I spent far too much time on the phone with my mother this morning talking about a former friend, even though I have a good deal of urgent work to do. Then I remembered reading your book and blog months ago.

When I first read the title of your book, I thought of one and only one former friend. She was always competitive and I was willing to act as handmaiden or foil or little brown wren. It didn’t bother me and seemed a little sad. I was surprised she continued to write to me after I got married, but she did dump me when I became pregnant (the child is out of high school now). This friend and I were constant correspondents (before email) and made trips across the continent to see each other until, I guess, in her mind, I pulled too far ahead. On one of these trips, we were out to dinner with two of her male buddies, and they both began attacking me about where I was from and my father’s company. It was jaw-dropping. Still, I kept my ”friend.”

The last I heard from her was a birthday card: “Just remember, no matter how old you get…” open the card … “I’ll always be younger.” This was her to a T, I thought.

So, this January, out of the blue, about 18 years after the lovely birthday card, I got an email from her. I was stunned. I did not open it. Talked it over with a couple of people. Knowing my former friend’s propensity for self-promotion, my mother said “Oh, she’s probably finally getting married or something.” She had some BS story about how she had been looking for me online for ten years. (I exchange Christmas cards with her mother.) About two or three weeks later she sent another email. I opened them. Turned out she was making a trip out my way. We started emailing and making plans, although I was wary. We got together, She had her live-in boyfriend in tow. His divorce had recently become final, it came out.

Two months went by and I got a text message saying they got married. I texted back congratulations, of course. Judging by the treatment of a couple of recent emails I sent since the text message (she deleted one and brusquely replied to the other), I suspect that she’s done what she originally intended: Rope me back in long enough to show off something.

I could send a card: “Just remember, no matter how long you’re married, I will always have been married younger.” Whaddaya think?

January 2009

From JS in California

Well, I thought I was the only one who had suffered something like this. It’s both comforting and sad to know that I’m not alone in being dumped by a close friend. It’s been shattering to me over the past year. But I am ready to move on, now that I have finished reading What Did I Do Wrong? When Women Don’t Tell Each Other the Friendship is Over. This is a book that simply had to be written. Thank you, Liz. I have suffered a devastating loss of a friendship that has left me with all the emotions you describe in your book – confusion, sadness, grief, loss, embarrassment, and for some odd reason, shame. I got dumped by a person who I thought would be a friend for life, the person I thought of as the sister I never had, the person I shared secrets with, and cried with, and laughed with until I nearly peed my pants, and now she is completely absent from my life. And for some weird reason, I have felt shame about losing her friendship. But reading Liz’s book and then writing my own story about the friendship with “Kate” (not her real name) will be cathartic, healing and liberating. I am ready to put it behind me.

The last time I saw my former friend was at a local coffee shop in late 2007. We said goodbye in the parking lot after a rather strained 90-minute visit, and she walked out of my life. I got a birthday card in December, we swapped a couple of brief emails, I sent her a Christmas card…and that was it. No other communication between us. I haven’t even seen her at the local market where we both shop, which is weird because we live within one mile of each other. I’d felt our friendship slipping for a long time, but I think I was in denial. It took a serious injury for me to realize she was not a true friend after all.

Kate and I met in spring of 1996. I remember it clearly. It was a warm Saturday morning and we were signing our daughters up for swim lessons. She was lost and I told her where the line was. She got behind me in the queue and we struck up a conversation. After about 45 minutes the line wasn’t moving much and she was getting antsy. “My husband has to go to work and I need to get home,” she said. “Give me your paperwork and the fee. I’ll register your kid for you and bring the receipt over to you later today,” I offered. She expressed gratitude, gave me her stuff, then ran off.

