When Best Friends Break Up

If friendships had anniversaries the way romantic relationships do, ours would have been coming up soon. We officially became best friends over two decades ago, after being in each other’s orbits for quite a long time before finally committing. But we’re not celebrating that anniversary; we’re celebrating a very different one.

It’s been a year since we last spoke.

Our story was somewhat uncommon. We met during those very awkward, unfriendly middle school years. I was the new girl, with no chance in hell of being folded seamlessly into a group of six other girls who had been together since kindergarten. It wasn’t that we disliked each other. In fact, we probably would have been friends if it weren’t for middle school social politics. When eighth grade finally ended, putting me out of my misery, we parted ways with the expectation that we would never see each other again.

The universe had other plans and orchestrated a chance run-in at Starbucks during spring break of our senior year of high school, some greater force causing us both to crave grande iced caramel macchiatos on the same day at the same time. And so our worlds collided once again, kicking off a whirlwind friend courtship.

Our time together that summer was short-lived, but as the days grew shorter and college started to feel very real, we exchanged AIM handles and dorm room landline numbers and committed to keeping in touch. Pinky promise.

Even while attending colleges 230 miles away from each other, with cellphone calls and texts free only after 9 p.m., we AIMed our little hearts out daily, swapping stories of the cute guys who lived on the floor above us, stale professors overdue for retirement and our brilliant schemes to get our hands on life-changing fake IDs.

We visited each other as frequently as possible, driving cars that were almost as old as we were, no doubt sorely overdue for oil changes, back and forth through miles of corn fields, full to the brim with a sense of invincibility and eagle-eyed vision that allowed one to see while driving in the rain. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Things didn’t get serious, though, until she moved in with my roommate and me for winter break of our senior year. In four short weeks, we made enough memories for a lifetime. To this day, I can’t watch the movie Elf without hearing her laughing and repeating the line, “Bye, Buddy. Hope you find your dad.” I can’t eat chocolate cake without remembering how we came home from the bar late one night and, a la Sex in the City, dug the cake out of the garbage that we had put there so we wouldn’t eat it anymore. And, I can’t live through a significant snowstorm without remembering how we trudged through literally feet of snow — uphill both ways — one night, during a blizzard, to get a drink at our favorite dive.

It was during that blizzard, in that dirty dive bar that only one with Wisconsin blood pumping through their veins could truly love, that she and I solidified our friendship. Under the glow of a blinking neon Pabst sign, with the snow falling at inches per hour outside, we made a vow so mighty that, if broken, the portal to hell would open up and swallow us all whole: We promised to be each other’s maids of honor.

At the time, we didn’t even have dates lined up for that Friday night, let alone men whom we were seriously considering marrying. But that night, while drinking skunky tappers of Miller Lite, we essentially decided we were going to be friends for life.

Two only children who had found what was as close as you could come to being sisters without sharing the same DNA. Off we went, continuing on the path of life, hand in hand, two peas in a pod. Happily ever after.

It wasn’t all dive bars and chocolate cake. We truly went through it all together — bad dates, new boyfriends, breakups, terrible jobs, starting businesses, moving away from each other, ending businesses, engagements, family deaths, estrangements, weddings and divorce. Through all of that, there was this unspoken understanding that we would continue to be there for each other, through all of life’s ups and downs.

I can only speak to female friendships, and I don’t think they get the recognition or attention they deserve or need. There are no soft Instagram launches, no anniversaries or milestones celebrated, no couples therapy when things get rough. The closest either one of us got to publicly announcing our love and affection for one another was at each of our weddings. Standing in front of rooms full of loved ones, champagne glass in hand, reciting funny stories and memories through laughter and tears, telling everyone just how important we were to each other. And, oh yeah, the guy you’re marrying? He’s OK too.

So, that pact we made that cold winter night? That was as close to a commitment as two friends can make.

But then, one day, as organically as our best friendship started, it just … ended.

She called, and I didn’t immediately return her phone call, which wasn’t abnormal for us. We had the kind of friendship where that didn’t mean anything, and we would call each other again an hour or so later. But then I still didn’t call back, and she didn’t call again. Pretty soon, a few weeks had passed, and I wasn’t sure what to do. We had never gone this long without talking, and it had crept into that awkward window of Okkkkk, What the Fuck Do I Do Now?

I realized I didn’t know how to reenter the friendship. Or if I was even supposed to. Like returning to a house you used to live in. It was your home at one point, where you felt so incredibly comfortable and could never imagine it changing. Then, one day, you walk in, look around, and realize, oh my gosh, that is not my couch.

I guess you could say our friendship ended because I didn’t call her back. It was my fault. Right? But blaming me for that feels like blaming the kicker for missing the game-winning field goal, after three hours of play that put him in that position in the first place.

So, clearly, something was very wrong with how we had been playing the game, but no one noticed. Or, someone did and didn’t know how to bring it up. All I know is that our friendship had become as quiet as a 90,000-person stadium a few hours after the game. You could hear a pin drop.

