I just can’t believe that I am such a shitty friend,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, the tears welling up then. “I really can’t either.”
At that point I got up to go. I made her stand up and hug me. I told her I loved her. She said she loved me. She sat down and began crying uncontrollably. I leaned down and kissed her on the head. She grabbed my hand. I took my hand away gently and said, “Be happy. If anything changes, give me a call.” And I walked out the door.
It’s been two months now. I haven’t really slept well since, although of course I’ve had to go to work. My heart is broken. I feel like someone has died. I’m loathe to tell any of our mutual friends how sad I am because it’s not fair of me to speak badly of her to them. I deleted my best friend (not to mention X) off my Facebook account because everytime I logged in I was astounded not to find a note from her saying, “What the hell is wrong with me? Please let me make this right.” I became obsessed with reading her old Facebook statuses to see if I could tell just when this secret business with X began. So, for my own peace of mind, I just cut her loose.
Last week, after two months of zero contact and stories from mutual friends of all the "lovey" photos my best friend has been posting on Facebook of her and X without a care in the world, I got a Facebook email from her asking what she could do to make this "even a little better." She said she was "willing to do whatever it took." I cried from relief, that maybe the purgatory was over. I'd been so lonely without her. You get used to living without your right arm, but that doesn't mean you don't miss it.
I responded that I was at a loss to know what it would take to fix this. Me having “time” to get used to the idea was not enough, because it wasn't about her and X. It was about her conduct. And her not being the person I thought she was. I thought that I could perhaps forgive, but not without serious effort from her. I thought I would like to know that she recognized that she is so insecure in herself, she threw away her fiercest ally to date a man she’s known for less then 3 months. And I wanted her to promise that she would try to work on whatever it is in her that allowed an otherwise lovely, caring person to be so hurtful and selfish. The sad part is, I didn't think this is what she was offering. Because she found her fix. She found her man. And while she was "willing to do whatever it takes," that did not include parting with X. It became clear as we corresponded last week that she was really looking for a way to close the book on me without feeling guilty. "Should I leave you alone?" she asked repeatedly. "Should I go away? Does it just make you angry to hear from me? Can you ever be happy for me?"
I didn't want to give her the out. I didn't want to say, "Yes, leave me alone now" and let her head off into the sunset with a clear conscience that she had done all she could and I had remained bitter and unforgiving. I told her again that I was happy for her (and I am, as weird as it sounds and despite all I've said here), and that I loved her so, so much. And I said that I honestly did not know how to fix this. "You made a choice," I told her. "Yes I made a choice, as you say," she responded. "I just didn't think it would be forever." But I knew with certainty that I could not be around her and X, and I asked her if she didn't think it was slightly unfair of her to ask this of me. To be constantly reminded that she chose to hurt me and lie to me in order to be with this person - well, I'm not that much of a masochist. "That's hardly fair, is it?" I asked. She never responded. So, it's very clear, if it wasn't already, that she has chosen X over our friendship. She really wasn't willing to do whatever it took to have me in her life, and choose me over him, and it wouldn't be fair of me to ask that. Which is why I didn't. Which is why it's over. And it sucks.
Losing a friend, I've concluded, is a great deal worse than losing a lover. This was the woman that I wanted to grow old with, not any old husband. I pictured us in matching rockers bitching about our husbands and our children over our knitting. I pictured us having kids at the same time, who would grow up to be best friends, like us. To have lost that is devastating. It's lonely. It's disorienting.
I hope that in time I'll be able to look back on the good times that we had together with fondness and affection and that it won't be tinged with sadness and hurt. Because right now, all I feel is the absence in my life of the one person who I thought would always be there, and grieving for what could have been.