Wednesday 20 July 2011

How to Lose Friends....

A few months ago the Guardian printed an article called ‘How to Lose Friends’ which inspired me to write this note. I felt it was an interesting, informative and quite topical piece with particular resonance for me (for reasons which will become clear).

Having undertaken Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) a couple of years ago, which dealt, amongst other things, with this specific issue, I was intrigued by the bluntness of this piece and also by the notion that there is indeed an ‘art’ to ending a friendship. I wholeheartedly agree with that and the ability to let a friendship go is one I have only learnt to do over the last few years.

I truly believe that you can put every single friend you have ever had into one of three categories – a reason, a season or a lifetime. This method of thinking about your friends runs along a similar theme to the piece by Hannah Pool; that not all friendships are going to fit with every period of your life or come out the other side unscathed.

In my life I have always been lucky enough to have a lot of people who I consider friends and these range from people I have known since I was a child to work colleagues from across the years to the usual random acquaintances who become friends along the way. I have never had a problem making friends; in fact my husband views my social life and constant friendship juggling with an air of complete puzzlement and slight suspicion. But then he is someone with a very different view on friends and also he has no particular need or desire for many friendships within his life, this is an area where we differ greatly.

I sometimes think he has a point – rarely a week goes by when I am not putting some kind of effort into at least one friendship. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I do wish I did not have so many metaphorical plates to spin, as it were. But on the whole there is generally a specific, identifiable reason why I continue to put effort into those relationships. And a reason why I do not for others. Identifying the balance of input and output has been an acquired skill.

CBT taught me to analyse the balance of each friendship in a useful and quite businesslike way. Basically, a job description was drawn up of what I expect in a friendship, as if I was going to advertise for friends – desirable traits, expected abilities and minimum requirements were all considered. Once this was created my therapist and I worked through each of my central group of friends at the time to see who met the criteria and who did not.

The results were astounding. My (frankly quite bafflingly astute) therapist had already fathomed which of this group were having a particularly negative, non-helpful effect on my life but I had not (or could not) see the wood for the trees until we carried out this exercise.

Strangely, some people who I had placed in the central circle (we used concentric circles to plot out the importance of different friends at the outset) turned out to be the least helpful, most selfish and least generous of the lot. Conversely, a couple of people in the outer rings were meeting every requirement and ticking every box in terms of support, genuine care and generosity of time.

These revelations were timely and necessary for me to move on with my life and begin to make better informed decisions regarding who I shared my time and my life experiences with. But that does not mean that they were easy to swallow or act upon.

Interestingly there was one particular friendship within that centre circle which I had not really noticed change from a balanced, enjoyable relationship to an almost claustrophobic, unhealthy (for both of us) and bordering on vampiric tryst. It is only fairly recently that the pair of us have finally and formally acknowledged the complete death of the friendship although we both know in reality it reached the end about 3 years ago.

I blame myself for some elements of why this friendship, one of the closest I have ever had with a member of the same sex, ultimately collapsed and died after a pretty solid 11 year period of shared fun and history – but I am not entirely to blame. What I can say without any doubt is that the catalyst (and I believe this is the case for many friendship endings per se) was a crisis in one of our lives. In our case it was a crisis in mine.

Without going into detail (CBT has also taught me not to overshare and I now find it pretty vulgar in others – another note to come on this topic) my personal life was somewhat in turmoil for most of 2006 culminating in the sale of our house and myself and my husband taking a break to consider our options (NB – this really works, marriage now stronger than ever).

At the beginning of said crisis this particular friend, we shall call her K, was an absolute rock and I expected no less. Shoulder to cry on, complete confidante, reassurance on tap and devil’s advocate in my moments of utterly irrational idiocy. I honestly do not know how I would have got through the early months without her and regardless of what’s happened since I will always be grateful for that.

