Friendships

 FTW 11/14/22 - Friendships

I listened to an Ali Wentworth podcast last night.  She was interviewing someone whose specialty was in how to end friendships without hurting the friend whose friendship you were ending.  Her feeling was that you should end friendships after about 7 years to make way for new friendships.

Not only do I not have groups of friends that I should end friendships with every 7 years, I don't have groups of friends at all.  All of the friends I have made in Davis have either died or moved away or just stopped contacting me.  So I don't need to know how to end friendships.  And since I almost never leave the house, i.e., belong to no groups, it is unlikely that I will make new friends at my age.

Over the years, I have had friendships which have ended.  The first that I remember was a friend from St. Brigid's grammar school

                                St/ Brigid Church. VamNess and Broadway, San Francisco.

My best friend from grammar school and I did not go to the same high schools, because we lived on separate ends of San Francisco and went to high schools closer to our homes.  I don't think I saw her through high school, but in our senior year, she arranged for us to have lunch.  I was thrilled.  It had been so long since I'd seen her and I was looking forward to getting caught up.  Lunch was fine and then I never saw or heard from her for about 30 years.

There have been other friendships which have ended, mostly painfully (they all needed to listen to this lady Ali was interviewing!)

 I guess one of the most painful was my best friend through our years working together in Davis.  We were best friends.  I helped her end her marriage and take up with a man whom she met at work.  They moved across the country and when she was pregnant and getting ready to have a baby, she arranged for me to move to her house and work her job.  We figured it would be perfect because she would be there to answer all the questions I had.

The move didn't work out the way either of us thought it would and years later, she came to Davis and we had a lovely dinner, at which she explained that our previous friendship really WAS a good friendship...and then I never heard from her again.  I still don't know why she ended our friendship.

I guess it's more comfortable now with no close friends and probably no upcoming good friendships.  At least it doesn't hurt now.