by Joelle Steele
I used to think that friends were friends forever. I thought that if something went wrong in a friendship that it would be easily fixed because of the bond I had with that other person. We would talk about it and come to terms, apologize, etc. But it turned out that I was wrong, and I had to reconcile that within myself. Friendships do die, and sometimes they die by choice, my choice or a friend’s choice.
The friendships that died because I ended them were the hardest, because I had to make conscious decisions to end them, and to do that, I need to have some pretty darn good reasons. I am not frivolous or superficial when it comes to relationships of any kind. I would never end a friendship because of some petty little grievance. It would have to be something pretty big and ugly, like dishonesty, betrayal, etc. However, there are some friendships that were simply outgrown.
The first time I ended a friendship was in 1985. I had been friends with a woman for almost eighteen years. and she had changed a lot in the past five years. I lessened the time I spent with her, thinking she was just going through a phase. But I suspected her of lying to me on several occasions, and after she stole from me twice and I caught her the second time, she pitched a fit and threw one of my antique vases at me. That was the end for me. I felt terrible off and on for several weeks. About a year later, she died, and I was left with so many unanswered questions.
In 1997, I moved from Los Angeles to the Monterey Peninsula in California where I had grown up. I lived there for eight years before moving to Washington state. My time in Monterey turned out to be a period of changes that centered around friendships and relationships in general.
The first relationship that died was only a couple months after I arrived in Monterey. We had been friends since high school. The cause of the relationship ending was a basic misunderstanding combined with a very big lie told by my friend’s brother about me. Her response? Blood is thicker than water. End of story.
It was in 2000 that I again ended a relationship. This was one that was of much shorter duration. We had been neighbors for two years and then roommates for three. I felt like I was the maid service. She did nothing whatsoever to take care of the house. She was a chronic complainer, and I sort of knew this before we lived together, but I didn’t know the extent of it. I suspected she was depressed but she didn’t want to do anything about it. I ended that relationship, and I did a lousy job of ending it too. My bad, as they say. I was sorry to do it, but she was driving me crazy and it was affecting my own mental health.
In 2001, a friend dumped me for something I didn’t do. But, I was so relieved that I didn’t even try to defend myself. I had wanted to dump her for about two years. I just didn’t know how to do it after being friends for twenty-three years. But we had very obviously outgrown each other. I have always been proactive about problems in my life. She was still whining and doing nothing about the same problems she had when I first met her. I was sick and tired of having to listen to her, and many times I felt she was paranoid and possibly delusional. So many people don’t realize the impact their behavior has on others. I had no second thoughts or doubts or concerns about the ending of this relationship. But then she contacted me and wanted us to be friends again and she kept calling me and talking non-stop about her problems and ignoring me completely. I finally had to be really rude, and I told her to not call me again as I hung up the phone on her. Bad ending, but sometimes that’s the way it goes.
In 2004, I dumped someone who I thought was a friend but was anything but. It’s too long a story to tell in full, but suffice it to say that she lied and betrayed me on several occasions that I didn’t know about and that had created some problems in my life that I couldn’t connect back to anyone in particular until a mutual acquaintance had the same problems that were traced directly to her. When I found out she was the cause and then confronted her, she admitted it and made it sound like it was no big deal, no apology, no nothing. But it was a big deal. And that meant goodbye.
I moved to Washington state at the end of 2005, but apparently this rash of ending friendships was not over quite yet. In 2009, I got dumped and also dumped someone else only two months apart. A friend of fifteen years from Los Angeles turned out to be a raving racist. This was extremely ugly and very disturbing to me. Racism had never come up in any conversation I’d ever had with her. She was a Bible-toting Christian, always preaching about love and faith in the Lord. Well, don’t know where that love went. She began making racist remarks about Muslims, and about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama who she was sure was a Muslim. I was appalled, and I didn’t even know what to think or say. Then she made some very derogatory remarks about a very dear friend of mine who is Black. When I tried to talk to her about this, she just gave me a lot of ridiculous excuses for why “white is right.” Hate is something I will not tolerate in anyone, so that was the end of that relationship, and I had no second thoughts about giving her a piece of my mind and dumping her sorry ass for good.
That same year, I was dumped by a friend of five years. She gave no explanation, would not speak to me, would not return my calls, or answer my emails. To this day I have no idea what happened, what went wrong, etc. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I may have said or did to hurt her or anger her or whatever caused the breach. I even emailed her an apology for whatever I might have done. But then a mutual acquaintance said she saw her on the street and made eye contact with her, but she just walked past without speaking. So, I assume I probably had some part in this break-up, but she also seems to have had some issues of her own that contributed to her decision to end our friendship.
Now, that’s the end of people I have dumped or been dumped by. But, just in case you think I now have no friends, it is quite the contrary. I have been friends with Liz since 1974, Gretchen since 1976, Annette since 1978, Jill since 1983 (she passed away in 2022), and Tracey since 1988. In addition, I have many friends who I have known for decades who simply live too far away from me to maintain an active friendship, but we are still friends. And, I have always maintained distant but friendly relationships with my exes. And, I have a ton of cousins, and I am close to all of them. But cleaning house where friends are concerned is one of those things that people simply have to do in this world. Friendships do die, and we just have to move on and make new friends. And, we have to hope we learned from our past relationships so that we can be better at being friends in the future.