A male reader named “Krist” posted an interesting question on our Facebook page. I thought others might have the same dilemma so I asked him for permission to share my reply here. He agreed and he offered for me to use his real (and uncommon) first name.
Krist wrote:
“I recently read the book you co-authored with Gary Chapman, “When Sorry Isn’t Enough.” It described PERFECTLY the problems that ended my last relationship/very dear friendship, and that continue to keep us apart.”:
The book focused a great deal on how apologies can heal and mend relationships; marriages, siblings, parents and children, friendships. But what about simply healing past hurts and going your separate ways in peace? It is not always meant for a relationship to be mended and move forward, but healing past hurts can go a long way towards being able to move into new relationships with a sense of peace, without having the past nagging at your conscience. ..is my opinion, at least. Do you have thoughts or advice on this idea?
My reply:
Krist, thank you for your questions. I’m glad to hear that our book addressed the problems that cropped up in your very dear friendship. I know first-hand how upsetting and all-consuming broken relationships can be. Personally, I often find that misunderstandings get blown out of proportion and soon the relationship gets blown up. With one friend, our superhighway of communication was reduced to rubble. There was no passable road for seven long years.
In your question, you made a nice list of family relationships and then you ended with friendships. To your point, family and covenant relationships are different from friendships. I believe that they DO require more attempts at reconciliation than friendships do.
I think you’re right that the best we can do in some friendships is to “heal past hurts and go your separate ways in peace.” What might that look like? It’s hard to write the perfect scenario because it is an uncomfortable situation. If possible, I’d talk calmly with my former friend and say something like this: I’m sorry to see that our friendship is not working right now. I can see that you’re hurt and I feel awkward too. I want you to know that I will not harbor bitterness towards you. In fact, I wish you all the best. I hope you can say the same for me. If you do want to reconnect at some point, let’s start slowly- maybe through letters. In the meantime, I will continue to laugh at our shared jokes and be grateful for the memories we’ve made together.
To My Blog Readers:
Can you relate to his situation?
What advice might you offer?
I was able to rid myself of a one-sided relationship by just standing up for myself. A friend of mine of over 20 years was in the habit of asking me for favors, leaning on me and generally taking me for granted (because of our long-standing friendship, I let her). In our final chapter, she asked me to watch her two children, a girl and a boy, while she had to work one day. Her son came to my house with the intention of stealing my son’s toys while my son was at school. I know this because he made a bee-line to the toy box and started his search to “play” but instead inconspicuously started pocketing his favorite legos with his father still in the room. After his father left, I actually witnessed him putting the toys in his pocket. I immediately alerted his mother, my friend, by text because she was at work, telling her what he was doing. She text me back telling me to tell him right off to give the toys back. This might have been my one mistake; I should have disciplined him and good. I instead took the toys out of his jacket pocket when he wasn’t looking and left the discipline to her. The children’s grandfather picked them up at the end of the day so I expected her to behave responsibly and have her son come apologize to us at some point in the future…and that was the extent of my expectations. It seems I very stupidly expected her to show us what a good family she had and I expected too much. In the next few weeks, she text me once and emailed me once through Facebook explaining that she was just touching base with me and nothing more about her son stealing at all. I responded both times asking her if she was going to have her son apologize and both times she flipped out, blaming me for not telling her (?isn’t that what I had been doing?), being ignorant, not knowing her culture and only wanting to correspond with her through texts/emails (?isn’t that what SHE was doing?). I don‘t know, do Native American cultures ignore stealing? Is it really that hard to have a 5-year-old offer some kind of simple apology to people they call friends? She also told me that her son was a victim of bullying from children (what THAT has anything to do with this, I‘ll never understand). It seemed to me to be a very odd, backwards and exaggerated response to what I thought was a very valid and simple expectation. It’s not in my culture to allow anyone to steal from my home and family without any consequence, adult OR child. Suffice it to say that she decided to go her own way in place of having her son apologize to my son and to our family. It was her choice to walk away. Really, I don’t feel responsible to call her or show up at her house and demand an apology but maybe that was a stupid expectation of hers. Who knows? All I know now is that I am GLAD and HAPPY to be rid of her kind of “friendship” no matter how long we were friends. Her son really did me a favor by putting us in a situation that highlighted the disrespect she really had for me and my family. I think it’s best to be rid of relationships that are one-sided and the best way is to let it happen naturally by sticking up for ones-self. It is inevitable that a self-centered narcissist will pull away when confronted with reality….or a friend who isn’t just going to keep taking the disrespect. Good riddance to that!