When I turned 30 years old, I decided that I had all the friends that I would ever need.

I wasn’t interested in making any new friends. New friends were only trouble. Old friends? They were perfect. They knew your quirks, your bad habits, your secrets—what made you smile. And then, one day in the hallway at work, while I was selling raffle tickets, I made a new friend. She was lovely. She was bright and very pretty. We both wanted to be writers when we grew up and we were both English majors. We liked the same television shows and authors. We got on smashingly.

But we were also similar in ways that weren’t compatible. We were both sensitive and very stubborn—a pretty lethal combination. We were friends for about a year, swapping stories of triumph and heartbreak. We’d only quarreled once or twice in all that time. In terms of friendships, ours was better than most.

One Sunday afternoon, she invited me over for dinner. Dinner preparation had taken her a lot of time, but I really wasn’t hungry. I should have told her that before she’d gone to all the trouble. We argued. I shushed her. We quarreled. I left. Little did I know it, but our friendship had ended while she was slicing avocados.

Six months passed. I married. Her roommate moved out and another moved in. I saw her on the street. We shared an awkward hug. I reached out via MySpace. I was hoping we could be friends again. She wasn’t interested, and she said just that in so many words. Sure, we could go out for a beer and a burger, but she didn’t want to reconnect. She needed to be around people who supported her. I didn’t fit the bill. I was hurt and disappointed.

I had officially been dumped by new, best friend.

Five years later, I still wince at the thought of how my friendship ended. I still had, until yesterday, my “friend’s” telephone number in my contacts list. Why? Because I was rejected. I don’t need to tell you that rejection hurts. Here are three things to remember about a best friend break-up.

Friendships, Like All Relationships, Require Communication

I may have thought that my friend was mad about me not being hungry, but that was far from the truth. She had been angry for some time; she just took it out on the avocado. When you hit the end of a best-friend relationship, just realize that whatever caused the end was probably not the real problem. The real problem was a lack of communication. If it will clear your conscious, try to reach out one last time to open up the lines of communication. If your friend isn’t open to it, move on and remember to keep the lines of communication open with the friends that you do have. That means addressing problems as they occur, treating your friends as you expect to be treated, and being open to constructive feedback.

To Everything, There is a Season

One of the reasons that the Bible has sold over 1 billion copies is this: there’s some good stuff in there! Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is an example of this. I’m not trying to wax theosophical, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason. We attract the people we need to help us grow and gain more experience. When we no longer need the teachers, they sometimes vanish. This is why people come into and out of our lives so frequently. When a friendship ends, look back over the friendship and ask yourself “what lesson am I supposed to learn that only this experience can teach me?”

Life Isn’t What it Wasn’t—It’s Only What it Is

The subtitle to this section is a lyric to a song that I wrote, and I firmly believe this statement. When a friendship ends, there’s no use re-hashing everything you’ve given, all the support you’ve provided, how much better off your friend was with you in her life, or how it’s her loss. All of that is your ego struggling to make sense of something very painful. Instead, when the thought comes to mind, whether it be accompanied by pain or anger, take a deep breath and release that pain/anger/resentment to the universe. Focus your thoughts on forgiveness, for yourself and for your friend. Release those negative feelings into the universe and thank God/Universe for healing. Remember, the experiences in life are what we are living for—not through.

Photo by alicepopkorn