Sometimes when a friendship ends, it’s mutual. You slowly walk away, neither of you are quite sure why.
But that’s not the case for me and my “best friend” Lucy.
Instead, after 25 years, I made the conscious decision to cut her out of my life. I stopped making plans, I stopped responding to his WhatsApp messages; in fact, I even stopped opening them, since the app would immediately notify you that I had done so.
What led me to do this? The end of their marriage. Once her divorce was finalized, my respectable friend reverted to the sexy, man-hungry party girl I had first met, so I deliberately distanced myself from her.
Now, two years after their breakup, we exchange jokes twice a year at most, whereas before we met every two weeks and exchanged messages, secrets, and delicious gossip every day.
Divorce can destroy more than one relationship if a woman suspects that her newly single friend might be after her husband (photo taken by models)
Although there are times when I have conflicts, overall I feel better for it. The reason? Without it and her new and exciting single lifestyle, my own life and marriage don’t feel as ordinary. . . or under threat.
I know it sounds cruel, but let me explain.
Lucy and I had been inseparable since we were allocated neighboring rooms in the halls of residence on our first day at the University of Manchester; her bubbly confidence took me out
of myself when I felt homesick and restless. I was the reliable, level-headed, level-headed person, while Lucy was outgoing and carefree.
After graduating, several years of weekend getaways together, sipping cocktails in Paris or Rome, followed.
Even though she lived in Guildford, Surrey, while I was in London, we remained as close as ever and I imagined our friendship would be unbreakable.
We were each other’s bridesmaids when we got married eight months apart a decade ago; She beat me to the hallway. She was the first person I told when I found out she was pregnant (after my husband) and she is godmother to my children, who are now seven and nine years old.
She doesn’t have children (by choice), but she understood that when I had mine, parties and trips abroad with her could no longer be at the top of my list.
Then, in 2022, when we were in our early 40s, she called me to tell me she had left her husband, Jack. For a time, she made no secret of the fact that she longed for the carefree life she had had when we were 20 and she felt that her marriage had become mundane.
Feeling tied down (her words, not mine), she was longing for fun and had decided to make a clean break. However, it is telling that she never said that she no longer loved her husband. In my opinion, she didn’t work hard enough on her marriage. It was much easier for her to throw in the towel and run away in search of a life similar to the one we had when we were younger.
“As her best friend, I willingly provided her with endless emotional support after her separation from her husband, comforting her during late-night phone calls.”
Still, that didn’t mean I wasn’t heartbroken after filing for divorce. And as her best friend, I willingly provided endless emotional support, comforting her during late-night phone calls, despite feeling like she should have fought harder for her marriage. Secretly, I felt a lot more sympathy for her poor ex.
Meanwhile, my husband, Marc, was happy to lend a practical hand, helping her move into her new home as she began the next stage of her life.
That was the moment things changed for me.
When Lucy emerged from her initial sadness, she entered the dating scene with her finger on the right, meeting up with different men each week and cajoling me to join her on regular nights out or weekend spa days. Determined to support her, I pressed on, even though it was not conducive to my established family life with a busy job as a teacher and young children. Mostly, I ended up having a glass of wine alone while she worked around the room, always tempting with her beautiful appearance.
Suddenly, she was living a lifestyle that I couldn’t relate to as a happy, secure, working mother in a strong marriage.
Although maybe a small part of me was envious of his freedom, mostly I thought he had lost himself a little.
However, listening to her tell me stories about her dating escapades and her exciting new social life, I worried that Marc would hear those stories and begin scrutinizing me and our marriage, concluding that we should both be more sociable and carefree, like Lucia.
Everyone thinks Lucy is attractive, but Marc had never made me believe he thought of it in anything other than a platonic way. Still, I worried that he would suddenly be envious of his social life, since ours was more or less nonexistent.
I have mom friends with whom I go out from time to time to have lunch or dinner quietly in the kitchen of each other’s house, but it is very quiet. When Marc and I have time together, we spend it on family life. We both admit that sometimes we feel like we’ve become boring.
And now Marc and I were witnessing a very compelling alternative. I couldn’t help but worry that he would think she was more exciting than me, even though I knew he would never stray, and possibly even wish there was more to our life than family dinners and trips to the zoo.
So after a few weeks of her being completely divorced, I stopped mentioning her to Marc at all. I couldn’t risk Marc one day saying that we should live like her, not get stuck in marriage and children.
Lucy’s new life also made me wonder if I would let myself go. While she visited the salon weekly for expensive hairdos and shiny manicures, I was immersed in playdates, parties and soft play centers.
Maybe I had gotten a little stuck and didn’t want Marc to come to the same conclusion.
That’s why I started ignoring his messages or leaving him too late to respond. If she was bugging me to go with her to a spa or have drinks at a bar, I would wait until the day before to tell her that she couldn’t make it. I also stopped engaging in her messaging about men she had dated or had sex with.
It didn’t occur to me that perhaps his bravado was because he was possibly feeling vulnerable.
“Once her divorce occurred, my respectable friend reverted to the sexy, man-hungry party girl I had first met, so I deliberately distanced myself from her.”
Of course, I cared a lot that she might feel hurt because I was distancing myself after such a close friendship. After all, it’s one of the reasons I followed her new lifestyle for so long, even though she had other priorities and was tired of being a working mother.
I felt guilty for deciding not to spend time with Lucy, but it wasn’t sustainable. Distancing took away the pressure I had felt to be more like her and my fears about the impact of her seemingly exciting new life on Marc.
Still, I was inspired by Lucy’s transformation after the divorce. Now I visit the beauty salon more regularly, and from time to time I change my mother’s jeans and sneakers for sexier clothes.
Then one day last summer when I hadn’t seen Lucy
For many months, after I had ignored or delayed responding to countless messages and invitations to go out, she called to ask what was wrong. ‘Our lives are so different; I’m happy and settled and can’t keep up with your single life,’ I told her. ‘We’re back to the women we used to be when we were first friends.’
And so there was no explosive ending. We both promised to stay in touch, knowing that we would stay at arm’s length while she was single and our lives were out of alignment. We’ve barely had contact in months.
As you can see, without being confrontational or unpleasant, I made sure we distanced ourselves. Unfortunately, I feel much happier without Lucy in my life, a phrase that at one point I would never have imagined coming from my lips.
Names have been changed. As he told Sadie Nicholas.
