To those of you who happen to experience conflicts with friends, you may be familiar with friendships ending and all the emotions attached to it. The stages of a friendship break-up has no set order. It can cause a lot of conflicting feelings. So, here I’m going to list some things you might experience. Hopefully it’s relatable and I’m not just crazy.
· You get SO frustrated with yourself. You may be thinking “why does this feel like a break-up?”, I didn’t sign up for this. Friendships are supposed to be fun and great and not end like this. You may have experienced a fall out, or it’s just been a downward spiral with your friend and one of you ended it. Either way, it feels like an actual break-up. You really just want to forget about it. But hey, there’s these things called feelings that not everyone can bottle up.
· You don’t know how you’re supposed to deal with this. I mean what fits the situation? Netflix and Ben&Jerry’s to heal both your ego and the lost memories? Or a giant tub of Mayfield Ice cream?
· You’re caught between being that empathetic, forgiving and mature person that you’re trying to be… and just letting yourself be angry. Either at yourself or the other person and if you’re even more conflicted, BOTH! This is not a happy time. But if anyone asks, you feel absolutely FINE.
· You get caught up in all the ways you could’ve done things differently. You wish you had seen things coming and just been better about dealing with all the bumps. You miss the good times and wish you could’ve focused on them more.
· You really start thinking about what’s best for you. This is when you’re so done with being angry and hurt and you just choose yourself. You take a good look at the wonderful people in your life who love you, and you’re grateful for them. You learn to live with the past and that you’re not a perfect person. Any self-blame is dealt with because you realize that you’re not perfect and it’s completely okay to keep going on with your life and believing that you’re valuable. Not everyone has to like you, and you become fine with this friend no longer liking you. You realize that what’s important is to keep living the way you want and appreciate that this experience has taught you that people come and go and better things will come your way.
· After a while, you get so involved in living your life and meeting new people that this road block in your life becomes a distant memory. It’s hopefully taught you things and made you better in some ways. But at this stage, you couldn’t care less about the things that were said or done because it doesn’t matter anymore.