It can be rough ending a relationship of any sort, particularly long lasting friends. But there really just seems to be two types of friends. There are those who are in our lives for some time, we do whatever we’re going to do together, and we move on when that’s over. Then there’s the rare type where we learn and grow together and we remain friends through our whole lives. In the latter, it is just like losing a member of the family, in my mind, lifelong friends are only different from family in that we don’t share as much genetic material.
When it’s the former type, it really should be relatively painless to end those friendships. I’ve had a few even quite intense friends like that, but when it came to an end, it was just an ending and I moved on. The real pain comes in feeling like they’re the lifelong type of friends and realizing they aren’t. At some point your paths diverged. It seems like you saw it, but didn’t see it as severe as it really was, and it sucks.
What I’ve found though, that differentiates these two types of friends, is really what makes the core of us. All of my lifelong friends, down at the core of our beings, what really defines us, are the same things. At least for me, I see a lot of those sorts of things like religion and politics as not a part of the core of my identity and so, oddly, those to whom I’m closest, we actually disagree a fair amount on those and we can even argue about them, but because we are not defined by them, it is never anything more than a difference of opinion. At the same time, I’m a musician and an artist, and my closest friends have those passions as well in some way. But because that is part of the core of who I am, when someone cannot understand that or fundamentally rejects some aspect of that, perhaps saying a genre is an invalid form of music, then it is like a rejection of who I am as a human being.
And some people do define themselves strongly based on those very things that I don’t. I know people who seem to define the core of their beings by their religious beliefs, or lack there of. There are some people who feel the same way about politics. In fact, some people will define themselves by things that seem absolutely ridiculous to me. But it’s precisely these sorts of people that end up not getting along with me if I disagree with them on one of their core aspects or I see it as ridiculous.
Sadly, it sounds like the two of you were pretty closely aligned, but as some point along the way, one or both of you had a redefining, perhaps triggered by changes in political views and that being an increasingly important aspect. The moment you feel the need to ban a topic, though, I think that’s a sign that that alignment has slipped.
Of course, none of this makes dealing with these things any easier, but at least for me, when this sort of thing has caught me off guard, seeing that we really weren’t sharing core values, I have no more regrets about those relationships. In fact, I look back on them fondly and remember the fun times we had and then we just moved on. Even for a few that went badly, I have no illwill, even if they may for me, as I now just see it as an appropriate end. Regardless, you don’t have to stop caring about her, nor her you; in fact, that’s precisely why it’s painful in the first place.
So, for you, I hope you find the solace you need in what made you friends and the times you two shared together, and that you’re content with the man you are today, both as a result of that friendship and, ultimately, what made your paths diverge.
