Dear Sasha, About two years ago, I had a really tough time. Most of my friends were there for me, but one of them was not. Since then, I tried to reach out to that friend and tell her how hurt I was, but she freaked out about how mean it was of me to call her a bad friend. In my understanding, we left it with the ball in her court -- I was happy to do the hard work of conflict resolution if she was, but she wasn't.
It's been more than a year since we were in touch, and I still think about her frequently and feel sad. She was one of my oldest and closest friends. My husband, who watched how miserable I was when she ditched me, says that it would be masochistic of me to try again to reach out. And I only want to be friends again if she's willing to talk about what happened between us, and it seems like she doesn't. But still, I feel sad about it. W
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Breaking up is always easy in the moment. Right? All the anger bubbles up to the surface and all you want to do is get them out of your life. But once that settles and some time has passed is when we begin to mourn the loss, especially mourn all the good that once was there. And W, that’s where we find you…..
I don’t know the whole backstory with your friendship but if she sucked at being a friend when it was time for her to step up and shine, then it doesn’t matter how many sh-ts and giggles you shared along the way. I mean, had she apologized or expressed that it went down differently in her head then yes, that would have changed the trajectory of your friendship, but unfortunately that’s not what happened.
So do you reach out to her again? Well, you have to figure out what you want to come out of it. W, if you regret what you said to her, if you feel like you overreacted, or if you feel like maybe there was something you had done in the past to provoke her distance, then fine, that may warrant another conversation. But if the expectation is for her to apologize or to reinforce again what a crap friend she was during that time, well, I just don’t see what the point is. Think on that for a bit and once you’ve figured that out hit me up.
Thanks for writing in and keep your questions coming to me at [email protected] xx