I suppose with hindsight what actually happened was twofold. First of all I became that most terrifying of things, a clingy friend. I was pretty much completely dependent on her and this must have been quite hard work. It did not help that at the time I was coping so very badly with the whole situation that I was drinking a lot and behaving like a complete buffoon. Alcohol is not a good thing to use as a crutch in such situations – a lesson I learnt the hard way in this case.

And then K seemed to hit a wall in her support, undoubtedly triggered by my own lack of ability to sort myself out. But, also with hindsight, I think she handled it like the proverbial bull in a china shop. What do I think she should have done? Well, and again this is much easier with hindsight, I wish she had just shaken me by the shoulders and told me in no uncertain terms to sort myself out.

What actually happened was a series of things which I later came to realise all clearly showed the balance of power in this friendship was starting to go wrong. The early years of our friendship had been fun, zany, easy because of our similarities. Now it was a pattern of drama (from me) and response (from K) which was completely unhealthy but also dangerously addictive.

Items on a whiteboard with my therapist which hammered home, much later, the instability of the relationship, shocked me when viewed in context. If anyone else had told me that they had been treated like this I would have told them they were being bullied. I don’t think it was malicious, however, I think it was just the easiest route. Easier than telling me to pull my finger out I guess.

Two things in particular stuck like a thorn in my side and shone a light on the whole thing. Six months into the crisis (which was still very much ongoing) I was told that from now on I was not welcome at social gatherings because I was too much hard work, instead they would like to invite my estranged husband. This was so painful to hear and to swallow. I understood completely that I was less ‘fun’ than he was at this point – I know that the prospect of me + alcohol probably = tears and possibly drama. But talk about twisting the knife.

AT (amazing therapist) stood shaking her head at me as I blamed myself entirely for this. “You might have behaved like an idiot” she said, “but you had reasons in your life and I thought she was your best friend”. And therein lay the crux of the matter. The ‘limit’ of the friendship had just been proven. The support had run out.

Subsequent time and therapy sessions made me understand that actually when the boredom threshold set in for dealing with the excitement of the crisis, Ks priority was elsewhere.

It then followed that a mutual friend told me they were sympathetic because I was the constant butt of jokes in this circle when I wasn’t around. I was shocked. I had no idea. Little pieces of evidence surfaced that I was very much being painted as the mad woman in the attic. Unfortunately I made the error of sharing this concern with a mutual friend who then totally betrayed my trust (for his own sadistically selfish but understandable reasons – long story) and fed them back to K.

For a while I was blissfully oblivious to the problem. I genuinely took a while to realise there was one. But it became clear over time that this final piece of tittle-tattle had given her enough excuse to draw her own line under the friendship full stop. This says it all really I guess if all it took was secondhand gossip to create (or justify) a final nail in the coffin.

My husband, one of the most astute people I have ever known, (and also one of the most ruthless when it comes to friendships) was very quick to point out that K clearly despised me these days. It is rare our paths crossed since to be honest but I had noticed a chill in the air on these occasions and I would have had to be blind and deaf to remain oblivious to blatant rudeness on some of them. He would have sliced out that part of his life years ago if it had been him. But I needed time to grieve.

Am I angry about it? No. Sad? Yes, a little. But every single thing that hurts teaches you something. It is ironic that the crisis that triggered the death of our friendship was subsequently resolved, the fallout from it having changed much more than just the two of us as people. Our social circles have changed, for the better in my opinion because I have learned to value friendships with much more accuracy as a result.

And I guess that this is why I feel that Hannah Pool makes some very good points in her piece. When I see people abusing each other in their facebook statuses I feel sorry for them for a number of reasons (not least the over-sharing they clearly need to curb). Friendships die, it is a fact of life. Fear of the death of them is about as helpful as fear of death itself – and about as pointless.

Accepting that people change, move on and ultimately outgrow one another is the only progressive and positive way to deal with this, it is indeed a very hard lesson to learn but an incredibly valuable one.           

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