I’m not really into sports anymore, so I’ll cool it with the athletic metaphors after this one: This wasn’t the only game I lost.

I’ve had a lot of friendships end over the course of my life. Almost all are very similar. One day they were there, and the next they were gone. One day, we were swapping inside jokes, making plans for the following weekend, and then, poof, the phone lines went dead.

Without ever getting closure, I was always able to find my own reasons that they ended. To rationalize why it was OK. Telling myself it was time for us to go our separate ways. I may not have known their side of the story, but I imagined they were doing the same thing on their end — justifying why it had been time to move on and realizing that, hey, life isn’t really all that bad without that person playing an active role in it.

But this one? This one was harder to understand, more difficult to wrap my head around or explain away. This was the one that made me look in the mirror and think, What are YOU doing wrong? Because, to me, as long as I had this one particular friendship, all was OK. Losing friend after friend didn’t matter because my ride-or-die friendship was still intact, and that one proved that I was capable of maintaining long, durable friendships. And maintaining long, durable friendships means there is nothing wrong with you.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the one that lets these friendships fall?

Me?

What was it? Did I choose the wrong people? Had my need for acceptance and validation led me into relationships that honestly weren’t good for me? Do I confuse familiarity for compatibility? Do I let circumstantial friendships last longer than their natural life cycle? Do I feel some unnecessary loyalty to longevity? Do I bury hurt feelings until they fester into resentment that becomes too big to address?

Or, is this in my bloodline?

I was raised, more or less, by three very powerful women: my mother, my grandmother and my aunt. Their power showed up in both beautiful and incredibly harmful ways as they raised the next generation, who, for the first 10 years, happened to be only me, another girl.

I learned quickly that we would fight for one another if someone from the outside came at us. If there was a threat or a judgment or someone crossing a line, there was never any confusion about where we stood. But when something went wrong between two or more of us, when the attack came from one of our own, when the call was coming from inside the house, there was no fight at all. There was just terrifying silence.

There was no conversation and certainly no room to express your hurt feelings. At least not without having to brace for the counterattack: Oh yeah? Well, remember this one time, when you did THIS to ME?! Speaking up did not bring resolution or relief. It put you in the hot seat, your past transgressions presented to you one by one.

The house became a painfully cold, you-can-see-your-breath, icy quiet. And the lesson learned was that you just had to ride it out. In a few days, the house would slowly thaw. Things would blow over, and we’d be back to normal.

The difference here was that we lived together. It was inevitable that things would go back to normal. They had to. How long could you keep moving through the same household, walking around the iceberg, without eventually breaking the silence?

That code of conduct was embedded in my being, and I carried it with me into my friendships. So, when the push came, there was no shove. The hurt feelings happened, and they weren’t discussed. The usual way we’d been navigating our friendship freezes to a standstill, and the landscape gets silent. Until the warmth returns and you move on.

But one day, you don’t move on. Or, at least not together.

I don’t actually know why this friendship ended. I have theories, of course, but no proof. No hard, concrete evidence or a single moment I can point to and say, “Aha! This is what did us in.”

I remember one day a few years ago, when we were sending posts back and forth on Instagram. She shared a statistic she’d found that said if you’d been friends for something like eight years, you’d be friends for life. It was this beautiful post with two smiling, happy friends walking in the park, laughing and easily friending. I immediately responded with “So us. Friends 4eva.”

Obviously, this is funny now because that statistic is ridiculous. And the meme swap highlights how much we were looking outside the friendship to tell us that we had nothing to worry about — we were best friends and nothing was going to rock that. But, truth be told, we had stopped, or maybe never even started, looking within our friendship for the tiny holes and fractures that, if left untended, could eventually bring the ship down.

I can’t speak for her, but I can say that I was definitely too timid and afraid to check in with her in that regard. To ask, after all this time, what we still meant to each other, whether we were doing OK, and if there was anything I could do differently in this relationship to hear or see her better.

In my own experience and in my keen observations of others, I can say that even those in romantic relationships hardly make the time or put in the effort to sit down and ask each other those questions. To ensure they are on the same page, let alone in the same book. To approach their relationships with curiosity and make sure they still want and need the same things after all this time. Deciding together that, yes, this still makes sense, and I still want this. I still want you. To get face to face with these conversations where, deep down, you fully understand that the answer could very well one day be, “I need you to work on x, y and z.” Or worse yet, “I no longer need you. I no longer want you.”

It’s that fear of loss and the instinct to protect ourselves at all costs that keeps us from diving into these conversations. It’s what keeps the houses icy silent.

Losing this significant relationship in my life has left me with many unanswered questions that I need to sit with and find answers to. How I want to form relationships moving forward, what changes I need to make in the relationships I currently have, how I can better evaluate how I was raised, and how I can start to break the learned patterns that have really never served me or those whom I love and love me.

Relationships end. But an ending isn’t failure. I know in my heart that this friendship was complete. It served us both well for almost 30 years, and I know I will always carry her and all of our ridiculously wonderful memories with me. I acknowledge that I have grown because she was in my life.

I acknowledge that I have grown because I lost her.