When Friendship Disappoints Us
Some people say that “ losing a love hurts, losing a friendship slowly kills ”. It is as if this bond based on complicity, intimate and spontaneous camaraderie, unparalleled emotional closeness, brought us something more important, more meaningful than our romantic relationships.
We must admit that studies and research on friendship and its mechanisms are not abundant, especially when compared with the impressive number of works done on love. However, the few articles that exist on this neglected area of social psychology tell us that losing a friendship is at least as painful as losing a love.
The main study at the heart of this claim was published in the journal Epidemiology and Community Health. She claims that men and women suffer in exactly the same way from such a loss. A friend is, for the majority of us, an essential person in our daily life. A friend is fundamental to our health, both physically and emotionally, which may seem surprising.
Friendships We Can’t End
Blanca is 40 years old and she has decided to end a friendship that has lasted for years. In fact, she cannot remember her life without her. She and Elisa grew up together because their mothers were friends. This young girl with big hazel eyes, long legs and a soft voice quickly became her refuge, but also her prison.
When they were children, Elisa forced her to get involved in activities that she did not like. She broke her arm when she tried to break through the walls of the college because her friend wanted her to follow her on her adventures. It was with her that she shared her first secrets about her first loves. She was also the one who set her sights on the boys Blanca liked. During all these years, Blanca has maintained a co-dependent relationship with a manipulative person, someone to whom she has never been able to say “ no ” or “ stop taking advantage of me ”.
It is quite possible that you identify with this example, but the essential question you must ask yourself is: why is it so difficult to end a friendship that brings us more bad luck than good things?
We will give you some explanations in the rest of this article.
Why can’t we say goodbye to a friendship?
The first reason is simple. We have a certain loyalty to this person. We shared many experiences with her, many confidences. However, there are some dimensions to keep in mind that can help us end an abusive friendship relationship.
- In a relationship, whether friendly or romantic, we must always maintain a certain balance and reciprocity. Loyalty to a person is meaningless if the relationship is not respectful, if there is not genuine harmony.
The second reason has to do with the idea that we have that it is possible to change others. We tell ourselves that we have to be patient, that what may have happened will not happen again if we have a sincere explanation, if we explain why we felt offended or hurt.
- In the same vein, we often think that we have the friends that we deserve. We reassure ourselves by telling ourselves that we all have faults and that it is normal to hurt others from time to time, as long as we do not consciously decide to do so.
The fear of loneliness is so ingrained in our minds that we allow ourselves to be encircled by so-called friendly arms, which are in fact harmful, exhausting and toxic. We absolutely must avoid falling into this trap, keeping in mind that true friendships are those that make us a better person every day, which do not seek to change us but which allow us to rise as Human being. Because deep down we all know that we deserve well-being, balance and happiness.
Friendly disappointment requires decision making
Gretchen Rubin, author of a very interesting book called The Happiness Project , explains to us that many of us move forward in our daily lives, feeling ourselves drifting away. This concept is interesting because, as the author tells us, drifting away means that we have made the decision not to decide what we want or what we want to do with our lives.
Not making important decisions in life leads us to experience only an ersatz happiness, in which we are linked to others by insignificant links. The people around us frequently disappoint us, but we continue to keep them around us. We allow this out of loyalty or out of fear of being alone, as we said earlier.
We need to realize that the years of our childhood and adolescence when we had no filter to interpret life are behind us. These two eras, marked by pure experimentation and the birth of complex feelings, are over. Mature involves being selective and looking for quality interpersonal relationships that enrich us.
Disappointments, if caused deliberately and repeatedly, give us enough clues to form a concrete idea of who we are in front of us. Let’s take action and make the right decisions to protect our happiness, even if it can hurt us badly at the time.
Let’s learn to be selective, to value real friendships, which are the most magical and the most moving. Let’s definitely put aside those that don’t bring us anything and don’t help us develop the best version of ourselves.