Girl Talk: Can You Regrow A Girlfriendship?
Posted by: Ali Jawin
Filed in:
relationships
10:30AM, Tuesday June 23rd 2009
I have been truly lucky in my life in terms of the quality of female friendships I have experienced. As much as I love being in a romantic relationship with a man, the love in a girl friendship is somehow much sweeter. I tenderly look back at the hours on the phone every night giggling and gossiping over a shared secret. I remember long summer evenings at summer camp on the screened-in porch playing jacks. I can’t look at a piece of chocolate and not think back to the nights of gorging on Reese’s Pieces and watching all six hours of the BBC’s “Pride and Prejudice”... on VHS. Due to many circumstances, best girl friends have wandered in and out of my life for years. I moved, they moved, the event which brought us together ended—there are a myriad of reasons why a girl friendship can die a natural death. It is always a sad event, but when distance or time is the major culprit, these girl friendships often dissolve as innocently and seamlessly as they began.
While I do remember these girl friendships fondly, I do not think they will be revived. Our moments together were magical, but they were just mere moments. Of course they added a richness and texture to my life, but I think those girl friendships will only live on in my memories. It’s bittersweet to watch the end of these girl friendships, and I have often tried to keep them together even after one of us has moved, but there is often the inevitable drifting. There are other reasons, however, that girl friendships end, and in these situations there is usually nothing but raw emotion at the end.
There have been three major girl friendships in my life where one of us did something to destroy the relationship. I know my language is harsh, but I doubt there are strong enough words to express the pain when you have been hurt by your girlfriend, or even worse, when you recognize you are the one at fault. With the first one, well, it was so long ago I can’t remember the exact details. I know I must have been about 10, it was at summer camp, and know that in no uncertain terms I was the one in the wrong. I can’t remember my exact motivation, but I do remember telling my friend’s secret to another girl. Knowing my insecurity at that age I was probably trying to impress this other girl or boost my popularity. Whatever my reasoning, or lack thereof was, my friend found out. The gory details of the friendship breakup has gotten foggier with time, but I clearly remember one teary scene where she asked how I could have done this to her. I am not sure if the guilt hit me at that moment, or if it grew over the years. What I do know is that at the moment I blabbed I could not have possibly conceived of the consequences. I didn’t miss her right away, probably because I was too busy defending myself and trying to hold to whatever friends I still had. At some point, when my self righteous crusade was over, I grieved. My young heart was broken and it felt like there was nothing I could do to fix it. The combination of youth, insecurity, arrogance and fear prevented me from taking some grand action to set things to right.
What could I do now? I truly don’t know, it has been so long. I am sure she remembers me, but I wonder if she remembers how things ended. Maybe she erased me from her memory after I hurt her and just vaguely recalls that I was some girl she was once close to. I could reach out, as I know she is also now living in New York. Frankly, I probably won’t because I am terrified. Terrified to confront her and terrified to own up to what I did. Perhaps too much time has gone by on this one, but I do not believe that a girl friendship cannot be regrown. I alluded to two other difficult girl friendship breakups, one of which I am not ready to discuss. The gist of the story is that this time I was the one betrayed and I am not ready to forgive her. I think she has tried, but I know I am prejudiced and would have disregarded her earlier attempts at patching things up. I am not particularly spiteful, but while I wish her no ill will, I am not ready to regrow that particular friendship. This happened a year ago, so maybe time will indeed heal my wounds. Maybe it won’t.
After my melancholy musings, it seems unlikely that I will end with hope for the regrowth of girl friendships. Nope. I waxed on poetically of the joys of girl friendships, but I didn’t go into great detail about the inherent complexities in them. Complexity is not a detriment to friendship, but the very reason why girl friendships are unique. Girl friendships are intricate webs of shared experiences, thoughts and emotions. Considering all the elements that create these relationships, how could they be anything but volatile? My best friend and I have certainly had our fair share of ups and downs. There were years we were inseparable and years we didn’t talk. It’s impossible to tally who screwed up more or who made the effort to reconnect. And yet, we always find each other again. We grow, sometimes apart and sometimes together, but in the end we always grow closer.
It’s not easy to re-grow a girl friendship. I do not even think it is always possible. Reconnecting over Facebook isn’t enough, nor is the occasional drink. Re-growing a friendship requires the concentrated effort of two people trying to bridge the gap that has kept them apart. How one does that? Good question. All I know is girl friendships can be rekindled if both women are willing to put themselves out there. Just like with a romantic relationship, you may get hurt or rejected, but the possible rewards make it all worthwhile.
