You Feel like Someone I Knew a Long Time Ago — Why Are Friendship Breakups So Hard?

Somebody asked me if I knew you. A million memories flashed through my mind, but I just said, I used to.

— Unknown

This post was inspired by my friend Louise who sent me a short video from a day trip to Mallorca. After showing me the blue sky, sandy beach, and palm trees Louise focused on a magazine open beside her. “I’ve just been reading this article,” she said. “I thought you’d find it interesting.” The article was Why don’t we treat friendship breakups as seriously as romantic ones? by Michelle Elman. According to the magazine, the author “has had her fair share of heartbreak but when her best friend of eight years ghosted her, she felt a new, confusing kind of loss.”

Louise was right. Friendships, especially mutually supportive ones, are important to both of us. We’ve been firm friends since we met online in 2019. Coincidentally, her trip to Mallorca fell on the fourth anniversary of us meeting in person for the first time. That morning I’d shared social media memories of us at my local coffee shop and sitting together on my favourite bench.

Breakups and Emotional Honesty

But this blog post isn’t about close friendships. It’s about the ending of close friendships. Louise and I have yet to experience anything approaching a breakup. I don’t think we’ve had so much as a serious disagreement or argument. I hope we never do, but I’m not complacent. Over the course of my adult life many friendships have had issues and disagreements, up to and including total breakups. The breaks haven’t all been as permanent as they appeared at the time. Some have never been repaired but I’ve reconnected with several friends after shorter or longer periods apart. In a few cases that’s happened more than once.

A friendship which breaks and resumes can be stronger for the experience, but that’s not automatic and cannot be assumed. Growth requires a willingness to examine what led to the breakup in the first place. Simply picking up where you left off won’t address the underlying differences or issues. This isn’t easy work. There have been times I’ve held back from asking the important questions — What really happened? Did I hurt you? What do we need to guard against or watch out for? How can we do this better? — because I was scared to uncover the truth. As I’ve written previously, it can be easier to permanently end relationships — or allow them to end — than deal with the reality of them changing. A little more courage and honesty on my part might have saved a great deal of hurt over the years, for me and the other people involved.

Each breakup was unique to that friendship and to that time. In some cases the responsibility is easily attributed. I was largely responsible for some breakups, less so for others. Reasons and responsibility aside, how did it feel? How will it feel next time (because there will be a next time)? In my experience, there are three breakup scenarios. When it feels right, when it feels wrong, and when you don’t understand what’s happening.

When It Feels Right

As hard as any breakup is, there are times when you recognise things have run their course and separation feels natural, if not inevitable. The following insight came to me after one such parting.

In the end there comes a time when you are ready to let go. Not because you stopped caring about them. But because you started caring about you.

That breakup was no one’s fault but that’s not always the case. There are situations where the connection itself has become toxic. In that case, ending the friendship is not only appropriate but healthy. There’s wisdom in recognising that the toxicity doesn’t always come from the other person. As I’ve written elsewhere, “maybe you were an asshole and they needed to push you away for their safety and well-being.” I explored this further in a post discussing healthy boundaries.

Not all relationships are healthy, however. I have had to acknowledge the concept of toxic relationships: not as a label of judgement or blame, but as a valuable descriptor. This has been hard, not least because I have far more examples of me being toxic to others than of others being toxic to me.

This was often down to me being either overly attentive or insufficiently engaged. These scenarios are not unconnected. There were times when I overcompensated and held back from a friend for fear of overwhelming them or causing concern. There are echoes of this in two poems of mine from long ago. The first was written during a period of upheaval within my circle of friends. I navigated what was happening very poorly. Worse, I withdrew from people who had a right to expect my empathy and support.

Mothly,
how i ache to understand you,
neither comfort nor console
but holdyou .then a fiercer
flame repels: the memory
of another that my flutterings
confused (an age too long ago.

