A best friendship is assumed from the time you meet the person that this is a lifetime commitment. There is no doubt, no “what-if,” or wondering if it’ll work out as there is with a potential romantic partner. The ideology is already there that this individual is a keeper.
Even when you don’t agree or bicker among yourselves, there’s never a doubt that the friendship is capable of withstanding arguments because you simply have that connection.
Most people don’t see the loss of a best friend or even a close friend as something natural. Many deem the loss as a personal failure, a private shame.
Individuals don’t recognize that friendship is as normal as any other sort of relationship with the potential to fade over the years, end abruptly, or simply lose the connection when not nurtured.
It’s essential when you experience hurt from a best friend that you be able to heal from the grief of the resultant “break-up” similarly as you would the loss of a romantic partnership with the intention of coming out strong, healthy, and capable of moving on to find other meaningful friendships. Let’s look at a few ways you can work towards that end.
How to let go of a friend who hurt you
It’s tough for many people to deal with the pain associated with a close friend or even best friend hurting you somehow.
That’s a betrayal not many fathom because friendships, in most individuals’ eyes, are supposed to be a relationship that can’t be damaged. Unfortunately, that’s unrealistic.
It’s essential to view every relationship as something that needs time, energy, and nurturing to survive, with the idea that not all of them have the capacity to last forever. Some won’t make it.
Some friends don’t have what it takes to be the best friend you initially envisioned and strived for throughout the course of your time together.
These people might try to be what you want them to be, but it’s not in their makeup. Ultimately they hurt you, devastation you need to learn how to deal with. How do you do that? Let’s learn.
1. Feel the loss and heal
One of the most critical components of grieving a loss is to allow yourself to feel the feelings in order to come to the point of acceptance and healing. It’s no different when you lose a best friend than when you have a romantic partner’s loss.
Let the people in your life know what’s happened. So you have a support system to turn to and allow comparable self-care as you would in the case of a breakup with a mate.
Our brain understands that we’ve experienced some sort of traumatic experience. It doesn’t differentiate between a love interest and a best friend. It sends the same emotion and sorrow in either situation, expecting it to be worked through similarly.
Further, there is a greater attachment, if you will, with a best friend because the sense is that this person will be by your side for a lifetime in an almost familial capacity making the detachment much harsher than it would be breaking up with a partner.
2. Find clarity and closure
Not only do you need to find a way to have what happened to make sense in your mind. But it’s essential to make peace with that clarity.
You’ll want to do that in your own mind first, gather your thoughts, consider the part you played, and determine how the whole situation genuinely affected you overall.
Not only the friendship coming to an end but also how the behavior that hurt you deeply affected you and why it happened, what it meant, and how you could have responded differently maybe.
Once you have collected your ideas and better understand the circumstances, you can work towards closure. An excellent way to do that with a romantic partner is to have a final “break-up” discussion that helps bring closure to the mates.
That’s unlikely in a friendship. The closest thing you’ll probably be able to get is to put your thoughts, feelings, and an apology for any part you played into a letter and mail it off to bring closure to yourself.
You should have no anticipation or expectation for a response back. The goal is to bring peace of mind to yourself.
3. Moving forward in the healing process
Once you have found peace of mind for yourself and recognize the impact the hurt has brought you emotionally and mentally, it’s time to allow yourself to treat the pain adequately.
You can choose to seek out your support system of close friends and family or better reach out to a third party where there will be no judgment or opinion, simply someone who will listen and you can talk through the issues in a trusting and safe environment.
It’s an environment where you can grieve openly, and vulnerability but securely and privately.
A good rule of thumb is eliminating things from your surroundings that might trigger memories you’re not quite ready to work through yet. You can either pack them up and put them in storage or perhaps get rid of them; that’s indeed an option.
What ultimately needs to happen is coming to a point where you can give thanks for that moment in your life when the person was available to you, speak of them in the past but appreciate that chapter. Eventually, it will become a pleasant memory again.
4. Don’t let the loss of a best friend define you
If you have other friendships within your social circle that include that friend, make sure that the other people aren’t assuming sides in the rift. There should be boundaries for having one-on-one relationships with each other and then as a group.
Simply because two people part ways should in no way affect other friendships within the group. Suppose the end of the two best friends’ relationship breaks up the entire group; that speaks poorly of the integrity of the members and individual boundaries being broken.
In that same vein, don’t allow losing a best friend to keep you from meeting new people and attempting to make new acquaintances.
That will be an essential part of the healing process, reestablishing unconditional self-acceptance and value, allowing you to work through the challenges more readily.
While it’s vital to allow yourself to feel the intense emotion attached to the grief experienced when losing someone significant in your life, it’s also crucial to remind yourself of the facts of the situation and act according to what you believe is true.
Is it possible to get over a friend you have feelings for?
The idea of “getting over” someone has varied meanings. Once someone touches your life, that person never leaves your memories. While you go through the stages of grief when the friendship ends, you’ll do your best to avoid triggering those memories because your mental and emotional capacity won’t be prepared to handle those.
But the more time passes, your brain will allow the thoughts, and you’ll come across things you thought you got rid of.
When you have a best friend with whom you likely have years of history, it can be challenging to wipe away every bit of material items you might have collected together.
You’ll always find something here and there, or a funny story will come into your mind when you’re gathered with family with whom this person was also very much a part of their life.
You never “get over” a best friend regardless of what happened or the pain they might have caused. Eventually, there’s an acceptance of the loss. Still, you soften to the adversity, instead, beginning to feel thankfulness that this person was a significant part of your world for that chapter.
You ultimately acknowledge that you wouldn’t trade what the two of you had for that period in time. But “getting over” someone – no; learning to live without the individual – yes.
Conclusion
No one meets a new friend with the idea that this person will eventually do something horrible to cause pain, and the relationship will end traumatically. Most people believe that you meet a new friend and stay “best friends forever.”
It’s not like a romantic partnership where you question the longevity, or whether it can withstand ups and downs, you just assume that it can handle anything that comes along because friendships don’t end.
Unfortunately, that’s unrealistic. Not all friendships are sustainable like that. In fact, more people lost connections in the modern-day, particularly after the worldwide health crisis. Instead, becoming much more isolated, with the only actual contact being virtual, mostly with family members.
For those who are fortunate enough to find themselves in a long-term friendship, it’s essential to put forth an effort to make them work. It takes energy and nurturing in the same way as any other sort of relationship.
They don’t simply work because you “will” it. If you don’t make a concerted effort, someone can find themselves hurt, and then a friendship might be lost.