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pennybadday
wrote on June 23 2009 @ 10:46 am: [report]
I enjoyed this article. Right now I’m trying to figure out if I can regrow my friendship with my best guy friend…we haven’t spoken in months but I know we still care about each other. But it definitely does take effort for both parties and risk.
musu
wrote on June 23 2009 @ 10:46 am: [report]
it is never to late to ask for forgiveness and, no matter what the response, you will feel more complete for having tied those loose ends. Once, I reached out to a girl friend many years after I had hurt her (and she moved away—because of me, I think) to ask for her forgiveness. I was shocked that she said no but I soon realized that we all do the best we can do and it was her choice to keep me out of her life. A chapter was closed and my guilt was disappeared. A few months ago, I again asked for forgiveness from a friend for what I thought was a betrayal more than 10 years ago and she said that she had never noticed! The bottom line is that when you learn to ask for forgiveness, you also learn how to forgive yourself. A very nice quid quo pro, don’t you think?
Humble Bee
wrote on June 23 2009 @ 11:02 am: [report]
Right now i’m not on speaking terms with my girlfriend, and I’m not the reaching out type either. I don’t have myspace or facebook so I haven’t really comunicated with “friends” I feel like these days it hard to find a loyal friend, everyone is out for themselves, and I feel like so-called friends give you negative advice so you won’t do better than them, like if its a competition. I have only come across one truly good friend and she’s out there bettering herself going to med school, I know that I could definitely regrow our friendship because she is so genuine. When I need to get things off my chest I tell my parents, I used to tell friends but it always back fires, I rather tell complete strangers here at the Frisky than tell my ‘friends’.
alliecat
wrote on June 23 2009 @ 11:16 am: [report]
I just had this same discussion with my (male) roommate yesterday. He asked why I don’t turn to my girlfriends at school when I need a shoulder to lean on, and I told him flat out it’s because I don’t trust them. I adore my gal pals, but we’re all Criminal Justice majors at the same academic level, so I’m scared to death anything I reveal to them will be seen as a weakness and exploited. CJ is a really competitive field, and I’m petrified that one of them is just competitive enough to use my moment of weakness against me to get ahead.
When I need to talk to someone, I either lean on my roommate, or I call up my best guy friend in New Jersey - he and I have been friends for 8 years now and we’ve had times where we didn’t speak for months, and times when we spoke every day, but we always find one another. He has seen me through every major event in my life, from losing my mom, to losing my dad, to making the decision to go back to school, and I’ve always been a phone call away if he needed me. We’ve never spent time in the same room together, but I’d rather talk to him than the people I see at school every day.
Ali Jawin
wrote on June 23 2009 @ 11:40 am: [report]
@Humble Bee: I agree that finding a true friend is one of the greatest challenges there is when it comes to human relationships. A certain amount of deceit is tolerated, if not expected in other relations. No one judges you if you fudge a few details of your romantic history with your boyfriend, or if you don’t tell your parents everything you did last night. With girl friends it is different. The expectation of complete honesty is liberating but potentially heart breaking. There is nothing more helpful than a girl friend who knows you inside and out during an hour of need, but it also awful when you have been used.
I have to say the risk of getting hurt is worth it. Bonds of true friendship take years and years to develop. Maybe try opening up to people slowly. Let them earn your trust. You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to. One day you may want to open up, or not, but you may have found few people you enjoy spending time with along the way.
blackwidowchick12
wrote on June 23 2009 @ 04:41 pm: [report]
I have had no luck when it comes to girlfriends. I know I may be to blame in some cases, but the older I have gotten I have just grown so indifferent to the friendships that dissolve. I feel like getting into these fights at 25 is childish, something I left behind in middle school. I had a friend who if you said something that she didn’t like (even if it had nothing to do with her) she would act nasty and give you the cold shoulder, then when you ask her what is wrong she says “nothing”. After about a dozen times of that I have just cut her out of my life and she doesn’t understand why. I have told her and all my friends “If I say or do something that hurts your feelings or you don’t like, tell me up front and I will apologize because that was not my intention” if you can’t do that one simple thing, you do not need to be my friend because I don’t want high school drama. How many of you feel the same I do?
chouette
wrote on June 24 2009 @ 02:10 pm: [report]
@ blackwidow: Story of my life! I sometimes think that my “friends” make a conscious decision to take things I say the wrong way instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt or even calling me out on it. And the passive-aggressive “nothing’s wrong” is the worst. I’m at the point now where I’m going to give up on a few friendships because I don’t think I should have to put up with childish crap anymore. I can’t play guessing games about what I did to make my 24yr old friend ignore me like a fourth-grader.
greggy
wrote on June 25 2009 @ 02:36 pm: [report]
Some girlfriends I’ve simply had to cut out. At the moment, I have two that I miss and I’m contemplating attempting to regrow these friendships. Alas, like someone else said, I’m not the type to reach out. The closest I came to doing that was adding one as a friend on facebook. As for the other, she just had a baby (friendship ended post baby) and I’m planning to send her the shower gift that she absolutely wanted but never got (Your Baby Can Read). It would probably be better for me to just call her, but that’s not my style.