— from “Mothly”

The second was addressed to a new friend.

i feel i’ve found a newfriend
in you .someone to think fondly of
speak fondly to, afraid though i
might hurt you (like the rest)
by coming on too strong

— from “untitled three”

I hope I’ve developed some emotional maturity in the intervening years, but I’d never judge someone for exiting a friendship — with me or anyone else — that felt toxic or worrisome to them.

When It Feels Wrong

There are breakups which just feel wrong. Something happened between you but it feels like it should be fixable. Except it isn’t. Or wasn’t. Or it might have been but somehow a line was crossed. It feels worse because of that sense of injustice. Whatever happened, the consequences seem disproportionate to the offence.

If that’s how you feel, check your assumptions. You may have hurt your friend far more than you anticipated or imagine. Maybe they misunderstood your intentions. Maybe you meant nothing by it. But you don’t get to tell your friend how to feel or respond. Actions have consequences. Apologise if it’s not too late, but respect their right to act however seems appropriate to them, up to and including ending your friendship.

It’s not always your fault, of course. Maybe your friend crossed a red line and you’re not prepared to ignore it or set it aside. I’ve walked away from very few friendships in my life, but there have been a few occasions when it felt the only thing to do.

When You Don’t Understand What’s Happening

And then there are the breakups where you don’t understand what’s happening at all. Maybe it’s your fault. Maybe it’s theirs. Maybe there’s really no one at fault. Earlier today I checked my social media “memories” and was reminded of a day trip to the coast with a new friend, fifteen years ago. Nothing went wrong between us, but that excursion was never repeated and the friendship lapsed. It was the gentlest of breakups with no lasting hurt beyond my incomprehension. The day had seemed so promising.

The hardest endings are where there’s been a breakdown in communication. It’s hard to resolve things and move forward together, or part gently, when you’re scarcely talking. The mixture of pain and confusion is expressed perfectly by Taylor Swift in her song The Story of Us.

I’d tell you I miss you but I don’t know how.
I’ve never heard silence quite this loud.

Now I’m standing alone in a crowded room
And we’re not speaking and I’m dying to know
Is it killing you like it’s killing me?

The song triggers painful memories. In the midst of an emotional maelstrom forty years ago I told my best friend, “It feels like you’re someone I knew a long time ago.” The words were honest but it appals me that I said them to someone who meant the world to me and was both vulnerable and hurting. What made it worse was that my friend was attempting to reach out. Not necessarily to explain — some things are beyond explanation — but to reconnect. I was confused and upset, but that’s no excuse. I handled things poorly and treated my friend with far less compassion and understanding than she deserved. We moved forward, though it’s arguable if things were ever the same. (If you read this, I’m sorry. I will always be sorry.)

There are more recent examples. Other friends. Other breakdowns in communication. In each case things would have been easier if we’d been able to talk. To ask what was going on. To challenge each other as to what we wanted. It’s not always easy.

How to Handle Your Next Friendship Breakup

Until I met Fran I’d always considered a broken friendship to be a failure. She taught me that not every friendship has to last forever and that sometimes letting go is the healthy thing to do. Recognising that any friendship can end heightens rather than diminishes their importance. Good friendships don’t happen by accident and are worth fighting for, as is any relationship.

Louise offered me the following insight. “The magazine article was saying how we get kind of ‘prepared’ for the fact that in life we’ll experience relationship breakups; but not in the case of friendships. I see a lot of people struggle when this has happened.” I think that’s true. We have an idealised view of friendship. We believe that “real” or “true” friendships last forever. From that mistaken premise follows the unhealthy idea that a friendship which ends was never real in the first place, so there’s no need to dwell on it. Buck up and move on. Needless to say, I disagree.

It’s healthy to grieve the ending of close friendships as much as any other loss, including the breakup of romantic relationships. Recognising how much had changed during our months apart, one friend said to me when we reconnected, “You’ll always have your good memories. And so will I.” We broke up again shortly after but her gentle wisdom still means a great deal to me.

From Fran I’ve learned not to expect or push for reconnection, but to remain open to the possibility. I cited a conversation with her in a blog post on healthy boundaries. We were talking about how she manages to release her hold on difficult, even toxic, relationships without forever banishing the other person to the Forbidden Zone.

