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Friendships - How Losing Your Best
Friend Leaves A Gapping Hole In Women |
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Best Friends are really special. We talk about how wonderful to
have them, but we don't talk about the pain of losing them.
The love you feel for a close girl friend is different from a
love relationship but it is not less meaningful. Unfortunately,
in our society today the love for a best
friend does not have the same value and support as for romantic
love. Losing a lover through death or divorce fits within our
understanding out loss and
grief. But the loss of a best friend, through death or divorce -
that is, a permanent falling out - has no socially Accepted
guidelines.
"Linda and I had a long distance relationship," Carla sadly
chuckles. "We talked at least once a week, sometimes more often.
We were two time zones away
but for 11 years since I moved away, we worked around that. We
made a point of getting together 3 or 4 times a year. I love my
husband, but loving Linda is
a different kind of love.
"She was the first person I called when Terry asked me to marry
him, even before I called my mom and sister. Whenever he and I
are at odds, she is always
there to listen to me vent about Terry, to help me see the
situation more realistically, and to walk me through the mess
with him.
"We used to joke what would we do without each other."
Carla's voice breaks. She takes a deep breath, as if gulping in
air would ease her pain. "I guess I'm finding out. Six months
ago she was diagnosed with
breast cancer. It was a quick decline. She was dead within three
months.
"What makes me so mad is that if it were Terry who had died, I'd
get time off from work; my friends would be calling on me,
offering me sympathy. But Linda
is 'just a friend.' Baloney. She's my best friend, my soul, my
stabilizer, my special other half, in a way Terry - as much as I
love him - can't be. But she's just my
friend, so life expects me to carry on."
We live in a world with rigid ideas about love and affection. We
have work place rules and social etiquette rules. The
inflexibility of these rules, though,
ignores some realities. Carla would be able to get time off from
work, or a reduced price plane ticket, for the funeral of her
sister, even though they haven't
spoken in decades, but not for her best friend.
In many communities, when there's a death, friends and neighbors
come with the proverbial casseroles and pies. The bereaved gets
company, food,
sympathy. Carla, though, did not have any of that. Most people
don't think about the depth of the loss when it is a non-family
member.
The same lack of understanding occurs when best friends have a
permanent quarrel, or to put it another way, when best friends
divorce.
"Mary just dropped me; I don't know any other way to put it,"
bemoans Laurie. "Although this was 10 years ago, I still get
teary thinking about it. I have no
idea why she just stopped talking with me, stopped returning my
calls. We had been such good friends for years. After several
months, I wrote her saying
she at least owed me an explanation. Boy that was a mistake. She
wrote back tearing me to pieces."
Laurie's eyes water as she goes back a decade in her memory. "I
don't know what was worse. Hearing all the things she didn't
like about me or having no
one to talk to about losing my best friend. You know, if Laurie
were a Larry, everyone would understand why I moped around for
months, my work
performance flagged, but you don't get sympathy for breaking up
with your best friend."
Carla and Laurie understand the power of best friends - having
them and losing them. There are rituals for dealing with the
death of a spouse and a family
member, but there are none for the death of a best friend.
People know how to respond if a friend gets divorced, but they
have no idea how to respond if
that friend gets divorced from a best friend - even though the
pain can be just as intense and the loss just as big.
Chances are Carla's and Laura's bosses have had similar
experiences because losing a best friend is not uncommon, it's
just not often acknowledged, and
the pain is rarely discussed.
There are many different ways you can lose a close friend --
through death, a quarrel, changing interests or growing in
different directions. When couples
split up, their friends may drift away, not wanting to choose
sides. No matter how you lose a best friend, it always hurts and
leaves a hole in your life. The
loss needs to be respected and given the same credence as the
loss of any loved one. It hurts just as much to lose a best
friend.
If friendships are important to you, get your free copy of
"Rules For Enhancing Your Friendships" from the Special Gift
link on the home page of
http:/WomenAndThePeopleTheyLove.com. Be sure to use the Code:
FRIENDS. And, consider treating you and your best friend to a
special weekend, check
out http://UniqueRetreatsForWomen.com
Dr. Karen Gail Lewis, The Woman Who Helps Women And The People
They Love
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Karen_Gail_Lewis
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