A friendship of eleven years that I have cherished has just come to an end. This has been not my choice but on the initiative of my ex-friend. He is not well psychologically. This can make things rather difficult whenever it comes to his identified triggers. If he can't deal with anything then he uses his mental health diagnosis as an excuse, rather than having to go through the hard work of accepting responsibility for his behaviour and apologizing for the consequences of his actions.
Here is how our friendship came to an end:
I was invited to a soiree in his home that also coincided with my birthday. He decided to tack on celebrating my birthday to the occasion. I am going to eschew certain identifying details because I still love this person enough to not want to openly humiliate him on this blog. And he is fragile. I tried to cancel going to his party, knowing that I was struggling with a lot of my own issues (earlier that month I was threatened by a pit bull type dog, which traumatized me, and then other things went south for me at work and with management in my apartment building. The toxic domino effect.)
When I arrived at his home I was not greeted at the door. I saw instead a list of rules, one of which I found particularly unreasonable, being the expectation of wearing a name tag, and I chose not to do this. When I found my way to my friend, he was clearly too busy with guests he appeared to like better, so I went to another part of his home where I passed the time with some of his other friends. We had in the hour I was there, but three interactions: when he scolded my for not wearing a name tag; then to make casual conversation with me for two minutes before returning to his preferred friends, and finally to get everyone to sing happy birthday to me.
I felt already depressed and overwhelmed, on top of not feeling welcome in his home. I also had to be up at the crack of dawn the next day for an early flight. I left after an hour. My friend and I saw each other again two months later in a coffee shop. He aggressively lashed out at me for contaminating his home with my "anger". I explained to him that I was dealing with trauma and exhaustion and also found his demands unreasonable. He apparently has refused to accept this. I did send him a follow-up email a week later, not wanting to see our friendship go down the toilet. Here it is, somewhat redacted to protect my ex-friend's identity (as if he deserves such protection):
I understand that you find it difficult to be open and direct with me. I appreciate that you took that step with me. I think things might have been said more respectfully. There is a difference between being direct and lashing out. I felt accused of things that I had no control over, nor is it true that I drive my friends away, though I fear that you might be trying to drive me away. I think we can do better, and I'm sure you feel the same way.
We are both trauma survivors, and our friendship can be either constructive or harmful. I want to aim for constructive.
I didn't feel welcome in your home, by the way. If you want, we could talk about it during future visits, if you still want to see me. If you prefer, I don't have to be included in your soirees to be your friend.
I feel that the charge of me infecting anger on your home is both unfair and untrue and I would like you to retract that.
I want to go on being your friend. I think you and I are much better as friends than not and I hope that you feel the same way. I say, yes, let's be open and honest with each other, but let's do it with civility and mutual respect. Humour, too?
I work in the mental health profession and I have seen over and over again people using their mental health diagnosis as an excuse for not taking responsibility for their behaviour. I believe that this ex-friend, rather than valuing me and our friendship enough to apologize to me, has taken the coward's route and has chosen to bail on me.
Well, with friends like that, who needs enemas?
I am still open to reconciliation with this person but my expectations aren't high. In the meantime, I will go on valuing those who are still in my life, and also give thanks that they at least have some integrity and honesty in their way of conducting their friendship with me.
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