How do you break up with a friend?

     I’ve had it done to me; I’ve done it to someone (poorly, I might add). I have relatives who have gone through it, and several friends. We’ve all probably gone through it from one side or the other, but nobody can tell you the best way to break up with a friend.
     You’ve grown apart, you are no longer gelling, or the relationship has gotten downright malignant, but only you seem to really know it. With romances, it can be hard to explain why a relationship needs to end, but with a friendship, it’s nearly impossible – there is no “goal” to a friendship, where if you feel the relationship will not achieve the goal, you’d better end it. Breaking it off then seems like a pure rejection of this person, as a person, whether that’s your experience of it or not. What’s the point, then, in ending a friendship?
     Friendships can cause you just as much pain as romantic relationships. It’s painful if you feel you are not really accepted for exactly who you are, and it’s painful if you feel like you are having trouble accepting your friend for exactly who they are. It’s painful if you feel you aren’t getting as much as you are giving in a friendship, and it is painful if you feel you are unable to give what your friend seems to need. And it’s horrible to feel that, whatever combination of these feelings you are having, your friend will not understand and will therefore be truly hurt by what you are about to do.
     Unfortunately, there is no good way to break up with a friend. The whole reason you have to do it is that he or she doesn’t understand the problem – otherwise the friendship would blow up, or simply melt away effortlessly, as they sometimes do. This makes a good conversation with an amicable conclusion almost impossible. Unfortunately, as with everything, you can be sensitive to your friend’s experience, but you cannot be responsible for your friend’s reaction. You can try to be both clear and kind, but you can’t control his or her interpretation.  So the focus has to be on you. What takes the best care of you? What form of communication will be the most productive? To what extent and in what form would I best be able to explain the problem? How can I do this in a way I won’t regret later? What needs to be said, and what is better left unsaid? What part of the problem can I own? Who do I want to be in this situation?
     It is possible that there is almost no way to end a friendship that won’t be accompanied by some form of regret. There will almost always be a sense that this friend deserved better, and there will always be pain over hurting their feelings. Or there may be a lingering question mark about whether the relationship could have been repaired. Maybe you will even feel hurt or unsatisfied with your friend’s response. In the end, all you can do is stand in your truth – you know when a relationship has become a negative force in your life, and it is your responsibility to yourself, AND to your friend, to choose to let that go.

The Personal in a Public Forum

     We are so spread out today. Friends and families who, back in “the day”, would have stayed within coffee distance now have to move where the work is. Even when we live within that distance, the increase in the hours that go into a normal work day make it difficult to make that coffee date a priority. So we are so grateful for the opportunities the internet provides to stay connected and share with everyone we’ve chosen to include in our communities. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter… we can better keep track of what’s going on in the lives of our “people”, and we can make sure no one is left in the dark about the basic goings-on in our own lives. It’s a wonderful and useful adaptation to changing circumstances.
     But there are aspects about this public sharing that are challenging to our personal relationships, and I’m afraid we may have to learn how to handle these challenges the hard way. This blog, for instance, whose purpose differs from these social-networking sites, has become a real challenge for me in this sense. Though not meant to be a forum for posting my personal news, in order for my writing to be meaningful it has to be in some part personal. But how do I address these personal issues without possibly offending friends and family for making these personal stories public? This has, in addition to the overwhelming amount of writing I have had to do for school, been a large factor in my not having written in a while. I am having trouble reconciling this issue for myself.
     Social-networking sites like Facebook leave us vulnerable to the same kind of offense. We may post something publically that some friends are really happy to have access to, but a specific person may wish we had not shared that way. And there are additional concerns. The “mass” quality of the choice to share information this way makes these communications less intimate, less special, and therefore can devalue the relationship. Friends may be grateful for the information, but unhappy that they had to find it out “that way”. It encourages a lazy, impersonal approach to our relationships, and gives us opportunities to cop out when facing personal discussions about difficult things. It can also seem to devalue the information itself – when we casually throw something on our Facebook wall, this brief and public communication can give the impression that we have a cavalier attitude towards our own news.
     These are all manageable issues, and I am in no way taking a stance against social-networking and blogs. The intention of these constructs is to allow us to stay connected and close. But if we can remember to value the relationship first, and use the social network to serve the relationship, hopefully we can avoid sacrificing relationships for the sake of the social network.

What is “harmless”?