I stick to my sisters (I have 7) now. Even when we fight, we make up. We don’t get petty, we don’t spread rumors (for the most part). We disagree, we’re done, new topic. Other than that, I’ve given up on having girlfriends.
MissPriss
wrote on June 26 2009 @ 01:06 am: [report]
Ali- Thanks for posting this article. I have two friends who have been my best friends since I was 13. They are awesome, but we all live in different cities- I actually live abroad- and it is impossible to keep up the kind of closeness that we once had. I feel like they make me feel guilty for living far away and not being “there for them.” We’re all experiencing new things and growing apart. As you so rightly pointed out, the only way to rekindle a friendship is to give it a concentrated effort- this is really difficult when you don’t live in the same place. I’m kinda at a loss of what to do. Your article and the comments that followed helped me to realize other women were struggling with female friendships as well. I don’t want to throw away years and years of frienship, but I can’t help but think—if a friendship is so much effort- is it worth it? Shouldn’t friendships be easy?
I agree with the commenters that stick to family. I can actually be honest with my sisters without worrying that they’ll accuse me of “not supporting them” if my opinion differs from theirs.
My other comment is that it is a bit worrisome that women seem so scared to have close girlfriends. A lot of the women who commented do not want to risk being let down or are afraid to really trust other women- what does that say about our gender? My husband never gets in fights with his guy friends. Why do women bring so much drama?
blackwidowchick12
wrote on June 26 2009 @ 05:18 am: [report]
@MissPriss: I think women bring drama because we are more emotional by nature. I even read this in a chapter of a book “Why men don’t understand and why women need more shoes” by Barbara and Allan Peas. See women, when we have friendships what are they about? We tell each other our hopes and dreams and our secrets. We are basically each others support system and sometimes there is shopping and lunching and clubbing thrown in, but most of our needs from a friend is emotional. Men on the other hand don’t talk about stuff that we talk about with our friends which is why they don’t get into arguments and misunderstandings. When my husband goes to his best friends house they are either playing video games, shooting guns, or working on their cars. Whenever women have a problem we like to talk to people to listen and sometimes get advice to what we should do (and that can be misconstrued sometimes as talking behind a persons back) Guys keep to themselves when they have a problem thinking they will fix it themselves.
CraftLass
wrote on June 26 2009 @ 06:07 am: [report]
I’ve had some incredibly rotton and toxic friendships and had to cut many women from my life. In school, friendships were usually tenous things, every girl did seem out for herself alone and no one could be trusted. After high school, I had a couple of experiences with seriously crazy women that wrecked any trust I had left. For a few years I became practically a hermit over that, but I’ve worked hard to learn how to trust the right people and it has definitely paid off. I have more girl friends than ever before, and they’re real friends.
I have regrown friendships that broke due to neglect, that’s pretty easy even from a distance. Real friends don’t care if it’s been 2 years or 20, the friendship stays just as comfy as ever as soon as you reconnect and there’s no guilt involved. The friendships that exploded, though, well, that’s actually a dangerous road, comparable to taking back an abusive spouse.
If your friends don’t support you, purposely give you bad advice, or try to cut you down in any way, they’re not friends. It’s that simple. Those friendships are never worth pursuing or repairing.
My father always said that if you have one true friend in life you are extremely lucky. Anything more than that and you’ve basically won the lottery. So, I feel lucky about the friends I have that are worth the effort, especially the women.
Just because women are complex doesn’t mean our relationships need to be so darn hard! It makes me sad when women say they can’t trust any woman, says a lot more about the person saying that than anyone else. Be trustworthy yourself and you’ll find SOMEONE you can trust. There is no way that a SO or family can completely replace the need for at least one girl who’s just a plain ol’ good friend you can share with.
But before you try to fix a broken friendship, run through the same checklist as you would if considering taking back an ex. The good thing is, if the friendship is built on a solid foundation, it’s easy to rebuild. If it’s not, you weren’t friends in the first place.
Ali Jawin
wrote on June 26 2009 @ 07:53 am: [report]
@blackwidowchic12: I understand what you are saying about all the drama, especially because I know I am guilty of it myself. I never been to be passive aggressive, but I hate confrontation. Even if I am annoyed with someone I would rather act as if nothing was bothering me, even though my anger seeps out. The other person knows I am upset and then gets more annoyed when I won’t say why. I am really not trying to be a diva, but I know that sometimes my feelings are irrational or whatever I want to say will only make the situation worse. And yet, I am still really angry. I guess that is the definition of passive/aggresive.
Ali Jawin
wrote on June 26 2009 @ 08:01 am: [report]
@MissPriss: I agree that girlfriendships are ridiculously complicated, but then again, all relationships are complicated. Family tends to be easier, but I think that is because at the end of the day you have to love your family, even if you don’t like them. Family relationships takes less effort as you are naturally brought together for important events like births, deaths, weddings, birthdays…You can never really escape your family, for better or worse.