Later that afternoon I stopped by her house, she invited me in for coffee, and that was the beginning of a sisterhood that lasted 10 years. We had a lot in common in terms of our political, social, and cultural beliefs. She was witty and sharp. We both kept up on the news and were highly interested in politics. She was a reader and so was I. I felt like I had finally met my intellectual equal. We enjoyed our differences — she eschewed John Grisham and sitcoms, didn’t wear make-up and wasn’t into girlie things. I was a world traveler and former performer and I loved getting dressed up and going out. We were different enough and similar enough — we were interesting to each other. And a big plus — we both had two daughters.

I bumped into her at a fruit stand the next day and we talked about getting together. A week later we met for dinner and I met her husband, and their constant friend, a divorced man with a son. I brought my kids, my new friends brought theirs, and our weekly dinners at a local favorite restaurant became a comfortable routine of laughter, wit, good food, pale ale, stimulating company and spilled crayons because of all the kids. It was heaven.

Kate and I talked on the phone nearly every day and got together for coffee almost every weekend. When my husband finally met my fabulous new friends, all five of us just clicked. We started hanging out together constantly –hosting BBQs, watching videos together, or we all went out to dinner. In a way it was like the 1950’s. We were a really tight group.

A couple of years after our friendship began, Kate’s life took a dark turn. Her marriage was not working out and she confided in me in that she wanted out and was in a dilemma about what to do. I was a sympathetic ear as we went on hour-long walks after work. When things came to a head, she called me both before and after she had the “big talk” with her husband and again after the two of them had the “big talk” with their daughters. Their girls cried and the older one did not take it well. She was 13, and rebellion was beginning. The split just exacerbated what was already brewing inside her.

Looking back, I realize I had a period of calm in my life and things were good for me. My life was a big contrast to Kate’s, and now I think it always has been. My marriage is strong, my kids are pretty trouble-free, and I take a softer approach to things; Kate is strident and forceful. She holds court and dominates conversations, often belittling and teasing others in a hurtful way. Her sexual innuendos make people uncomfortable and many times my husband and I have agreed that her social barometer is broken. Her insensitivity can be astounding. Why I couldn’t see her flaws then is as much a surprise to me now as her being able to walk away from our friendship. Despite her imperfections, I found her fascinating company.

Kate’s eldest daughter, now 15, was starting to really act out and Kate was confronted with some of the most difficult things a parent can go through – her daughter was sexually active, cutting school, drinking and smoking cigarettes and pot. For the next 3 years, Kate’s life was hell…and I was there for her every step of the way. Every time we got together, I was a sounding board for her woes, her challenges, her bitching about everything from work life to home life. She made the painful decision to have her daughter taken in the middle of the night and shipped off to a home for wayward girls in Mexico. I was with Kate that day and the next, and I had never seen her so distraught. While her daughter was in the program, I was calling Kate and meeting with her to check in – see how she was coping, was she sleeping, was she eating right, did she need to get away, have ice cream or go for a drink? Her sister totally dropped the ball, and I picked it up. I was a true, true friend, barely sharing anything at all about my own life. There was no room for me. It was all Kate all the time. I remember sitting in Kate’s driveway up to two hours while she talked and talked and talked, running a painful monologue over the things going on in her life. It was a very hard time for her, and hard for me to see my friend in such pain. So I never gave up. I never turned my back on her. I never cut our calls short. I was there for her every time she needed me. And I did the reaching – if a day went by when I didn’t hear from her, I called. I’d stop by unannounced with 2 pints of Ben & Jerry’s – Chunky Monkey for her, New York Super Fudge for me – and we’d sit on her sofa with spoons and dig in. And I’d let her unload.

So, I ask myself now — why did I choose to stay in this friendship? What did I get out of it? Did I feel needed? Did listening to Kate make me feel better about my own life? Did I genuinely think of her as a sister, and therefore ,a familial duty to let her unload? It never occurred to me to end our friendship. I was taught that’s what friends are for – they’re there for the rough times, no matter how long or how rough. I can’t turn my back on a friend in need any more than I could walk away from a person who just fell in the street. I’d have to stop and help. But it was deeper than that. We had already forged a bond so strong that I thought nothing could damage it. We shared so many joys in the preceding years that I was certain we would get there again and it would be worth all this pain of her unloading and pain of my having to listen to it. Bottom line is that I just couldn’t turn away from my dear, dear friend.

