Especially if it's a long time friendship. Like 20 plus years long. It's almost like breaking up with a guy in that you're obsessed with analysing it, replaying every word and action that led to the last episode that caused the rift. There's the defensiveness, the rush to get your side of the story out first, with the favorable spin, the spliting of friends and places, just like the break up with the boyfriend.
But with the girlfriend the possible fallout is like a Civil War cannon ball, buried deep, covered with years of detrius shed by the forest, the fields and their inhabitants but yet for all that, still potentially dangerous, even more so because of the lack of certainty that comes with pulling the pin of a grendate, pulling the trigger on a rocket launcher or an automatic weapon. A few months ago, a man in Georiga blewhimself and his grandson up while trying to cut open a civil war cannon ball. They lived but the granddad got some major face damage.
Girlfriends know all the secrets, even the ones the boyfriends don't.
So there's that about ending long term friendships.
But sometimes the glue that holds a relationship together dries and cracks out of the pressure of attempting to fuse together something that as incompatiable as fish and fowl and sometimes as toxcically opposed as the boa and the rat. One is bound to swallow the other one.
There's grief about the relatkionship, any relationship, good or bad, leaves a hole that we creatures of habit miss. We are inclined toward the easy way, the comfortable way, even when it's bad, it beats making an effort, sometimes.
But this break up has been a better learning experience than the actual friendship, which could have been a place to learn about about ourselves, bad and good, in a comfort zone that gives both of a chance to look in the mirror and fix what they see.
Friendships can be a warm, loving place, where you can admit your secret shortcomings, the ones that people know about but hurts you to own up to. Inside a warm, loving relationship, those kinds of things can be faced down and the individual is strengthened.
But some relationships, in all kinds of relationiships, are just plain bad. They are dsyfunctional buecause two people who do not know how to have a healthy relationship have found each other and out of habit and the comfort zone - don't have to break in a new person or keep up a front for the casual/social aquaintances - stay together.
But this change gives me the chance to examinewhy I stayed in something that more often than not made me mad.
First the source of anger was really at myself but before I knew that I directed it at the other half and acted awful. That gave support to her image of herself as the "good" friend.
Me - not good at confrontation, not good at speaking up when something hurts or offends. ergo shit piles up and when it hits the fan, everybody gets dirty.
Even with these "a ha," moments, I'm still fuming. I guess I want one good screaming, cursing, dredging up every offense fight before I completely let it go. :)
But that won't happen for several reasons: one she's even more loathe for confrontation than I and she believes that she is the good friend who is being wronged by the unappreciative, hateful friend.
And that's an analysis based on 20 plus years of playing the supporting role in her drama where she had the starring role and all of us, her kids and husband inlcuded, were but bit players on her stage.
ob la de, ob la da, yeah
ob la de, ob la da, yeah
