by Tracey E. Bennett, Queen of Conversation
I’m driving home from the bark park, thinking about my ex-friend Mary Wagner. I’m feeling the hurt of being dumped after 30 years of close friendship. And it’s not a new hurt either; it’s been more than 10 years since Mary announced she was ending the friendship.
Why? On our trip to Guatemala and Costa Rica, I had bugged her with judgments about her singlehood.
Who, me? A couple mentions, yes. But over the top? I had no idea. Is that enough to end a friendship?
Nobody gave me the ballot to vote on it.
So I’m driving, thinking, how many times in our lives do we allow someone to bug us, not tell them we’re annoyed, and then cut them off? SNIP! If only she’d spoken up: "Enough with the singles stuff!" We’d have a 40-year friendship.
Next thought: I should blog about how not to end a friendship. Maybe I could save somebody else’s friendship from going in the ditch, save them this pain.
Two seconds later, I hear a voice, an actual voice. He says,
Be here now. Don’t anticipate. Don’t yearn for things of the past. Let the past go….with forgiveness. And let the future go with no anticipation.
What are the odds of hearing that then? Of the thousands of songs in my iTunes, the computer put 1,300 songs on my iPod. Of the 1,300 — days and days of music and podcasts — Ram Dass’s "Be Here Now" played at the precise moment I needed to hear it.
What are the odds?
Pretty good.
On August 3rd, I blogged about three kinds of conversations:
- with yourself
- with others
- with God/the universe/Higher Ups
Driving along, I thought I was talking to myself. But somebody was listening and sent me a message. How cool is that?
What’s the take-away here?
What’s your style of dealing with friends, or for that matter, lovers or colleagues who annoy you? Do you
- confront them
- avoid them, or
- grit your teeth and hope they’ll change?
I hope my story spurs you to take action, not just once, but all the time. Speak up when you’re mildly irritated so you don’t blow up later and end a friendship altogether.
p.s.
If you see Mary, tell her I miss her and our thoughtful, stimulating conversations. She challenged me and made me think. Still does.
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Thanks for reading my blog. And now I’d like to invite you to get all my posts delivered by email. See the box on the right? You know what to do now….
- Tracey E. Bennett, Queen of Conversation
Tags: end a friendship
I loved the topic and applaud you for sharing a personal pain with us. Perhaps your story will help us treat our friendships more carefully. I must say, though, I wish you hadn’t used Mary’s last name. (Mary W. would have sufficed.) I imagined, “Gosh, how would I feel if I were Mary, and found about about this public revelation?” For all we know, Mary is ashamed of her long-ago behavior and now her “dirty laundry” is hanging in the breeze for all to see.
Good point, Pam. I would not want my friends to think that our upsets or other personal information might appear, naming names, on my blog. [Hey, friends. I would not do that to you! Use your name, I mean.] I hoped that including Mary’s last name might–big might–reconnect us somehow. Even though Ram Dass said to be here now.
Other readers might be thinking, “What ELSE did Tracey do to cause the rift? Why was her emotional bank account empty or overdrawn?” Good question. I wish I knew the answer.
So readers, what do you think? Did you have a reaction to my using Mary’s real name? Feel free to comment on this or any other aspect of the post.
It’s possible that Mary had that topic already in the very front of her thinking and was maybe feeling something less than positive about it when you mentioned it. That alone could have been enough for her to think you went “over the top” in mentioning it. I think it depends on what point Mary is at in her life how she would react to seeing her name in “lights” and only Mary can answer that. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all said or done things in our lives that we later regret or wish we wouldn’t have done but what’s done is done. For me I just try to learn from those things that bring sadness to my heart when I think of them in the hopes that I’ll avoid going to that place again with someone else.
I like your blogs, and read with interest your article regarding Mary, I have recently had an experience, not similar in the way that it happened but similar in that I lost a thirty year friendship, when someone is in your life for that length of time and then goes it is like a bereavement but worse, because the closure is’nt there. May I say that there is probably a lot more to that situation than you are aware of at this time and although painful for you then…… and now, one day hopefully you may learn the real reasons behind it, I admire your courage in speaking your truth.
Losing a friendship is like losing a loved one. Painful. Friendship is mutual. If the other one does not see the value in the relationship, it is just waiting for the right moment to break off. Bored probably? Does it mean good things do not last long? go stale? Should we move on? Thanks for sharing. I just open my thoughts after pondering for a while – why? Wish you all the best to renew the friendship.
I have known you over 40 years and know the work you have done over the years to be a better person. I'm sure Mary would find you to be an even more amazing person than you were ten or twenty years ago. You have told me that "there no mistakes in life – just lessons to be learned." What did you learn from this? It is good that you shared this with us – lessons for us to learn too.
You've been putting a lot of energy into thinking about Mary. This is usually the precursor to an encounter. keep us informed!