How have you moved on from a friendship breakup? How did you process your grief?
For a little bit more context, I ended up cutting off a very close and dear friend of mine around a year and a half ago. I started a conversation about setting boundaries because the friendship started to feel very draining, and we had a very difficult (and honestly pretty traumatizing) argument over it 2 years ago. I think that fight marked the slow death of our friendship since I felt that a lot of my mental health issues were used against me despite having talked through his concerns about my behavior before the argument itself.
Let me be clear that while I was incredibly hurt by his behavior, I’m not going to excuse the part I played in it, especially as this friendship started falling apart during a very tumultuous time in my life where I was working through and discovering that I had a very traumatic upbringing on top of being overworked, busy, and burnt out. We both were at fault for the things we did. Ultimately, I understand why he said the things he said and why he felt the way he did. Ever since that argument, however, I started to feel very unsafe with making friends, started cutting back from socializing not just with him but many of my other friends, and started completely closing myself off to him without really even realizing it.
I cut him off a year and a half ago because I was so exhausted from the distance and felt guilty and hurt from everything we did to one another. I felt that he deserved a better friend than me, and I buried my emotions about it for over a year and a half, completely mentally blocking and dissociating from the friendship and the memories. Recently, it caught up to me again and I’m feeling the wave of sadness, betrayal, hurt, and emptiness from losing one of my closest friends. I keep on asking myself how I could’ve been a better friend, if there were better ways to just talk about what was going on, if there was any way to salvage the friendship, and beating myself up over not fighitng for it more or seeking out better closure. It eats up at me so often because I live with this fear that I will never have a friend like him ever again. Although he really hurt me, he also had a very profound and positive effect on my life.
How do you deal with that emptiness and grief that comes with losing someone that special to you? Any advice or even input on your experiences would be really appreciated. Thank you guys ❤️