LIGHTBULB MOMENT...

I recently had a long time friend break up with me. She had said something I found offensive, and rather than apologize, she hid behind "this has nothing to do with me", and eventually doubled down with "it was a typo." It stung to read, but I chose to sit in that discomfort. What was this moment teaching me?

Aside from the obvious of "is this the type of friend I want?" or "guess I learned my lesson", I chose to dig deeper. While the surface validated my feelings what was the take away from this?

I thought back to all my therapy sessions and I could hear my therapist in my head saying "what is it that you needed?" Well, I needed her to acknowledge her behavior, not defend it. I needed safety to express my feelings. I also needed the security to know I could do that without punishment. None of these were met.

A few days later though I had a moment while reflecting and drinking my morning coffee. I kept running the text message my now ex friend had sent through my head, trying to find any way to not be so hurt by it. I was basically gaslighting myself, trying any was to make it my fault so I could fix it but then it occurred to me....

No one gets to decide for another human being what that person finds offensive or hurtful. We can choose to agree or disagree, respect it or disrespect it, but the decision itself is never ours. It was that moment that I had realized my own error in the way I had been moving through the world. I had walked around most of my adult life with a certain entitlement of telling people what's offensive or not when confronted with something I chose to disagree with. I thought of all the times I argued politics, religion, political correctness, etc. I realized I have been a bully, and this was the first lesson. I need to take accountability for that and offer an apology for my own bad behavior! i will correct it moving forward.

It's taken losing who I considered one of my best friends to understand everyone has a right to stand in their feelings and not be made to feel small because their values don't align with yours.

That was the second lesson. Our values no longer aligned. I have grown. We aren't the same people we were when we met nearly a decade ago. Things change. People change, and not all friendships go the distance. I don't wish the person any ill will, in fact I hope the exact opposite. Just because we are no longer friends doesn't automatically mean we are enemies, but it does make me sad to think about. This could've been so easily solved with a simple "I'm sorry" but unfortunately that didn't happen, and that's ok.

I heard a quote recently "unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments"... and perhaps that is the third lesson. For a lot of our friendship I had bit my tongue knowing full well the outcome would not be a positive one, but I genuinely liked her as a human so I wanted to keep the friendship. Maybe this particular situation was simply the straw that broke the camels back. Maybe this happened so I could finally find my voice and if the consequence to that was friendship loss was it really a friendship at all?

Perhaps something in this resonates with some of you and it provides clarity if any of you are going through something similar. This is just one more chapter in a long list of them from the past year and a half that have closed. Time to open a window!

-S.