It’s Sad When A Friendship Ends

Sometimes it breaks my heart a little to delete numbers because there is a human being behind them.

Some people collect others. They link to each other, love job portals, and, yes, of course, Instagram & Co to make as many “friends” as possible. I don’t mind professional networking. I could benefit from it – even if I’m a lousy “networker”. I never look on LinkedIn to see who to wish a happy birthday, and I don’t maintain my network by emailing regularly.

But some people I have met somewhere – or worked with – write to me regularly. “Hey, it’s been a long time, how are you, what are you doing?” I’m always uncertain about it. They don’t really check on me, mostly they want something or they feel I could be useful in any form or way. Professional networking is reasonably easy to understand.

But what about people with whom you were once friends or well-known and whose numbers are stored in your mobile phone?

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How long do you keep them, hoping friendship will start to sparkle again and that you want to see each other again? Whenever I delete or remove people and their numbers in my address book (Yes, I still have an address book, hand-written, old-fashioned all the way) I ask myself with a mixture of the tips of the tidying queen Marie Kondo (“Does it spark joy?”) and my gut feeling whether this person is still part of my life or was simply very important in the past – and it’s okay now to let him or her go. There can be something very liberating about tidying up your address book because you can focus more on the two or three handfuls of people who keep popping up in your call list.

Last summer, I got into an argument with a very close friend. We were sitting in front of a café, and for no real reason, it escalated to such an extent that I got up, paid, and left without saying goodbye. I got in my car with a sense of relief. As important as our friendship had been for decades, it came to an end that day and I think we both felt the same way.

Where did all my friends go?

I noticed it on New Year’s Day when I pulled out my cell phone to at least send a quick New Year’s greeting to all the wonderful people I couldn’t celebrate the New Year with. There weren’t that many left. In recent years, my circle of friends has dwindled.

I suppose that’s normal. The number of friendships decreases with age. This is because, over time, we choose our friends more carefully and shape relationships with them in a way that suits us, and sadly, some of our friends pass away way before their time (not that we know what time that might be.)

Some move away and you stay in contact at first, but it’s never the same.

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Last month I lost three friends. Two real ones, and one blogging friend, which I considered very real, even though we never met. One friend passed away after a long battle with cancer, the other two friends are Jewish and neither one of them liked my empathy with Gaza, and/or my critique of the government in Israel and the voters who put them in place.

In the last eight years, I have lost friends over politics here in the US. It seems there are the right-wing nuts and the left-wing nuts. The nuts in the middle have disappeared or they don’t speak up much. I am a middle nut, perhaps the worst nut to be.

Can you be friends with someone so different from you? Can you befriend someone who doesn’t tolerate different opinions – or thoughts – and is offended by your honesty? It’s possible, I am practicing it with one of my friends, but it takes lots of love and patience on both sides. The tone makes the music, an old Austrian saying to remind us that the sound of our voice, the way we say something can be as important as the message itself.

Is someone who cut you off for an opinion even a friend?

I don’t have the answer. I just do what feels right to me and my life. In the end, that’s what counts. How do I feel about myself at night, alone in the dark? Do I smile or do I bow my head in shame and disbelief? Do I feel guilty or confident? Do I have to whisper “I am sorry” to whoever might be listening in the dark -which is up to our imagination.

I like to smile and keep it that way.

For the first time in my life, I got ghosted, which to my surprise I took extremely well. Ghosting, it’s so far from what I would do, that it made things easier for me. I will miss my online friend and I wish her well. Number deleted, case closed.

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You are there for real friends – even if they are in a stressful phase or annoying

Just like in a romantic relationship, the break with friends is not always sudden. Sometimes it’s several weeks or months that no longer feel right. Contrarily, it also means you should not give up immediately if a friendship becomes more difficult. You’re there for real friends – even if they’re in a stressful phase or annoying as in any relationship. There are ups and downs in a friendship. Of course, you should never jeopardize a good friendship lightly and fight for it, and think carefully about the price you pay if you give them up.

However, if the bad times clearly outweigh the good times, and you have the feeling that you just can’t find the common ground anymore, a friendship break is often inevitable.

Friendships mostly end quietly. There is hardly a discussion about it. Many don’t even bother to say goodbye. They just don’t call anymore, or stop writing. Perhaps that’s where ghosting comes from. The easy way out. A closed door that can’t be reopened. Not closed with a bang, but silently locked by one person, while the other on the other side wonders what happens.

Why don’t we end friendships properly? It’s probably the fear of losing someone once and for all. But is it fair to just gradually ignore someone – like a book you started but don’t want to continue reading? And why haven’t we learned to properly release people who used to be our friends?

Doesn’t everybody deserve a goodbye?

Love relationships are discussed at length, in all their stages. Erotic love is the stuff of great dreams and stories, our friendships, on the other hand, seem rather insignificant, simple, almost self-evident. Yes, of course, you argue sometimes, but then you make up and share a bottle of champagne as if nothing had happened. We love each other. The end of a love affair seems big and drastic and changes the small world in which you live with your friends. The end of a friendship, on the other hand, knows no framework, there is no etiquette.

I have no idea how to end them either but something inside me insists on saying the words goodbye, “I wish you well.” Online or offline.

It makes me sad when a friendship ends.

I cherish my friends, all of them, even the ones I have outgrown or have lost contact with.

I still have contact with my two best friends from boarding school. One is now in Lebanon, and the other is hiking somewhere in the Alps right now. There is Sandy, the friend who took us in when we had no place to go and I fondly remember Miss Liz, the old lady who shared her wisdom with me and who saw me in my pj’s every Monday evening (long story.) May the ones I lost rest in peace according to their religions. May the ones who are still with me, be with me for a long time.

May the ones I lost because we drifted apart have a happy and hopefully healthy life.

I hope I always have the chance to say goodbye.

I owe all my friends so much!

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