Faded Friendships

Closure,  is it really that important?

The term literally means “the act of closing; the condition of being closed” according to Merriam-Webster. Its use often refers to physical, tangible things like the examples given along with the definition, “business closure,” “the closure of the factory….”

For most of us the most relevant meaning of the word isn’t found in the dictionary definition. It’s in the connotation that the word has its significance. It signifies that there has been some kind of resolution to a relationship – a chance to say goodbye or an opportunity for both people involved to say what they feel like they need to say before going their separate ways. Yet when it comes to friendships its often the case that we don’t get the closure we need.

Memes abound about relationships that seem to be, or have become, one sides: “Never fight for a place in a person’s life. When a person values you, she will always keep a place free for you,” and “The worst feeling is when you find out you didn’t mean as much to someone as you thought you did, and you look stupid for caring too much.”

Statements like these put into words the feelings that arise when we realize that a relationship has become one-sided.

It has happened in my life recently, and, that being the case, I have spent some of my down time reading about the topic of friendship.

One article I read indicated the need to categorize the type of friendship in which we are engaged, for example, I’ve had the “friends for a reason” and “friends for a season” like the people who I met at community college and continued to interact with when we all took classes at university, my lab partners, and my partners for important presentations. I am still in contact with some of those friends via social media, and while it’s fun to see how their lives are progressing, we don’t have intimate friendships.

Then there are those friends that the article describes as being lifetime friends, the ones we make in elementary school or middle school that stay in our lives for the duration.

I was pleasantly surprised that a friend from elementary school found me on social media recently. It’s nice to see how things are going in her life. But I haven’t kept in contact with anyone else from elementary school. We left the area, and I started at a new school when I was in eighth grade.

It was at that time that I made some of my life-long friends, though those friendships have waned over the last few years. I have reached out time and again, but I haven’t gotten too much back.

When that happens I feel like I can only draw one conclusion, that the relationship has become one-sided. The reasons may vary, kids, busyness, driving distance, or no reason at all, just silence.

I reached out to a long time friend in March, and she let me know that she was going through some things and needed her space.

While her response is better in some ways than no response at all, it was still somewhat hurtful to hear that, after being friends – and roommates – since our teens, she didn’t feel the need to let me know what she was going through and didn’t really need me in her life at that time.

I realize that sharing that I was hurt by her not needing me does open me up to the criticism that if I were truly her friend, I would give her the space she needs, and perhaps that criticism is valid. I even tend to agree, in part.

I have given her space. I haven’t contacted her since. At this point, I plan to wait until she contacts me again, but I also realize that she might not contact me again, that this friendship may just fade away.

That’s where the hurt comes in.

When you know that friendships are likely temporary, like those of classmates or short-term neighbors, the goodbye, or lessening of the intimacy, doesn’t really hurt as much. But when you have built a friendship that you thought really would last a lifetime, and it ends, or seems like it has ended – though you’re really not sure, that causes the frustration, anger, and hurt to surface.

Then there are those memes about how “Good friends are like stars. You don’t always see them, but they’re always there.” The idea that people can be apart for an extended period of time and come back together and find “it’s like nothing has changed,” is quaint, and it does seem to happen in some cases, but things do change in all of our lives. Those are often the times when we need our friends, to share the joys and to ease the pain.

Pardon my selfishness, but what I want, and what I need, is the kind of friends who I can really be honest with, drink over-priced coffee with, pick out an outfit with, the kind of friends who know that “What happens during girl’s night out stays with the girls,” even if our nights out aren’t all that exciting or daring by some standards.

Friendships in adulthood can be challenging to maintain given all of life’s responsibilities; I too have been busy at times, and I too have turned inward and haven’t reached out to friends like I could have. I know that I have to be willing to be a friend to have a friend.

This blog post isn’t a post to solicit friends, because I do have some. It’s a writer’s honest admission that I’ve been a sad lately. I’ve found that losing friendships is hard, especially when the ones that had lasted for decades just seemed to fade into nothing.