Sometimes a Friendship is Just Over.

You know when a friendship is coming to an end. You just can’t find the motivation to spend any time with that person anymore. Usually because the memories of the last times together still leave a bad taste in your mouth. It’s about a person giving up a feeling of caring for you and not admitting to it. Or it’s an anger that they haven’t expressed about some perceived wrong.


I was in love with a man back in 1998. It was a short relationship that took me a really long time to get over. It took me a long time because of the fantasy. Almost immediately I felt that this was the man I was going to marry. I’ve never felt like this about any one before. It was a feeling, a knowing, that this was the man I was going to marry. I won’t get into depth, I don’t think I can go into depth about it but needless to say it didn’t work out. He told me he loved me but he couldn’t be with me. And it was over.


The interesting thing about it all was this was the first time that I reached out to my friends and said, “I’m heartbroken and I’m having a hard time dealing with this pain.”
I cried on a couple peoples voice mails. I needed support. I needed to be around people who cared about me and I asked for it.


One girlfriend came through once. She’d invited me over to her house. We chatted, I cried, we watched a movie and then her new boyfriend came over to pick her up to go to his performance. I didn’t hear from her again for months. The entire summer went by and we were approaching winter before she’d finally started calling me. I didn’t return her calls.


As I look back on the relationship with this girlfriend, I remember that I’d already been feeling like our friendship needed a break, at the least, or was coming to an end. You know how it is, you just don’t enjoy yourself as much when you spend time with some people. They make decisions about how they want to behave going forward and it could put a substantial strain on your patience.


For instance, I can remember this same girlfriend had decided one year, “this year is going to be All About Me.” And throughout the year she’d announce constantly, “It’s all about me! It’s all about me” It was truly trying especially for the friends who had been with her all along. What does that mean, it’s all about you? What about us, the people who’ve always been here for you and supported you? A couple of us considered dropping out of her life.


So when she didn’t call me for months it was the perfect opportunity to call it a day. So I did. We are in peoples lives for a reason and when the reason is gone...


A couple of points come up as I think about this. I needed to move away from that relationship as a part of my healing. When I’m in anger mode and that is all that I can focus on... When all I can think of about a friendship are the negatives, I think, for me, it’s time to move on. It may be for a short time. It may be that it takes a decade to see things from a different perspective. It may be that the friendship will never ever happen again. It happens as it happens.


We have recently, within the last year, resumed contact with each other. It’s not the same kind of friendship, obviously. But we are friendly. I can remember all the things I’ve always liked about her again.


The ideas that are popping up for me now, as I look back on this lesson of friendship is that I had certain expectations. I set expectations on how I thought I should be treated during my time of need. I was upset, I made the meaning of her caring or lack of caring about, “you didn’t call me for 6 months when you knew I was depressed and heartbroken.” And the big part of all of that is I never said anything to her about it. I didn’t give her a chance to say her peace. Granted, as I said earlier, after the ‘all about me’ year I needed a break.


I think that we can be cowards. We’re all guilty of this. At some point something happens in our lives and we have the expectation that certain people should show up for us. We have a health issue and we think our best friend should show up. We’re going through a hard time and we think our friends should care in a certain way. They should care in the way that we say. But if someone is being exactly who they are we have to then understand that they may only be able to give so much. And the bigger point, there may be a bigger reason why they simply cannot show up. They just don’t want to anymore, can be one of those reasons.


I have to accept that I play a part in all that happens around me. All that I create. I also have to hope that the more I delve into what I see, the more I will learn. As we know better, we do better...


I’ve discussed this before - accepting people exactly the way they are and accepting myself exactly the way I am. I think it’s a huge theme for the future, for everyone. We hear it, we’ve said it, if we’re going to stop wars, if we’re going to ever see world peace we have to stop trying to insist that all people be just like us. We have to learn to accept everyone’s differences. I’m no philosopher nor an academic so I won’t get into the atrocities that we humans commit against one another and entire countries.


I have another girlfriend. Her achilles heel is that people abandon her. She has told me on several occasions, “it seems like out of the blue someone freaks out on me and they basically tell me to go fuck myself and then they’re gone from my life. They don’t want to be my friend anymore. It has happened so many times and I don’t know why.”


I’ve been a coward. I suspect why some people have left her life, burning that bridge beyond repair. I’ve told her in one instance but not in all of them. She has the answer to everyones life, all the time. She has the answer with a touch of venom using poison tipped words. And she blames the person for any bad in his or her life. She’s simply not nice anymore. And she’s always had that insensitive edge to her. One of those, “I’m just telling you this for your own good” which is supposed to absolve her of any wrong when she says something without tact. You can tell somebody something for their own good without being an asshole.