    There are a lot of definitions of marriage out there.  The meaning of that commitment seems to mean different things to different people, and the details of the contract vary.  I have a first row seat to that truth as a performer – the world of theater, especially of touring theater, seems to be a sort of petri dish for marriage experimentation.  It’s a world in which the line between personal and professional is blurry beyond recognition, where people are extroverted, emotionally driven, and flirtatious, and where being away from one’s spouse is as common (if not more) as being with them.  And I have to admit that the judge and jury in me want to come out sometimes on this issue.  How ok is it to push the boundaries of behavior on the road in the absence of one’s spouse?  Where are the boundaries and what does it mean to push them?  What is actually “harmless”, and what is not only inappropriate, but a dangerous emotional set-up?  Can there be different definitions of what’s ok in marriage, or are there some basic psychological truths about what will and will not work for marital success?

     A strong argument can be made for “harmless flirtations”.  But I guess for me the answer is partly to be found in the question of why we flirt in the first place.  We flirt because it makes us feel good.  It makes us feel attractive, desirable, of interest to someone.  And I can see where, when you have your spouse within reach, this can actually be of some benefit to keeping the fires stoked in marriage – as long as you can always reconnect those feelings to your spouse.  The problem is that we are highly associative creatures.  When we experience certain emotions repeatedly in a certain set of circumstances, or related to a specific person or thing, those emotions become tied tightly to those circumstances, person or thing.  Simply put, having someone other than your spouse be the source of this good feeling is dangerous.  And when your spouse isn’t around to be the ultimate associated release of those feelings, the person with whom you continually act those feelings out, it is exponentially more dangerous.

     I’m trying not to be moralistic about it.  The fact is that moral beliefs have very little power over this very human experience.  It’s hard, though.  For me, I’d love to know that my husband was always behaving in ways I would be comfortable with if I were in the room, and so I try to always use that as a measure of my own behavior – how comfortable would my husband be with my behavior right now if he were able to see me?  This seems right and reasonable to me, and has built into it the idea that different people’s spouses would be comfortable with different things.  In the end, though, I think the more delicate and often overlooked issue isn’t whether our spouses would be ok with what we are doing, but whether we are subjecting ourselves to an unnecessary and painful psychological battle for the sake of feeling good in the moment. 

What’s getting in the way?

     I have a personal training client whom I adore, but who for a long time continually made me mad.  He was submitting himself to our sessions together, but I couldn’t quite fathom why, as he seemed to really hate the experience.  Which made me feel horrible for putting him through it.  Which made me mad, because why should I feel horrible??  

     So we bickered, incessantly.  It was a tug of war, with me trying desperately to get him to invest in what we were doing, and him seeming to try everything he could do to distract himself from what we were doing.  Until I finally took a minute to think about this man and who he really was.  A brilliant mind, idle.  This is a former Dean, a scientist and science professor, a man of mind.  A habitual thinker.  And it occurred to me that what was really getting in the way of his investment in what he was doing wasn’t so much a bad attitude, but that he didn’t know how to invest his MIND in the physical activity.  This man’s mind and body were very much two seperate entities to him, and while his body set about doing these uninteresting repetitions, his mind was searching desperately for something to occupy it.

     So I set about making sure I gave him clear directives for what to engage his mind with during each exercise – these are things you need to think about and why - and stressing the mental component explicitly, instead of simply asking him to focus.  I began to turn my attention towards actively focussing his mind instead of simply expecting him to.  In short, I stopped taking his behavior personally, I figured out what was in the way, and I actively helped him move the obstacle. 

     His work outs have improved tenfold, and we are getting along pretty famously. 

     How much better would all of my relationships be if I could remember to start with the assumption that people generally have good intentions and do the best they can unless there is something in the way?

Honesty isn’t honesty if you’re lying to yourself.

     This thing with actress Katherine Heigl has been bugging me.  Do you know the story?  She decided against submitting her name for Emmy consideration for best featured actress this year, and explained in an interview that “I do not feel I was given the material this season to warrant a nomination.”  The producers and all those involved with Grey’s Anatomy are furious, and are clearly looking for ways for her to get out of her contract.

