I don’t expect to fall in love again. I think I’ve had some great love stories before and, at 60, I’m not looking for another one. I’m happy with my partner and, if I wanted to feel the euphoria of first love again (rather than the possible anguish of a whirlwind adventure), I’d rather adopt a Labrador.
But avoiding romance doesn’t mean we escape the pain of losing a loved one, because we still have friendships. And losing a friend can be just as painful as losing a lover.
It is natural for these relationships to come and go, dying due to lack of contact or distance or even more serious reasons such as disagreements.
And sometimes, like a boyfriend, you get dumped outright, though frankly, being told he wanted out of the relationship by a guy I was dating for months has never hurt as much as being dumped by a friend. Especially if that friend subjects you to the lingering death of ghosting.
Marion McGilvary says ghosting takes you right back to that time in school when your two best friends would stop talking to each other whenever you came near them.
At first you don’t realize what’s going on. You suggest meetings, but you don’t get a response. Days later, you send another text. After a significant pause, you get a response, but they’re “busy” and suggest meeting when “work is less hectic.”
You respond by suggesting they get in touch when they have more clarity on their schedule. A month may pass, you try again. “Oh, sorry,” comes the reply, “hell has frozen over.” Well, that might as well be the case because the excuse you give is weak but believable. So, maybe it’s the third time you suggest meeting up and, feeling bad for turning you down, they agree to grab a quick coffee. You’ve had longer sneezes.
They’re nice, but they’re very busy. Maybe they talk more than usual and don’t give you time to ask anything too pertinent. And the slow, slow drip of friendship erosion begins again, until six months pass and they don’t even like your Instagram posts anymore.
Oh, the agony. For anyone who has ever been the unpopular girl at school, this takes you straight back to that time in ninth grade when your two best friends would stop talking to each other whenever you came near them.
So it was galling for me, as a mother of four in my 40s, living my best life with a friend so close I could finish her sentences, to be unexpectedly transported back to those insecure teenage years.
It was a long time before the term “ghosting” was coined. I still think with nostalgia about that girl, as she was then, 15 years younger than me, when she suddenly dropped me.
We met in art school, she was a graduate student and I was enjoying precious time away from my young children. She was stylish, I was not. But we understood each other. After a while, though, the friendship soured. I now realize that it was my fault. I had asked for credit for work we had both done and that she considered a collaboration. I made other mistakes, too, but I also did a lot of good things for her.
Then he got engaged and our friendship fell apart. At the time, I didn’t know what was going on, until I realized he had stopped calling me and was never free to hang out. Finally, he confessed to me that he couldn’t trust me anymore. The end.
A year later, I saw her as I was walking. I nodded. She stopped and called me over. I was hesitant, like a child waiting to be slapped.
“I saw that you had written that your father had died,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” I waited a moment. “But nothing has changed,” he added.
“Go to hell!” I thought. I turned and walked away. So off I went, abandoned. I can understand why it happened, although it did seem a little unfair.
But then it happened again. This time, the fact that my friendship is on the rocks is much harder to grasp. My new ex-friend is a young, smart, witty, glamorous, and very funny mother. I’m not sure what I was to her: perhaps an uncritical mother?
It is natural for these relationships to come and go, dying due to lack of contact or distance or even more serious reasons such as disagreements.
Either way, it doesn’t seem to work anymore. She is busy with “family and work” and while I have both, albeit in smaller doses, only I have time. My messages go unanswered and my attempts to meet up are ignored and rejected. Once again, she is ignored.
I understand how it feels to have a friendship that has come to an end, but I wish it hadn’t because I loved her so much. What to do? You can’t make someone love you by being a needy whiner. I feel like a fool, holding on to something that’s already dead.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised, because I confess that I too have stopped seeing people. The woman who believed in spirits and told me that someone had died in my house (perhaps a cat she offered me) became too strange for me. I replied to her messages with an emoji for a good three months. I know. What nonsense, I shudder at my wickedness. What can I say? Karma catches up with us all…
(tags to translate)dailymail