She’s going through what so many of us go through once we hit a certain age. It’s having to face the reality that all of our childhood dreams have not been met. Let’s look at my realities - I never became a dancer. I’m still an unpublished writer. I’ve never been married or had children. Heck, I don’t even live in a fancy anything. I’ve accepted that. The only thing that hurts is being unpublished.


This girlfriend hasn’t accepted her reality and worse, she’s mad at those of us who are living our lives the best way we can and we are all starting to realize that about her. She cannot find a way to be happy when one of us has a nice bit of happiness enter our lives.


So slowly as I realize that this is exactly who she is. This is what she is going through. I spend less time with her. I would guess that so does everyone else. Hey, my life sucks too sometimes, I don’t need to make it suck more by spending the little free time I have with someone who is filled with venom.


Needless to say, she went through a breakup similar to mine and when she called asking for help she threatened, “If someone doesn’t call me back I’m going to do something really bad to myself.”


And that loaded word obligation came up. I didn’t want to call but I didn’t want to be left with the guilt that if I didn’t call and she did do something to herself that somehow I would have been at fault. So I called. She wasn’t a crying mess like I had been. She was angry and filled with all the answers as to how she is filled with a power that had intimidated her boyfriend and that’s why he left. Okay. When I changed the subject and asked about mutual friends, she proceeded to blame one for being sick, said another one was in an arranged situation (‘there’s really no love there) and asked me when I was going to get off my ass and get my writing done. Did I mention she doesn’t work and I work a full-time job and a part-time job? Yes it’s easy to have all the answers for the world at large when you haven’t worked a day in your life. But that’s just a little of my venom.


After that call I didn’t bother to call her for 6 months. I just couldn’t be bothered. I felt like her cry for help was emotional blackmail, a manipulation and I just couldn’t be a part of it. Emotional blackmail is one of my achilles heels. Emotional blackmail gets you to say yes when you don’t want to say yes for fear that should you say no something really bad could happen and by extension it would be your fault. I do not respect anyone who gives me no choice other than doing what they want me to do. IT MAKES ME HATE!


Anyway. We recently got together for dinner. I didn’t really want to go but I figured since it had been at least 6 months maybe it was the time to approach the subject. The moment I saw her I realized that nope, it wasn’t going to be discussed. The first thing out of her mouth was a careless remark that was basically like a laugh at how hard I work. Basically I’m a loser in her eyes.


I sat across from her and for the first time ever all I saw was an ugly person. Her skin looked ugly, her eye contact was angry and ugly. She was ugly to me. I knew that her poison tipped words were probably about her anger towards me. She is angry that I haven’t called her in six months. She is angry that I didn’t support her in her time of need. She didn’t ask me why I haven’t been available and I didn’t volunteer the information. Another girlfriend said to me last night, “that dinner was the funeral for your relationship.” Truth!


As I look back at the girlfriend who didn’t call me for six months, I wonder had she felt she’d done enough of what she could possibly give me at that time? Was I putting on her expectations of what I wanted not considering what she could do? Does my heartbreak mean that everyone else should stop what they are doing to sit vigil by my side? Does your heartbreak mean that I have to sit vigil? And it brings me back to accepting people exactly the way they are and accepting myself exactly the way I am.


Byron Katie shared a story a few years ago about her husband who wasn’t interested in joining on family outings. The outing were with her grown up kids and he didn’t have kids. And overall he just wasn’t interested. She made it into a thing briefly and then finally set him free from having to attend. She made family plans without him and found she enjoyed those outings more because she wasn’t worrying about him having a good time. And he went off and did his own thing. It wasn’t too long before once he had the freedom he started joining the family outings and started having a good time himself. She said something along the lines that when she realized she wasn’t responsible for him and accepted that the family thing wasn’t his thing it made everything easier. And for him, he needed the freedom to choose and when he did have the freedom he actually chose them.


I’m really trying to find that place of true full out acceptance. Removing false expectations and obligations from others and hopefully they will do the same for me.


The best analogy has always been about giving money to charity. It would be ridiculous to donate your entire pay cheque to a charity leaving you with no money to pay rent, get groceries etc. No, you give a portion of your pay. You give what you can afford to give.


I want to accept that people, my friends, my loved ones are giving me what they can afford to give emotionally, spiritually, keeping their own well being in consideration. I want to remove the focus on what I think they ought to give me, how they ought to support me. How many phone calls are enough phone calls if I’m heartbroken. Because if I lift my head and look around, other people did support me through that heart break. I wasn’t alone.


That work as yoga practice has really been helping me to look at my life from a different perspective, with a different attitude. And zero in on where I cause my own problems and zero in on what meanings I give to events that don’t have to mean the most negative.


And that said, sometimes a friendship is just over.

