"If he don't love you anymore, then walk your fine ass out the door." ~ Good As Hell, Lizzo
We talk about romantic breakups all the time. It's on the cover of our most popular magazines and the subject of award-winning music. But we don't talk about friendship breakups; and I include myself in this mute group.
This unwritten pact of silence recently came to my attention via an Instagram post by Angie @gamercrafting (Angie does a lot of really cool things but I came to know her for the awesome hand-dyed yarns she creates; you can find the specific post I'm referencing here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9MIc_Wp1Y3/).
I've been dealing with a friendship breakup for over a year now. And it still hurts. I've only ever really spoken about it to one other person (my sister) and although she was helpful in getting me to not obsess about the situation, I've obviously still not completely processed it because I'm not openly talking about it. And I know from other personal experiences and professional education that unprocessed feelings can lead to a complicated kind of grief known as disenfranchised grief.
Disenfranchised grief is basically having feeling of sadness that you don't feel you have the right to have. Some groups of people who deal with this type of grief on a regular basis are first responders and medical professionals. They can experience feelings of sadness and loss over the death of a patient but feel that they cannot express this sadness as it would be considered unprofessional. Being an oncology nurse, I've, unfortunately, experienced this particular type of grief.
But I feel like this - disenfranchised grief - may be what some of us who have a tough time after a friendship breakup may be experiencing too. Well-meaning individuals will tell you to, 'Just let it go,' and 'You don't need that kind of negativity in your life,' and 'She/he was suffocating you.'
We're not talking about a pair of too tight knickers than can be tossed in the bin and new pair bought on your very next shopping trip!
Just like other relationships in your life - marital, parental, familial - there were hopes and dreams and expecations for that friendship that have now been shattered. Things that you saw yourself doing with your friend that will now, not come to pass. A hole in your heart has been created and you need to find a way to fill the hole or go around it. You have to find a new way of being, a new state of normal.
And that sounds so dramatic! I mean, it can sound dramatic, when you place it in the context of other types of relationship and how the loss of those individuals can affect your life. The loss of a spouse, for example. Not only have you lost your life-partner, you may have also just lost your only means of income. And perhaps this is why we don't discuss friendship breakups. Again, when the loss of a friend is placed in the greater context of all relationships, we may be left feeling like we don't have the right to feel the way we feel. And that's a lot of feelings that are floating around, unprocessed, invalidated, and still very much painful.
And so, this disenfrancised grief can keep us from being able to patch up the hole in our heart and to come to a new state of normal. Which, unfortunately, can just keep the cycle of grief going. Perhaps that's why I'm writing a blog over a year later about a friend breakup? Maybe. I don't have the answers. And I may never have an answer as to why my friendship fell apart. But I do think that if we talked more about friendship breakups, maybe, just maybe we could all heal that hole in our hearts and maybe heal it a little bit faster and a little bit better.
We talk about romantic breakups all the time. It's on the cover of our most popular magazines and the subject of award-winning music. But we don't talk about friendship breakups; and I include myself in this mute group.
This unwritten pact of silence recently came to my attention via an Instagram post by Angie @gamercrafting (Angie does a lot of really cool things but I came to know her for the awesome hand-dyed yarns she creates; you can find the specific post I'm referencing here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9MIc_Wp1Y3/).
I've been dealing with a friendship breakup for over a year now. And it still hurts. I've only ever really spoken about it to one other person (my sister) and although she was helpful in getting me to not obsess about the situation, I've obviously still not completely processed it because I'm not openly talking about it. And I know from other personal experiences and professional education that unprocessed feelings can lead to a complicated kind of grief known as disenfranchised grief.
Disenfranchised grief is basically having feeling of sadness that you don't feel you have the right to have. Some groups of people who deal with this type of grief on a regular basis are first responders and medical professionals. They can experience feelings of sadness and loss over the death of a patient but feel that they cannot express this sadness as it would be considered unprofessional. Being an oncology nurse, I've, unfortunately, experienced this particular type of grief.
But I feel like this - disenfranchised grief - may be what some of us who have a tough time after a friendship breakup may be experiencing too. Well-meaning individuals will tell you to, 'Just let it go,' and 'You don't need that kind of negativity in your life,' and 'She/he was suffocating you.'
We're not talking about a pair of too tight knickers than can be tossed in the bin and new pair bought on your very next shopping trip!
Just like other relationships in your life - marital, parental, familial - there were hopes and dreams and expecations for that friendship that have now been shattered. Things that you saw yourself doing with your friend that will now, not come to pass. A hole in your heart has been created and you need to find a way to fill the hole or go around it. You have to find a new way of being, a new state of normal.
And that sounds so dramatic! I mean, it can sound dramatic, when you place it in the context of other types of relationship and how the loss of those individuals can affect your life. The loss of a spouse, for example. Not only have you lost your life-partner, you may have also just lost your only means of income. And perhaps this is why we don't discuss friendship breakups. Again, when the loss of a friend is placed in the greater context of all relationships, we may be left feeling like we don't have the right to feel the way we feel. And that's a lot of feelings that are floating around, unprocessed, invalidated, and still very much painful.
And so, this disenfrancised grief can keep us from being able to patch up the hole in our heart and to come to a new state of normal. Which, unfortunately, can just keep the cycle of grief going. Perhaps that's why I'm writing a blog over a year later about a friend breakup? Maybe. I don't have the answers. And I may never have an answer as to why my friendship fell apart. But I do think that if we talked more about friendship breakups, maybe, just maybe we could all heal that hole in our hearts and maybe heal it a little bit faster and a little bit better.