Why It Matters How We End A Friendship

Something upsetting took place the other day. I woke up to discover that a woman I am friends with on Facebook had blocked me. Permanently deleted me, so that I can’t see her presence anywhere online and she can’t see mine. I don’t mind telling you, I was shocked to my core. First, the juggernaut of anger, then a tidal wave of grief knocking me sideways and ripping me along with it for the rest of the morning.

Though we had only known each other for 10 weeks, we’d been part of a sisterhood engaged in deep journey-work, and had shared much of personal meaning together, including on email. Our last connection had been a series of written messages in which a hurt and a difference in viewpoint were being explored. We’d had no ongoing abuse, there was no physical unsafety. Nothing had signalled she would block me.

For the rest of the day the word that kept arising in me was severance. 

While I had slept, this woman had suddenly severed all ties with me. With one press of a button, I had been eradicated from her world and she from mine, and any opportunity for us to reconcile whatever was up for her, had been removed. To some, it may seem such an innocuous act. To press a button and eliminate the presence of another in your ‘’virtual’’ life.

But for me, on the receiving end, it felt violent.

Sound a bit extreme? Maybe it is.

But to ‘’sever’’ does mean to cut or chop off, especially suddenly or forcibly. Remember the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland? She used to scream ‘’off with their head’’ the minute she encountered something that displeased her or did not fit with what she thought was the right way to be. Think too about the way a knife-wound can sever the connectedness of an artery carrying life, how it cuts through that artery, ruptures it, splits it, rips and tears it. When we sever, there is a force or specific energy needed to break the integrity of connection. That force is a kind of violence.

This really made me think.

About how profoundly difficult we can all find it at times, to be in relationship with another human being!

How much we can all struggle when we believe our point of view is threatened because someone else sees things differently. 

How our thoughts and feelings can have us all believing we are unsafe or unviable in instances like that, and that we need to create an artificial boundary to protect us and keep the other out. 

How we can find it so damn hard to just sit in the vulnerability of what is coming up for us on the inside, and how we find it a challenge to not act on those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings in ways that destroy.

How in our squirming we can often rush to resolve the inner tensions in a more surface way. We yell and argue maybe, try to shut the other down, eradicate them, curl up into an unavailable ball like an echidna or hedgehog, or disappear far away ourselves.

But when we avoid hanging out with our vulnerability we break the integrity of connection.

When we sever ties or block or dismiss someone like this, we close our heart, we act from fear. Our cleaving and hacking serves only disconnection, and energises an experience of separation. We ‘’cut off’’ from ourselves, from the vulnerable part of us, the part of us in which we remain unwilling to sit whilst in the presence of the other person. We sever from the experience of love.

So maybe it can be useful to think of severances like these as being an unwitting type of violence that we carry out.

I agree it sounds confronting. It may however give us that cause to pause within the reframe for a second, and see if we want to choose something different. Perhaps we can wait a day or two and try and speak with the person again. Keep our heart open within the differences, and focus on our shared humanity. If we still feel we want to part company from them, can we choose to do it with respect for all involved, openhearted, and allowing each to express gratitude and honouring for what has been?

True, that will require a willingness to sit in the vulnerability of our heart with ourselves and with the other person.

But what if we each began that work in earnest?

What if we all start asking the question:

‘’Am I choosing connection or disconnection? Is my heart open, or closed?’’

As for me, good has come of this event. It has allowed me to bring longstanding and deep wounds within myself to the surface, and heal the next layer. I’ve reached a place of compassion for myself and my friend, though not without sadness that in my communication with her I must have contributed to our disconnection, said something that she has experienced as violating perhaps. So that’s why I am also ‘’cleaning house’’ in my life. I rang another friend to make good on our last interaction, shared deeply with my mum about something from three years ago. I am choosing to study more about deep listening of another person and how to enrich my capacity for this. And I’m looking at the places where my heart still needs to open.

This is not just about Facebook and email and these not being ”real”. One glance at the world and how it deals with tension and conflict, shows me this ”cleaning house” is needed in all aspects of our life, it matters.

And it starts with each one of us.

 

What about you: What is your relationship with severance? In what way do you struggle to stay openhearted and still choose connection (even if and as you part), if you have differences of opinion with another? How do you do endings?