     I couldn’t figure out what bugged me about this.  First of all, I absolutely agree with her about the material she had been given on the show.  I used to be an avid fan of the show, but stopped watching sometime last season for that very reason – I felt the writing had gotten really poor.  And I can even see her making an argument that her material was particularly bad – I had begun to despise ”Izzy” despite liking the actress and the character very much through several seasons.  And I’m all about honesty.  She was asked the question, and she answered it.  I felt that I should be applauding her in respect for her judgment about the material, and for her willingness to tell the truth even if it meant she would have to leave the show.  Clearly she ought to leave if she is feeling that way, and wanted to leave if she was making these kinds of statements publicly.

     But I found myself siding with the producers on this one.  And though of course it made sense to me that they would be offended and looking to relieve her of her contract, I couldn’t figure out why my sympathies seemed to lie with them.  But then I realized, the Emmy was for “Best Featured Actress”.  The Emmy was NOT for “Best Writing” or “Best Material”.  And though I fully understand the connection between the quality of the performance and the quality of the material, I have also seen many examples of actors rising above crappy material to deliver a stellar performance.  In fact, those performances may be even MORE worthy of award.  If she felt that her acting suffered for the material, that’s fair – I’ve certainly felt that way in my life.  But then let’s be honest about why we aren’t worthy of an Emmy.  Say, “I failed to make it work”, or “the work wasn’t good enough”.  But Heigl withdrew not because she didn’t feel she deserved the Emmy, but because she wanted to make a statement about the material she was being handed on the show.  It was a passive-aggressive decision involving third parties.  And that’s why it seemed an unnecessary and unsavory “throwing under the bus” of the writers.

     What has this got to do with relationships?  This was a private conversation that went public and has destroyed a relationship.  Perhaps because she felt inhibited from having this conversation straight up with the people directly involved (or because of the failure of those conversations), Heigl acted out in a way that ruins any chance for real understanding and a win-win solution without bad feelings, or at least of getting out quietly without residual public negativity.  This is the price of passive-aggression for Heigl, and it may end up having resonating negative affects on her career. 

     Honesty is the best policy…as long as you are being honest to the appropriate parties, and as long as you are being honest to yourself about the role you are playing in any challenging situation.

He’s just not that into you?

     Did you all read this book?  I don’t suppose many of the men did, which is a shame, because this stuff certainly works both ways.  But then again, I wasn’t a huge fan. 

     As any of us who have been in a truly confusing situation with a romantic interest know, it just isn’t that simple.  There are a lot of reasons someone may be giving you mixed signals, and many of them have little or nothing to do with you or their feelings for you.  A guy can be crazy about you, but when he thinks about it working out, he gets completely freaked out about what he feels that would require of him.  A woman may be intrigued, but may be concerned about what she sees as a major incompatibility issue.   It can be about rent, religion or readiness…and yes, it can be that they just aren’t sure how they feel about you.  But the fact of the matter is, and I guess this is what the book was getting at, is that anywhere on this continuum of reasons to excuses, the truth remains – whatever is in the way is bigger than his/her feelings for you.  He’s just not THAT into you, as in, he’s not into you ENOUGH.  And you know what, he (or she) should be.  For it to work, his feelings for you need to be bigger than just about anything else.  And really – don’t you want them to be?  Why would you want to try to make it work with someone whose feelings for you are “LESS than”?

     And if you are on the other end of this, you may do well to ask yourself, doesn’t this person deserve that – someone who feels unequivocally for them?  And if you can’t give it to him (or her), what the hell are you doin?  Get out of the way!

     I’ve had it done to me, and I’ve done that to someone, and I’ll tell you something – those times someone did it to me don’t touch me at all anymore – in fact, I thank them every day for letting me go so I could find the man I was meant to be with.  But I am afraid I will always be somewhat haunted by the time I did it to someone else, and the damage that did both of us. 

You can take it (her/him) with you.

     In many ways, we come to know about ourselves by the choices we make, both on a large scale and in the small interactions of our daily lives. We see how we are behaving, and we identify ourselves as someone who behaves that way. That is why the way one relationship ends has so much resonance for the next one. The baggage we carry with us from one relationship to the next has less to do with what has happened to us than with how we have come to define ourselves through the experience. The fact is, if we truly trust ourselves to handle any situation with self-love, dignity, strength and compassion, we carry no baggage.

     If we leave a relationship as a resentful person, we enter the next relationship looking for a problem. If we leave a relationship as someone who is betrayed or taken advantage of, we enter the next relationship without trust. If we leave a relationship as someone who lacks understanding, we enter the next relationship unable to hear or know our partner. But if we can leave a relationship as someone who hears, understands, and acts out of compassion for both ourselves and our partners, we enter the next relationship ready for love.

