The Friends Who Rejected Us: Thank You

And gratitude for the friends we left behind.

Photo of thank you note and flowers by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

This is one of the most heartfelt and earnest letters about a friendship breakup I have ever received. And that is saying a lot considering I’ve been reading anonymous friendship dilemmas since 2014. I hope this question helps many of you.

Dear Nina,

Within the last year, I had a friendship breakup with someone I considered one of my dearest friends for eight years. Our families regularly spent holidays together, and our husbands were also friends. It was an emotionally confusing breakdown, coming after years of feeling so much affection, connection and feeling compelled to be friends with this person, mixed in with lots of red flag moments of “is this friendship even a good idea?”

The friendship often felt one-sided to me, and after being on the receiving end of a lot of hurt and some wildly mixed messaging, I decided to let the intensity of the friendship lessen if it had to. Of course, as soon as I made some boundaries to protect myself, it fell apart. The two of us have different attachment styles, different friendship values and goals and both of us have some relationship damage in our pasts from families that were not accepting.

I can honestly say I wanted this friendship to work, was willing to do the work to bridge our differences, and was ready to talk things out until the end. My friend was not. The friendship was definitely over after she ghosted me when I tried to have a conversation about what was happening. After six months in limbo, I decided that I am not ok with ghosting, texted her to let her know I would always wish her well, and she responded briefly (and coldly) that she had made peace with the end of our friendship.

It’s been about a year since the incident, which was the final straw for me, but I’m still struggling with the pain I felt over this probably inevitable breakup and sometimes feel like I need a friendship-specific therapist. What can I do, for example, with the sad feeling that my husband and I will never have another couples friendship like this one? Although we have plenty of other friendships, none of them are at this level and perhaps they never will be. 

I feel like I have learned so much about myself, what I value in friendships and even have dealt with some old personal damage in the course of trying to heal from this relationship. It’s good to be the kind of person who thinks deeply about my relationships, analyzes and hopefully learns from them.

The problem is, I can’t seem to STOP thinking about it and move on. It intrudes into my daily life regularly, and impacts my self esteem. It still hurts that I’m thinking about all of this, still missing what once was and I really think she probably isn’t doing that at all. When you end a close friendship in a messy, unclear way, is this normal? I’m just so TIRED of feeling bad about all of this.

I’m reaching out to renew/form new friendships and doing all the things I think I should be doing to recover, but how can I do better at just letting this go? Feels like I was born without the ability to write people off, even when it’s obviously time to do that. I even wrote a friendship pre-quiz to help new friends identify possible areas of trouble from my experience! Know of any friendship-specific therapy groups? Can we all please start one?

On A Friendship Journey

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Dear “Journey,”

This letter touched me because I’ve been in your shoes, as have many of my readers and listeners.