This was a long piece. If you’ve made it through the whole piece SERIOUSLY Thank you for reading!

EY

Work/Yoga Mindset

We are all Teachers

Monday 8:27pmn 16June08

"I love you and I do what I feel is intelligent and kind and it may not match your request, but as a loving human being those are going to be my standards. I'm not going to sell my soul out, my life out, my self love and respect out to please another human being. That makes me a terrible teacher. We're all teachers and we teach through the way that we live. There's no teaching more powerful than that. If I live a lie, I teach a lie. I teach it to others and I teach it to myself. " Byron Katie

I decided to listen to another podcast while I was eating my dinner and taking a break from writing. I chose to listen to an episode of Conversations with Masters who is hosted by Life Coach, Mary Allen. Holy Cow! I think I found something to replace television once and for all! Of course that's because I decided to listen to Byron Katie first.

I've mentioned her once before in a previous post and everytime I read something about her work or listen to her doing her work, my brain clicks right into it and I have these great AHA moments! On the podcast episode which was from 2007 she talks to a woman who is having disagreements with her mother, as daughters will do, and Byron Katie discusses stuff about love. The above quote is part of the discussion.

How many times have we been convinced to do something we don't want to do, in the name of loving someone? How many times have we spoken up and said, "I don't want to do this," and the person understands or doesn't understand and we've chosen what we wanted, not what they wanted? I've done it but only after years of doing what the other person wants. I admit to it, I've been a people pleaser when it comes to people I love. But all I did was teach them how to disregard what I wanted (because if you guilt trip me enough, I'll give in) and push until they got what they wanted. Wow! Did I really type that? It's what fed into my depression so I might as well be honest about it and stare it down. It was the depression that ultimately made me less of a people pleaser with friends, family and ultimately the men that have come into my life and are continuing to come into my life.

Of course I've mentioned it here about a zillion times but spending Christmas on my own was a big challenge of not hurting anyone's feelings but ultimately it became about me being happy. It is a big example for me because it was such a hard road of accepting invitations out of gratitude and loving my friends and yet never being happy on the day. And more recently my best-friend in Montreal mentioned that I'd need to spend another Christmas with he and his family and when I'd explained that I love spending it on my own he said, "But you can't spend EVERY Christmas alone!" Yes! I can! Until I don't want to anymore.

Byron Katie gives this great example about her new husband telling her several years ago that, despite her having three grown kids and grandkids, he had never been around kids and he wasn't particularly interested in going to family reunions. She said she loved him for being honest, loving and kind. He didn't tell her that she couldn't go, he told her that he wasn't interested in going. So she planned reunions without her husband. She enjoyed the time she had to focus more on her children. She didn't focus on her husband who wasn't interested in being there for that event. It was fabulous if he went or fabulous if he didn't go. A few years later he decided that he was ready and told her, "I'd like to go to the family reunion."

Could you imagine? She describes him as, "an honest human being who knows what he wants and has a willingness to change it, but in his own time."

It's like having best girlfriends who meet the big significant other and then insist that the only time you get to spend with them is with the significant other in tow. You don't always want to do that even if you like the guy. But that kind of honesty can often alter a friendship forever but it could be because so many of us have the attitude that love means, "if you love me, you'll do what I want." That's not love.

I can do what you want for a long time, sometimes years, but eventually I will leave you and so abruptly that you can't figure out where the heck that came from. What happened? Where did she go? Where did I go indeed...

I've been trying my darndest to keep myself being myself as I get to know this man that I find attractive. As I may have mentioned before I often turn interests into plain friendships but if the truth be known with this one, I saw him first and continue to see him as a very attractive man. Friendship, Schmenship! Wow! I typed that too! I've become the giddy girl with giddy girl breathless excitement when he comes around. I repeat friendship, schmenship...

I'm happy to say that despite the giddy girl behaviour that I have been myself. I've used swear words in my discussions. I've said my wacky ideas that come to my head. I've complained about things. I've been honest about aspects of my situation/ environment... And attractive giddy girl inducing man will either like me or not and that's fabulous. Because if he decides he's not interested he won't be interested in me, not some girl that I thought he would be attracted to.

And when I see him again each day, as I do, I will keep more of Byron Katie's words in my head:
"We meet someone and then we turn into the person we think they want us to be. We say what we think they want to hear. We do what we think they want us to do. We become puppets, a facade. We become who we think they want us to be and we haven't even included them in it. We haven't asked them is this what you want. We just assume. Eventually when they do care for us or love us, or tell us that they love us, we don't believe them because they love someone that doesn't exist and we know that. Winning someone's love cannot be done. I cannot manipulate you into loving me."