Fran: I don’t give up on people.

Martin: I have learned to let go.

Fran: Giving up is different than letting go.

Martin: I was just pondering that. I’m not sure. Maybe.

Fran: Giving up implies hopelessness. Letting go implies openness. Open handedness.

Martin: Closing the door vs leaving it open?

Fran: Yes.

Martin: It’s not always healthy to leave the door open. (That’s what I’m thinking, anyway, about me and my relationships.)

Fran: It’s ok to close the door but not the heart.

Years later, I’d revisit those words. During a prolonged breakup with a friend I wrote:

I didn’t lock the door. I just stopped watching at the window for your return.

The insight has helped me more than once. Whether we’ve reconnected or not, if I ever called you my friend I still care, and I’ll be here if you want my help or support. Those are not mere words on my part. That said, I’m wary of reaching out to former friends if we’ve spent considerable time apart. There is peace in closed chapters.

 

Over to You

In this blog post I’ve shared some of my thoughts about friendship breakups. How do you feel when close friendships end? How do you manage friendship breakups? Do you have friendships that have lasted decades, or do you tend to make new friends as older ones end or fall away? I’d love to hear from you, either in the comments below or via our contact page.

 

Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova at Unsplash.

 

It's Not Enough / Never Enough

I think everybody should get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that that’s not the answer. (Jim Carrey)

At certain moments, I find myself asking some of life’s great unanswerable questions. What is my purpose? Is this all there is? Is it enough? And, come to that, what does “enough” mean, anyway? Two songs offer contradictory insights: “Alone Tonight” by English rock band Genesis, and “Never Enough” from the musical drama film The Greatest Showman.

Alone Tonight

It’s not enough, it’s not enough
This feeling I’m feeling inside

I’ve known the Genesis track most of my adult life. Its cry of not enough echoes from a place of almost existential emptiness. There’s an emotional paralysis too; an inability or unwillingness to imagine things will change or improve. It’s the archetypal cry of the lonely, and I know it well. I included it in a post on loneliness for Mental Health Awareness Week 2022.

My earliest memory of loneliness goes back to my first year at university. I would stand night after night at the window of my halls of residence looking out across the lights of the city, extravagantly empty and alone. I ached for something I had yet to experience. Genuine connection. There’s a Genesis track I remember from those days. It contains the lines, “It’s not enough, it’s not enough. This feeling I’m feeling inside. Oh, I know it, I know tonight that I’ll be on my own again.” Forty years on, that track (“Alone Tonight”) can bring me to tears. Ironically, back then, I would not have cried. I had yet to learn how.

As well as sorrow and loss, there’s more than a hint of self-indulgence in the lyrics. Even the reaching out for help is less a healthy attempt to move forward than a cry for the attention of someone who undoubtedly has already done so.

Say that you’ll, say that you’ll
Help me reach the other
Help me please cos I know I’m gonna be
On my own again alone again tonight

Looking back, I have compassion for the young man standing at the window all those years ago. He had no idea how to address the aching emptiness. At eighteen, that’s understandable. More than four decades later, I’m still trying to figure it out.

Never Enough

Towers of gold are still too little
These hands could hold the world but it’ll
Never be enough

This is one of my favourite songs from The Greatest Showman. Performed in the movie by actress Rebecca Ferguson, but actually sung by Loren Allred, it’s the proclamation of someone (Swedish opera singer Johanna Maria “Jenny” Lind) who knows great success and can look to more. She nevertheless declares that no matter its breadth and depth, public acclaim can bring no lasting reward, no ultimate satiation. Why is that? What would make it “enough”? In the movie, it’s love.

Take my hand
Will you share this with me?
’Cause darling without you [all of this]
Will never be enough

More generally, though, it’s whatever we most need. A key relationship, perhaps. Understanding who we are. Identifying our life purpose. This message is fundamental to the movie; most notably the central figure of P.T. Barnum, played by Hugh Jackman, but also many of the secondary characters. It comes through powerfully in two more of my favourite songs, “This Is Me” and “Rewrite the Stars.” Whatever it is for us, without it there will always be something missing. There’s an echo here in the words of actor Jim Carrey in a 2005 interview published in “The Ottawa Citizen.”