Friends and significant others are a different story. There is nothing holding two people together except the shared desire to have a relationship. People are so naturally different and self-protective that opening yourself up to another and building trust requires Herculean effort. It’s always amazes me that even the strongest ties of friendship can crumble with just one sentence. All this being said, relationships are difficult. People are difficult. The thing to remember is that we are all difficult.
As my wise English professor once said in a lecture on Jane Austen, “anyone who thinks marriage ends all conflicts has obviously never been married.”
Ali Jawin
wrote on June 26 2009 @ 08:07 am: [report]
@Greggy: Kudos to you! Even though you are not the reaching out type, you are doing the appropriate thing by sending your friend a gift. Calling is always nice, but I respect that phone communication is just not everyone’s strong suit. Sending a gift shows you care and wish her well. Your action actually opens up the door for her to reach out to you. She can thank you for the gift, and that might naturally open the gates of communication and lead to regrowth.
retro chic
wrote on June 26 2009 @ 01:41 pm: [report]
Didn’t see this one. Good advice, Ali and CraftLass. How timely, too. Just 2 months ago I got this urge to call an old dear friend who I’d lost touch with due to moving marriage, children etc. We’d had a minor bad patch when I briefly worked for her (don’t work for friends). Not insurmountable, but our friendship just slipped away, as Ali put it, “as innocently and seamlessly as [it] began”—in Kindergarten. Anyway, the bug to call—not email—overwhelmed me, and so I did it. She answered with the same casualness as when we last talked, nearly 20 years ago. What a surprise! Turns out during the thronging in my head to reconnect occurred when she rolled her car and broke her neck, truly lucky to be alive. That’s when my call came when she just got out of the hospital rigged with all kinds of immobilizing metal apparatus. And, her mother was dying. She was so grateful for the contact and pivotal timing, which we now marvel over. Point being, it’s never too late to reconnect, or be there for each other, if it’s a true friend(ship).
I’ve been very lucky with friends overall, better luck in some ways than with BFs, and is why it is so important to screen and have similar expectations with men as we do with our friends. Thanks for the lovely and timely article.
stef
wrote on June 29 2009 @ 05:00 am: [report]
My whole life, I have moved around a lot… I have met many people, and yet I only seem to have a number of friends that I still keep in contact with. I have never really understood the Female friendship, and you are right to say that they are complicated. Women are fickle, and gossipy, and hard to trust. I find it very difficult to meet a female at my age, and actually take the time to get to know them.
I have a friend I have known from sophomore year of high school. Our relationship wavered, but recently in the past few years we have seen a lot of each other. A mutual girlfriend of ours had gotten married, and from that she met someone (from the wedding) and got married to a man that is in the military, and rarely around.(They were together for barely 3 months) I am an extremely honest person, and very hard to keep my thoughts to myself. I don’t think she was very happy to hear how I felt on her new arrangement, because she hasn’t spoken to me since the last time I saw her.
I wish that it was as easy to connect with women like it is for me with men. (Strictly Friendships) They are just so much easier to talk to, and not as sensitive. Sometimes the truth hurts, and I think women like to be lied to, and placated sometimes. Which is extremely difficult for me to understand, because to me a real friend will be 100% honest with you regardless of your reaction, and still know that that person loves you, and you should value people like that in your life.
FreeSpirit
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 05:20 pm: [report]
I lost my best friend in junior high school because I laughed when others were making fun of her. At the time, I didn’t realize how much I had hurt her. I tried to apologize, but she cut me dead. We went on to different high schools and I lost track of her. When we were seniors, the newspaper ran a story, with her picture, of how she had won a college scholarship. I couldn’t believe how pretty she had become, and I was glad that she had a chance to escape her home life, which when I knew her had been grim. I called her house, but hung up before anyone could answer. I just didn’t know what to say to her after all that time. Fast forward two years. I was home for the summer and, as often happens, everyone I had known in school was an old friend. I saw her in a store and ran to hug her. Probably too PDA, for she stood stiffly and didn’t return the hug. Immediately, I apologized again for the awful way I had treated her seven years earlier. I asked her to have lunch with me so we could catch up. She said, very slowly and coldly, “You were my only friend back then, and you turned out to be like all the others who made fun of me.” So, that was that, and I never saw her again. I heard later that she married a college professor.
Now that I am much older, I know that a friendship can only be restored if both parties want to.
Ann W., if you are reading this (your favorite book in junior high was “Gypsy Secret”), remember when we had a crush on our English teacher, the time we hid behind the gym and smoked Kool cigarettes (and thought we were really cool!), and the time I had to keep your makeup so your father wouldn’t find it.