EY

Unsolicited Advice

Sunday 27Jan08 12:33pm

Have I mentioned that I'm not a fan of unsolicited advice? It drives me crazy. I get that most times people mean well when they announce how they think you should (big should) live your life. What drives me crazy about it the most is that when I respond with some comment as to why that's nice information but this is what I'm doing with my life, the person refuses to 'hear' what I am saying.

Out at the bar about a week ago, one of the women asked me if they'd end up in my novel. I laughed and said, "No, maybe in ten years! You need to have distance from something in order to make it true fiction."
I didn't think anythng more about it. Because, although I have fun at the bar, it's not really something I'll ever write about. But in all situations people always ask if they'll end up in my novel so I try to have a nice answer. What I really want to say is that it's not that interesting to end up in a novel but instead say maybe in ten years because people feel that you think they are more interesting than they are.

This week, my dream buddy says, " I know you say that you wait ten years before you write about something but I THINK you should write about it now. You can't remember everything and it's important to record things to remember them."
I tell him, "That was just an arbitrary number, 10 years. I journal what inspires me or what stands out in my mind but my fiction isn't me just taking what's happened and fictionalizing it. My fiction is fiction. Plus I have enough novel ideas to keep me busy for twenty years."
"Well, you should write things down to keep yourself up with ideas... blah blah blah."
"Okay buddy, you are not listening to me." And he got that, "I'm right" expression on his face as those unsolicited self proclaimed guru's get because I am too stubborn to realize that they know what's right for me.

I just have to say, because it needs to be said, When you're life is perfect maybe then you can tell me what you think I should be doing in my life and how I should do it. When you're life is perfect, I'll ask you specific questions about your area of expertise. It's always what I love to say, "You don't ask a poor person for advice on how to get rich, because clearly he doesn't know how to get rich. And you don't ask someone whose life isn't working how to go after your dreams. I'm just saying.

I find myself saying to so many people when they insist their advice on me, "I didn't ask!" But it generally falls on deaf ears.
Now I'm not saying that I don't ever listen to anyone. But there are those people who think they know me and people who really do know me. I know the people who know me by what they say to me. They are the people who listen, ask questions and suggest rather than insist. There are people that I ask, "what's your opinion on this?"

On the flip side, it's so nice to have people in my life that get me. My girlfriend who mentioned that my returning to blogging made her sigh with relief. Not once had she ever said, when I wasn't blogging, "You know if you start blogging you'll get out of your 2007 funk." My girlfriend who kept pushing me to come out when I was in pain because she knew that even if I got out for an hour, I would know that I wasn't going through it alone. She didn't tell me I should get out, she just tried to push to it. If I told her to stop she would have but deep inside I knew she was right and I was impressed that she knew how to get me out without giving me advice.

I've been trying to, as I've read somewhere, to just smile and say thanks for sharing with the self proclaimed guru's of my life. But I find what happens is they think it's an opening for more, "this is what you should be doing rants."
I look for areas in my life where I may be doing the same thing, but I'm so mindful of how annoying it is to act like you know everything that I honestly don't believe I do it to people. I'll say, "this is what I've done, when I've been in that situation," but I never say, "you should do this." Who the heck am I to say to anyone, "you should do this?"

Who is anybody to say that? What if there is a path that we are meant to follow? What if we are supposed to struggle at some things, procrastinate at others, excel at some, and just plain try all the wrong avenues before we find our proper place? What if every moment of our lives, is our proper place?


Even with deaths, I'm starting to look at them from a different perspective. I never say any more that some one has died prematurely. What if the death isn't premature? What if their purpose was to have a short life? There is nothing more inspiring to get us to live our lives fully than the example of some one dying young. A person's life is an example to someone to live more, or try more.

I don't know. I've never claimed to have the answers. I just have things that I want to work on overcoming or handling. And being given unsolicited advice is a biggie. If I'm going to make an effort to maintain more relationships with people who don't necessarily get me, I have to, for myself, look at ways to accept that from people without feeling all knotted up about it.

I receive a boatload of emails from different newsletters around the world on working on my stuff. It interests me. I don't always read all the emails but on some days one of the subjects will catch my eye and I'll read the email. I've been receiving emails from Byron Katie for over a year and only read an email just recently. I clicked on to her website and listened/watched her you tube video on what she teaches called, "The Work."

It's interesting work. Especially when I found out that she had also suffered from depression for a number of years and got herself out of it by changing her thinking. As is You Tube's way, after you watch one video, it offers similar videos and I came upon one from Janaka or is it Janaki? I'll have to check again.

It was a goodie! It was ofcourse about how we all want to help others and feel that we know what is best for them. And how about we choose to believe that they are doing the right things for themselves and ultimately that we are doing what is right for ourselves. The link to that video is : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhO0UDwfza4

Click the title to be forewarded to it. Interesting work, The Work.

EY