I remember, after a time, my mother said something to me. She questioned my friendship with Kate, implying that I was “giving more than I was getting…” or some such wording. It seemed strange to me, because my mother’s friendships are strong and loyal. Her friendships go back 40, 50, even 60 years, and she’s had one friend since she was 8-years-old. My mother is now 77. She is a faithful, trustworthy, dedicated friend, and what I’ve learned about friendship, I’ve learned from her. But she was questioning my judgment, my friendship with someone who needed my shoulder, and I was defensive and protective of Kate. I dismissed my mom’s words. Looking back, I see now that my wise mother was intuitive about this friendship and where it might end up. But I never saw it coming. I didn’t know that when I needed Kate for my own woes, she’d be nowhere to be found.

Over the next couple of years Kate’s life continued to take center stage in our relationship. I didn’t realize how very unbalanced it was – a one-way street, always in her direction. Her job was in upheaval and she was about to reveal some real dirt on her boss, resulting not only in him losing his job, but in having charges brought against him. Kate eventually assumed her former boss’ job and her salary went up substantially, which she both downplayed and never failed to mention – an interesting trick. During this painful period she anesthetized herself with some high-end shopping – a new car, expensive artwork and then there was the day she called and said “Come on over and see my new $4,000 sofa!”

Her mother died and a few months later her youngest daughter, now in high school, was suffering from her first heartbreak. Kate had a Hawaiian vacation planned when that happened, and in her absence, I went to her house to console the daughter (bringing chocolate and my daughters with me so that they could provide moral support) …and time marched on. I was seeing less and less of my friend. Her new circle of friends were women at work who had power and money and she reveled in their company. The cracks in our friendship were widening and yet, like a fool, I continued to reach out, be used, and hold on to something we’d had several years before when our children were young.

Over the years Kate’s youngest daughter and my own had grown very close and considered each other best friends. A difference that became more noticeable over the years between Kate and me was that I was always a bit too critical of my own children, while Kate’s youngest daughter could do no wrong. She marveled at anything and everything her youngest did. She’d give a pass to her daughter’s impetuous and sometimes rude behavior, laughing it off. I could never honestly discuss her daughter’s behavior with Kate, as the Mama Bear instinct came out in her swiftly and ferociously. It was clear to all – don’t say anything less than stellar about Kate’s youngest kid. So years went by, and people stood back and watched the behavior of Kate’s perfect child, saying nothing. When this happened with more frequency, I noticed that we were actually very different in our parenting. Slowly the pieces were coming together in my head about our differences as our friendship was unraveling.

Sometime in early 2007 I noticed a real shift in our relationship. I would remark to my husband, “Gee, I feel like I do all the calling. I never hear from Kate.” But still, I stuffed down the rumblings that our friendship could be changing. The fact that I had no major drama in my life, save for the fact that one of my daughters contracted lice in second grade and Kate came over armed with bottles of Rid at 10PM — which I count among one of the few times she was really “there” for me — made me think my life was dull. Sure, my husband and I traveled, we went to shows, we still read books and were up on the news, but was I becoming a boring and monotonous person? Had I morphed into a provincial lug, dull and tedious? Was I now uninteresting? How come she never called and inquired into my life? Why didn’t she call to find out how I was doing? A few attempts to join her on the weekends made me feel like an intruder. A weak, “You can join us, if you want ” was tossed out from time to time; but there was no real “please come!” in her words. Still, I ignored it and only now realize how hollow her invitations were.
“It’s not working for me.” “I’m over it.” These 2 phrases are Kate’s favorites. She must have said these words more than one million times in the 10+ years I’ve known her. I’ve heard her say it about people, about situations, about relationships. Though she never said these words to my face, she might as well have. For when I needed her the most, she was MIA.