For quite sometime I have been lamenting over a friendship that had fallen apart. I understood what brought our friendship to an end. I accepted that even if we could become friends again it would never be the same. And, to be honest, I really wasn't holding out any hope that our friendship would be repaired. Sometimes, things are just over and it is time to move on.
However, this was proving to be harder that I expected. The reality of the situation was this wasn't just my friendship that ended.
Our husbands were friends.
Our children were friends.
In fact, we were really more like family.
So, despite my head knowledge of an ended friendship... my heart still longed for that family that was missing from our lives.
It's been about 5 months now. Our oldest daughters are occasionally in touch. Husbands too.
I asked my husband a few nights back if he had spoken with her husband recently. He said that it had been a few days and commented about their inability to spend any time together. What ended up happening was an hour long conversation about not the situation but the family I was missing so much. Not about all the details of what went wrong, or how it could be repaired... but just about the family.
What I realized....
I missed her husband. Truth was, I probably had more in common with him than her.
I missed her kids. I loved their kids, like my own. I missed not knowing what was going on in their lives.
I even missed their pets!
I realized that in the years I have known that family, I have watched friends come and go... we aren't the first & won't be the last.
I realized that when we would be over there with other families... often their wives were not there. It would be the husbands with the kids.
I realized that on those occasions when there were other women around, their husbands were not there. It was then my husband stated that as long as we have been friends, he never felt her husband was as vested in the friendship as he was. And that, he believed that her husband kept a distance with all their friends because he never knew when they were going to leave.
She drives people out of her life.
She also suffers from depression and low self esteem.
I didn't recognize it, but she does what a lot of people who suffer from serious depression do. They distance themselves from people. Not just by pulling themselves away, but by even going so far as to push those who are closest to them away. That creates even more distance.
I had seen this behavior in others before, but I suppose I was too close to recognize it in my own "best friend".
But what does this mean?
The conversation helped me realize that I wasn't as close to her as I thought. If we were really that close of friends, I would have recognized it.
It helped me realize that what I was really missing was the family, not her specifically. But she was part of the package deal.
It also helped me realize that despite our friendship being over, she is a woman who needs to be prayed for.
No comments:
Post a Comment