[Carrey] says that earlier in his career, he believed that making just one more film, getting one more hit, would be enough, but he got tired of being emotionally disappointed.

“You just go like, ‘Yeah, it was a fantastic hit, but what now?’” Carrey’s advice: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that that’s not the answer.”

When Do I Feel This Way?

I mentioned there are times I ask myself these questions. What are those times? It’s perhaps easier to say when I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel that way when I’m occupied with work, with writing or other creative pursuits, or in conversation with friends. It’s good to be actively and creatively engaged, but I wonder if I do these things as much to distract myself as for more laudable reasons.

Distraction is fine as a management technique to get us through difficult times. It helps when I’m feeling flat or the kind of low I’ve described previously in Return to Down. Coping strategies are meant to help us handle things when living is hard, but if we rely on them too much we can lose sight of what they were helping us cope with.

If we never set them aside and address what’s wrong in our lives, we’re likely to keep distracting ourselves, confusing its temporary relief from emptiness for satisfaction. Many of us will recognise, in ourselves or others, the insatiable urge to move house every few years, to constantly redecorate or rearrange aspects of our lives, or begin a new relationship that’s likely to be no longer lasting than the one before. For all our attempts, the not enoughness will still there, until we face it properly.

How Do These Ideas Help?

I said these lyrics help me address these questions of meaning and enoughness. In what way? What have I learned from them? The Genesis track reminds me that the ache of bereavement or lack (including the lack of something we’ve not yet known or achieved) is a commonplace of human existence. It always feels like we’re suffering as no one in history has ever suffered, but we’re far from alone in our emptiness, our sadness, our excuisite and elaborate pain.

I broke up with a friend several years ago. The pain was real but one unexpected blessing was the realisation that there was nothing unique about my experience. Friendships and relationships break up all the time. Most people learn this early on, in their teens if not younger. For me, the insight came late but was no less meaningful for being tardy. It helped me accept and explore what the loss of this friend — and this friendship — meant for me. What needs had been opened? What had I learned?

Several times in my life someone has appeared and filled a gap I had no idea was there, because I’d never looked at myself deeply enough to see it. I remember explaining this to one friend a number of years ago. I’d had no idea there was a space, a gap, a not-enoughness that she — that our friendship — could fill, until she appeared in my life. When in time we separated, that space was still there, but I knew its name now and what it represented for me. No breakup or parting could take that away.

If Genesis taught me to recognise people-shaped spaces in my life, “Never Enough” reminds me it’s not all about people. I have people aplenty in my world. Family. Close friends. People I trust, love, and value. People who meet the vast majority of my emotional and relationship needs. I have a job that (recently at least) motivates me. I have my writing. I have no specific health or money stresses. And yet there are still those never enough moments when I feel some fundamental need is going unmet. It reminds me to treasure life’s successes, but never to mistake them for the real thing — whatever that might be.

When Did it Last Feel Like it Was Enough?

I don’t always feel unfulfilled. There are times, mostly when I’m sitting in a café or coffee shop writing (as I am right now, at JAVA in the centre of Keswick) when I lose myself in the immediacy of what I’m doing. A few days ago on social media I posted a photo taken in the garden of the vacation cottage I’m staying in this week.

On holiday, blogging about enoughness in the garden, surrounded by hills and trees, twenty yards from the river. If ever there was a moment when what is, is enough, this is it.

At such moments, I am content. It’s interesting that the word content suggests the content-of-the-moment, what our world contains in that moment. It’s a word and a state of being that is overlooked and underappreciated. Being content loses out to being happy, or excited, or passionate, or joyful. But it can hold — can contain — all those and more.

Enough Is Enough

This leads me to another aspect of enoughness. That’s the idea that whatever is, whatever you’re doing or have in the moment, with all its incompleteness and inadequacies, failings and not-quite-perfect-ness — exists. And if it exists, how can it be less than enough?

