When A Friend Breaks Up With You

Recently, I went though a breakup. Not one of the romantic kind, one of the friendship kind. Is that worse? In some ways I suppose it is. There is a level of trust and commitment I give to a friend that I might not necessarily give to a boyfriend – but that is a topic for another day.

Today the topic is friendships and them coming to an end. Now, I have had friendships end in the past, haven’t we all? Mostly though they have ended due to time spent apart and two people naturally and mutually growing distant. Sometimes lives simply start to take different directions, before you know it, you can not remember the last time you spoke to someone over or met up in person to spend time together. Your friendship becomes a series of likes and comments over Facebook and even that over time comes to an end.

However, when a friend breaks up with you, it is different. There is no gradual progression and break down of the relationship. All you get is the slap in the face stop. It is something that up until last year I had never experienced.

Now that a few months have gone by I’ve had time to think about our friendship. Was it a good one? Yes. There are a lot of very fond memories I have of this person. It is important to me that I keep those memories, and to always look back on them with love. I never want to be angry and think negatively of the good times we had because at the time we were having them I was happy — we were both happy.

There are a series of pictures I have from the last time I hung out with this former friend, and a few of our other mutual friends. I was looking at the pictures and a part of me strongly wanted to go into Photoshop and remove her from every single one of them. The great thing about pictures though, is that they never change, even when the people in them do. I like that girl in the picture.

Do I fault her for our breakup? In some ways yes, but I understand where she is coming from. I am a passionate person both when I love something and when I hate it. When I disliked something my very opinionated “That thing sucks!” approach clashed with her more passive “It is not for me.” approach. Over the years she began to resent my outspoken views and ended the friendship.

For what it is worth I really am glad of the three solid years of friendship we had. In the words of Dr Seuss ‘Don’t cry because it is over. Smile because it happened’.