3 Ways To Deal With Friendship Heartache
“I never felt this hurt by a girlfriend”, Jackie says, her tears streaming down her face.
I mean I get heartache when it’s the guys. I know guys can be mean, but my best friend? How could something so small flip me over and make me feel so hurt inside? I thought we would be friends forever…”
I look at Jackie and wish there was some way I can offer that hurting heart some comforting words, but she is in such deep distress, that she just needs me to hear and be with her pain.
“Tell me more about this, the losing a best girlfriend that hurts so much”.. I say, with loving kindness in my eyes.
My mind flickers back to a few years earlier, when I had a shift in a relationship with a close friend. I remember the stingy feeling in my heart when things had changed. It took time for me to process. There were a lot of tears, tissues and confusion. but I was ok. I come back to Jackie and look at her. I obviously won’t be sharing that I relate to the flavor or her pain because #boundaries, but I’m hoping she can sense my empathy, and my deep trust and belief in the ability to mend a broken heart.
None of those are relevant now. All she needs is me, my heart, a listening ear, and some space to process.
“Listen I get it, our lives were always different”, Jackie says, sitting up and grabbing the tissue box from the side table, placing it on her lap.
She looks up and smiles, seeing that I notice that she took the box of tissues.
“What? I need it here. I can’t expend any extra energy on reaching for tissues, I’m so tired”
I smile back at her. She’s funny. Even when she’s in pain, she finds a way to make me chuckle.
I like Jackie a lot. There’s something about her that brings lightness to our sessions, even when she’s moving through some big emotions…
Jackie goes back to sharing about her friend.
“I know we are in different seasons….and to be frank we’ve disagreed about a lot of things in life, but we’ve always navigated around that and found middle ground. But not this time…after many calls and texts, I don’t think we are coming back from this”,
Jackie said patting her cheek with a tissue.
I just hate that people always leave…it’s like no matter what I do or say, how picky I am with choosing “good friends” to do life with..eventually it ends, for one reason or another. I don’t understand how someone so close to you for years, who knows so much, can be so harsh…and just walk away.
As I sat across the room…these words sounded all too familiar to me, whether that was in my own life…or from countless clients I’ve worked with that have had to navigate the deep pain of losing a dear friend.
There’s nothing quite like losing a friend….
…..the blur of what just happened, the rage of deep misunderstanding, and the lost trust and support like a core part of who you are is no longer attached to you.
Maybe you’re in a season too where you feel like your friendship is slowly slipping away, or it already has and the loss feels unbearable to you.
Maybe you resonate with one of the below sentences..…..
It feels like I lost a sister, she was one of the only people that knew X.
I have no one else I can share my deep thoughts with, he was the one that always got it.
She was an answer to prayer when she came into my life, and now she’s a thorn in my heart, a memory that will always bring pain.
Did I ever really know them? Was there more they lied about? Why was it so easy for them to hurt me…I’m so confused.
Well, I guess getting married and having kids means no more time for me…gotta find a new friend to talk to.
He/she was always there for me, until one day he/she wasn’t.
So to you, my dear reader, though I may not know you or your story, I do want to say that……
If you’re going through this right now, I am so sorry. Friendship loss is often a deep and confusing loss. There’s no magic bandaid, or waving of a wand that will take away the pain and sorrow. However, there are some stones you can step on that might aid you in this season.
3 Ways to Cope with Friendship Loss
Zoom In: Assess If It’s Forever
Sometimes friends need more space for a season, for different reasons. Zooming into the details, reflecting and asking some clarifying questions.
Do you want to still be friends, and more than that, is it healthy to still be friends? Could it be beneficial for either party to have a season apart, or that just looks a bit different?
Is the relationship salvageable?
Or is it a closed door, and it’s time for closure and letting go.
Look for clarity in the fallout, details in communication, or underlying problems. Try to read between the lines, what are they really saying, and hoping. But if it’s fuzzy and unclear, maybe it is time for a shift.
Healthy relationships shouldn’t involve mental gymnastics to create understanding.
There should be mutual benefit, exchange, willingness and connection. If that isn’t there….maybe assess what part of you wants to hold on to the friendship, and why.
2. Invite Support
After you assess, and hopefully have more clarity on next steps, it might be a good time to get some extra supports in place. If you need help navigating this decision, seems like a reoccurring pattern in your life, or aren’t sure how to tell if the relationship is healthy, check in with a friend, or reach out about getting weekly support from someone on our team!
This is a tough thing to go through, with many layers involved.
Tune in to what YOU need…
Whether that is other friends to help process, therapy, taking some time off work, or giving some extra self care to yourself. Maybe you need to ask for others in your life to give you space (or to come a bit closer) and communicate your hurting right now. You don’t need to give details, unless it feels appropriate and you want to.
3. Zoom Out: Validate Your Experience
Let the pain come. Look at the whole big picture, zoom out to see the good times, and hard. Losing a friend (or a massive change in the friendship) is a big deal.
With hurt pride, it can be tempting to be dismissive and say
“It was nothing, whatever, who cares, I guess we aren’t friends, oh well.”
Or another response could be to turn against the self: I over reacted, why am I like this, shifting blame to the self, I always lose friends…or if I had done X differently they would still be around.
It is important to make space to find what is yours to hold and look into, but right now in the height of your loss, it may not be the best time to objectively look at where you misstepped, and where the other misstepped.
They changed, hurt you, you felt some form of rejection, or lacked willingness to understand. Or they don’t have capacity to be your friend in the way you need right now. They moved away, slowly drifted, or entered a new season with lots of changes and less time for you. Trust was broken in a big way, betrayal or lying was involved, or judging and shaming.
Whatever the reason, all of this warrants pain; sit with the hurt, and grieve as needed.
{And please don’t forget all the good times that were shared together, it’s easy to only see the bad in our pain, but usually there are parts of a relationship we are letting go that were indeed good and healthy and life giving. This relationship may have shifted, or is no longer serving you…but it doesn’t necessarily mean it was all a waste. Try to see the big picture of your life, take the beauty and move away from what isn’t for you. }
Friends are our support system, our community, and can be our safe haven.
As humans, our relationships serve as a pillar of stability and the health of our relationships, directly impact how secure we feel in life. Because of that, when there is change in a significant relationship, it is normal to feel wobbly or lost.
Our staff are first, humans and second, therapists. We relate to the spectrum of pain, loss, hope etc. and also have skills to help you navigate painful breakups: be it in love relationships, family dynamics or with losing a close friendship.
Live In Long Island or anywhere in New York?
Our Team is here for you, reach out today!
Sending you courage,