     If we can use the challenges of the dissolution of a relationship to define ourselves this way, we can move on freely. If that is not possible (and sometimes it’s not), we can expect to have to use the next one to find that ideal version of ourselves, and be prepared to do the work. So be mindful of who you are being as you end your relationship – you take her with you.

Easier said than done, but something to consider.

There’s a fine line between wanting to be right and wanting to be understood in any argument and they can often look like very much the same thing.  We push and push and push to get our point across, relentlessly pursuing a concession.  A concession, yes, but of what kind, exactly? 

 

I push because I assume you don’t understand my point.  After all, I think, if you truly understood, you couldn’t possibly still believe I was wrong and you were right.  But then what if you demonstrated you absolutely understood?  What if you took a moment to not only acknowledge what I was saying, but that you understood why I was saying it, why it made sense to me?  What if you did all that, and then told me why you STILL disagree?  I suppose I would have to listen to what you were saying, or at least stop pushing my point.

 

And who knows, maybe if I truly understood what you were saying, if I took the time to demonstrate I absolutely understood, maybe I wouldn’t still believe I was right.  Or maybe I just wouldn’t care so much about being right anymore.  Either way, it’s worth a try. 

Time heals…nothing. By itself.

     I am having occasion to check in (yet again) on a process of forgiveness that seems to be taking forever.  The hurt involves betrayal, manipulation, depletion and humiliation.  The forgiveness is two-fold, as it tends to be.  I have to forgive him, and I have to forgive me for allowing him.  And I am seeing that time alone heals nothing.  In time, the universe tends to give you opportunities to heal through experience, but if you are failing to see the opportunity, you may have to create one.   

      In the process of forgiving, I let time go by, waiting for myself to simply let it go.  I felt that if I were the kind of person I wanted to be, I would just let it go and move forward.  Then I woke up 3 years later and realized that I was, simply, NOT letting it go, despite my best intentions.  And worse, that I had come to define myself by the experience, so it was contaminating my new and potentially joyful experiences with distrust.  I needed an experience that would help me redefine myself.  So I invited the past back in, so that I could at least write a slightly different “last” chapter.  So I could finally take some action.  And there was definitely some healing.

     But now there is a new occasion to examine how far I have come regarding this long-ago hurt.  The past is making an appearance in the present.  And I see that it no longer has any power over my new experiences, that is, my experiences that have no ties to the old ones.  But having been given the possibility of experiences that bridge the two, I see that I still feel the sting of humiliation and anger.  And I see the opportunity the universe is giving me.  There is a reason the past is working it’s way into my present.  There is more to my process of forgiveness and letting go, and healing is to be found in the new choices I can make, in the person I can now choose to be.  I’m nervous about it, but ready to see how far forward I can move.

     It’s interesting, though – now that I have come to see this Personal Evolution aspect of the marriage relationship, I am seeing all of my relationships in this light. 

     Maybe it’s because I’ve never been good at casual friendships.  I’ve never been the popular type – capable of chatting without intruding on people’s personal experiences, joking casually and cleverly, good for a good time.  Not that I’m a total bore.  I’m very capable of laughing and having a good time, and I’m a terrific audience for the clever.  I like to play, do, and try.  But my sense of humor has always come out most strongly in the process of exploring the depths – I am very good at finding the funny in what is deeply personal and deeply TRUE.  So my friendships have always had an element of this kind of exploration, of grasping for understanding, of trying to learn from it all. 

     So that’s ok.  I struggled with that for a long time in junior high and high school when that was a source of some real self-esteem issues, but as an adult, I have learned to embrace it and focus on the richness those relationships provide me.  And as an adult I am seeing that if my friendships are going to be about this, then they can be about so much more than a friend who is loyal and understanding, and who seems to like me.  I can choose my friends for what they inspire me to reach for.  I can choose them for my own Personal Evolution.

      And then I can look at my other relationships – the one’s I haven’t chosen, the one’s I am stuck with - and I can see them the same way.  These relationships, too, provide me with opportunities to be better than I am currently being.  Every interaction is a scene in which I have a part to play, and I chose who I will be in it – will I be a good listener, will I be compassionate, will I be self-respecting, will I be honest, will I be curious… will I handle this the way I’d like to handle this?  And hopefully, in this way, I will become more and more joyful in my life, as the gap between who I am being and who I’d like to be closes, as I become my best version of myself.