Should I Take the Hint and Let Go of the Friendship? Grief, Friendship, and Ambiguous Loss

An old friend from high school recently contacted me and asked me to write about grief from this perspective: letting go of old friendships not out of conflict, but out of attrition; the way social circles can narrow as we get older.    The grief that comes with that.  The uncertainty.   The way social media can make us feel simultaneously connected to old friends, but can also reveal how our lives have moved on, and cause us to question if the friendship is real, true, and mutually felt.

What I am talking about is an idea in grief counseling called ambiguous loss.  You can read lots on the internet about ambiguous loss.  There's even a Wikipedia entry on Ambiguous Loss .  To shorthand it, it means that it's a loss without closure, a loss without answers, a loss (sometimes) without the understanding or acknowledgement from others. Ambiguous loss, to me, most often takes the form of a changed relationship, rather than a death.  In theory, you are still here in my life.  In practice, you are gone.  This happens in marriages.  This happens with parents and adult children.  This happens in friendships.  This happens on Facebook.

Specifically, my friend wanted to know my thoughts on grieving very old friends - close, childhood friends - friends that would always be there.  But with the passing of time and the space of living in different places, these friendships appear to have been let go.  There is the added cognitive dissonance of seeing all about them on social media.

Here's what I imagine happens for many of us:  We have a friendship that used to feel close.  We reach out and notice the person is not reaching back as often or is unreliable.  We feel hurt and talk ourselves out of it - "Oh, he is just busy.  Oh, her mom just moved and she was overwhelmed with that.  Oh, he just got a new job.  Oh, they just had a baby.  Well, we have lived in different cities for 20 years.  Well, do you really expect Jim to remember your birthday when you haven't seen him face to face for 5 years?"    These are our very resilient defense mechanisms to talk ourselves out of being too hurt too fast.  Most of us try to be reasonable adults.

And then we respond.  I put us human beings in two categories of responders:  The reacher-outers and the withdrawers.  When feeling a little abandoned, you might be someone who reaches out more.  "I'll fix this" you think.  "I'll be the 'bigger' person,'" you might say to yourself.  Or, you might be someone who withdraws or at least does NOT reach out.  "Humph," you think. "I'll wait and see what they do next."

And then, whichever way you are, you assess the friend's response or lack thereof.  You collect more data to know if you should be hurt, angry, happy, or grievous. 

In the cases we are talking about today, your friend continues to be more absent than present.  Less involved with you, more involved with other parts of their life.

Here is the next choice you have...how to think about this:

1) Our friendship is over.  I don't want it to be over.  I am deeply hurt.

2)  Our friendship is over and I accept this is part of the natural ebb and flow of life.

3)  Our friendship is over and if I am honest with myself, I am relieved too, because I was ready to put my efforts to other friendships anyway.

4) Our friendship is not over.  It is in a time of 'breathing room.'  I feel somewhat hurt, but I respect my friend's need for breathing room.

5)  Our friendship is not over, it's just that we both have changed a little (or a lot), we have to renavigate a new way to be friends together.

6)  I have no idea what is going on with this friendship.  I would like to check in with this friend and see if everything is ok.

There are no right or wrong choice in how to think about it, but I just want to point out that there are choices.  Other, very individual variables are also at play - what does a close friendship mean to you? What do you need out of that?  Are you an extrovert or introvert?  Are you someone who tends to have very high expectations of those in your life or are you a 'live and let live' kind of person?

After all of these thoughts and questions, now, let us assume that you really decide to let go of this friendship.  That it is too painful for you to continue to hope to be connected when this other person and he/she has clearly moved on or has very little to give.  How to grieve them when they are still there and you still see their happy face on Facebook and Instagram?

One simple idea to consider is blocking them or unfriending them.  If it hurts to see this person, maybe you don't need to see them as often.

But that is only a surface level change.  I'll go a little deeper, if you don't mind:

During the time I first separated from my ex-husband, my aunt, who is widowed said to me, "I think what you are going through is worse than what I went through."  And the very fair-minded, reasonable therapist part of me thought, "We really can't measure one person's hardship or grief against another person's.  It's all relative.  It's all terribly sad"  And another part of me - my non-professional self - thought: "Yes.  What I am going through is worse than death."  And I know I felt this way because like all divorced people with kids,  I knew my then husband would be in my life after the divorce.  I would be reminded daily of the loss of my family as I knew it.

One suggestion from a therapist that I found very helpful was to write a eulogy for my marriage.  I've been to a lot of funerals, as you know - so this was a concept that I had already thought a great deal about.  The best eulogies I've ever heard are the ones that capture some essence of the person who died.  I wrote a eulogy for my marriage, just for myself - what, who and why was my marriage at its best?  What was the most beautiful essence of it?  It was a tangible and cathartic way to acknowledge that and begin to let it go. 

You could do the same thing when letting go of an important friendship or any other ambiguous loss.

I would also suggest reading almost anything by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, who is my go-to role model on acceptance.  We lose people in our life, but they are still there.  We lose who they were to us.  We lose the love, care, nurturing, fun, etc., that we once received from that relationship.  That is sad.  There's no way that's not sad.  It's ok to let it be sad.

My friend who wrote me also alluded to age and the place childhood friendships hold in our hearts and what does it mean to 'let go' of them?  Can I have deep affection and nostalgia for what we once had without the pain of knowing that is in the past? 

I think it depends on what you hope for and need.  Are you relying on those friendships for intimacy and vulnerability?  That might be painful and unrealistic.

But, personally, I've found an unexpected comfort out of these connections on social media.  Rather than thinking of 'letting go' of these relationships, what I experience is a feeling of honoring them.  And maybe that's how I grieve (I wrote a eulogy for my marriage, after all).  I think of a boy I had a crush on in third grade who is my Facebook friend (David Crane, if you are reading this, I'm talking about you.)  David taught me how to do a backdive at Saxony pool and he was really nice to my little sister, so these are good reasons for a third grade crush.  I like seeing his happy family on Facebook even though we are not close friends.  It gives me a good feeling of being connected to summers in my childhood and knowing that people I think fondly of are doing well.  I honor my past, our shared past, and the little bright spot of a boy who took the time to teach me to do a backdive. 

Finally, I would say this...many of our human brains seem to want clear cut answers.  If a friendship or any relationship is toxic, cruel, all take and no give, I say, grieve it and let it go.  But, if it is two people of good will who have just grown apart, I recommend trying to be ok in the grey area.