“Perfection is the enemy of the good,” so the saying goes, and the endless pursuit of having everything we want, desire, or need, can be the enemy of contentment. Of appreciation. Of living in the here and now rather than in some imagined perfection we can never quite achieve. Known as the Nirvana fallacy, this is something I recognise as a writer and blogger. I explored how the desire for ideal conditions can get in the way of writing a few years ago in I Was Going to Write Today. After listing all the ways my situation was less than perfect, I recognised the fallacy for what it was — an excuse to keep me stifled.

And in the meantime the world goes on. And other people write. And they are not necessarily “inspired.” And they probably don’t have the right pen or the perfect notebook. Maybe they found the back of an envelope to scribble on when their laptop crashed so they didn’t lose what was bursting to get out. And maybe the cat just spewed up or the baby did. Or they feel sick today or depressed or despair of ever making a difference or even getting through another day fuck even another hour but you know what they dare anyway they dare to care and write and scream sigh vomit breathe craft something from the guts of them because sometimes that’s all you have and all you can offer to the world and sometimes it is enough you are enough YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Ultimately, I feel there’s value in both enough and not enough, as long as neither is taken to extreme. The dynamic balance between the two is what drives us on, creatively at least. I was discussing this recently with my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson of I’m NOT Disordered. Aimee appreciates and celebrates her wins, but is driven by a sense that she can always do better, bigger, or differently. It’s a strategy that’s brought her considerable success to date, and one I find inspiring.

Over to You

In this post I’ve explored some of my thoughts about enoughness, inspired by two songs which deal with the idea of “not enough” from very different perspectives. What do these concepts mean to you? How do you handle feeling that whatever your life contains right now, it’s not enough for you? It’s still something I’m working with, and I’d value your thoughts and ideas, whether in the comments below or via our contact page.

 

Image by Felicia Buitenwerf at Unsplash.

 

Four Things It's Hard for a Mental Health Ally to Hear (And Why It's Important to Listen)

I’m going to talk about a few things said to me over the years by people who have what I do not: lived experience of mental illness.

They’ve been hard to hear but I’m grateful because I’ve learned something valuable each time.

“You don’t understand”

They say we all have mental health but as Fran and I describe in our book High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder there’s a fundamental difference in experience between someone like Fran who lives with mental illness and someone like me who never has.

Well or ill, we are all people. Nevertheless, it is naive, disrespectful, and dangerous to downplay the impact illness has on those affected by it. Those who are ill […] have particular life experiences, perceptions, expectations, and needs. To use Fran’s terminology, she is the ill one in our relationship; I am the well one. Nothing more or less is implied by our use of these terms.

High Tide, Low Tide, Introduction

So when someone tells me I don’t understand what it’s like for them or I can’t help because of that gulf in understanding, it hurts precisely because I get it. How can I understand what Fran is going through when she is manic or in the depths of depression, or when suicidal “stinking thinking” plagues her? How can I empathise when another friend is hallucinating and is convinced reality is other than I perceive it to be? How can I know what it means to self-harm or overdose?

I can’t. Not really.

Rather than allowing myself the ego defence of hurt pride and self-righteous indignation I’ve learned to accept “you don’t understand” as a simple statement of fact. I can’t always join my friends where they are. And that’s okay.

I’ve also learned that although our perspectives are different – indeed because our perspectives are different – we can complement and learn from each other.

I am a better person for knowing Fran. I have a greater understanding of my strengths, values, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities than ever before. I have learned more about mental and invisible illness, suicidal thinking, stigma, determination, courage, and responsibility since we became friends than in the fifty years before we met.

High Tide, Low Tide, chapter 10, “A Life worth Living”

“Don’t be so bloody positive!”

Fran calls me pathologically positive and it’s not meant as a compliment. We only met at all because she was furious at my inept response online to someone in suicidal distress. I’ve always been a positive person, but mostly I deployed it defensively to avoid facing up to how shitty life gets. It’s been hard to accept this was hopelessly naïve and prevented me engaging fully with life and with other people.

There are healthy aspects to it, of course. I can help Fran counter her illness-skewed thinking but I must never allow myself, consciously or unconsciously, to invalidate her experience or attempt to bully her out of her feelings. It also helps keep me grounded when those I care about are struggling. This is part of what my friend Aimee Wilson meant when she wrote, “I’ve seen how many people you support through social media. It’s inspiring to think of the strength you have in order to be there for so many people.”

I’m grateful to all who are patient with me as I open to a deeper understanding. I’m learning that courage isn’t about being relentlessly positive. Real courage is dealing with the shittiness of life when you’re unable to set it aside or run away from it.

“I don’t need you right now”

For me, mutual caring is an essential part of any meaningful relationship. The word mutual is crucial. I may be the “well one” and Fran the “ill one” but we each have issues, hang-ups, and needs. We support and care for each other, and the same is true of my other key friendships. That’s not to say both people will give and receive equally all the time, as this anonymous quotation attests:

A relationship isn’t always 50/50. Some days your person will struggle. You suck it up and pick up that 80/20 because they need you. That’s love.

I would add — and sometimes your person will be doing okay and need less of your support, time, and energy. This is hard for me. In our early days as friends I’d react with fear and panic to any suggestion Fran was pulling away from me. It caught us both by surprise when it first happened. It took a while for me to acknowledge what was happening and accept that Fran needing less of my support didn’t threaten our friendship or mean she no longer cared about me. I’ve learned a lot about co-dependency since then but there’s no place for complacency and we remain vigilant.

Fran values the support of “well ones” when she is poorly but I also have friends for whom the opposite is true. When they’re struggling they’re more likely to seek professional help or reach out to people with comparable lived experience. This can be hard because I want to help too. One friend became understandably frustrated having to explain to me how things were for her when she was struggling and I offered to help. What she needed were friends who understood without having to ask. It was a painful lesson but one I hope I have taken on board. Aimee shared her perspective on this in a recent blog post:

I also wanted to say that if someone you know does have a mental health crisis and doesn’t reach out to you; don’t feel offended or useless. Other people aren’t usually the first place I turn in a mental health crisis — for many reasons — but I appreciate that there are a number of people in my life who could be so helpful at those times and I just don’t give them the chance. This isn’t anything against them.

What matters far more than my bruised ego is that the person finds those best placed to provide the care they need.

“Leave me alone”

Friends part sometimes. Relationships end. Where mental health appears to have played a part in the break-up it would be easy to justify myself by recalling how unreasonable their behaviour was, or how imbalanced the relationship had become. It would be easy — and untrue. I can’t think of a single friendship which ended for such reasons.

So what happened? As I wrote a few years ago, hardest for me is where the other person acted in their best interests by severing what had become for them a toxic connection:

A friend on Twitter shared a link today to her blog article about needing to let go of unhelpful, toxic people and relationships. Her words brought me face to face with the realisation that there have been times in my life when, for one reason or another, someone has needed to let go of me. It’s not an easy thing to admit to myself […] yet there are those who choose to remain distanced from me, and who would reject any attempt I might make at reconnecting. I must respect their need to do what they need to do, and to accept responsibility for my role in what has happened.

Not every friendship ends like that, of course. Sometimes it’s simply that the person’s needs or situation have changed. Perhaps they found others better suited to support them or they no longer need to rely on me as much as before. This can be hard to hear, especially if I’ve been doing my best and would like the opportunity to learn how to become the friend they need. Ultimately, though, it’s not my decision to make.

The most I can ask is that we part with honesty, in which case there need be no lasting guilt, recriminations, or regret on either side. I am grateful to those who have parted with me on such terms. We cannot be all things to all people.

Over to You

I’ve described some of the hardest things I’ve heard as a mental health ally. If you live with mental illness I would be interested to know your thoughts about what I’ve written. If like me you have no lived experience of mental illness but have friends or loved ones who do, what are the hardest things you’ve heard and what have you learned about yourself in the process?