When You Miss Someone Who Isn’t Good For You
The wisdom of forgiving but not forgetting
Last year I ended my long time friendship with Bethany, a woman who had been one of my closest pals and confidants for over ten years. Recently, I’ve started to really miss her, and have even considered reaching out to her again. What keeps me from doing that is the understanding that although we’re all human and we all make mistakes, she broke my trust in such a way that I don’t think I’ll ever get it back. I can forgive her, but I can’t forget, and so there is no point in trying to rekindle the relationship.
In short, she’s not good for me, and although that doesn’t make her an inherently bad person, it does make her a person who is not a good fit for me. I miss her a lot, but I think I have to accept that. When James and I were opening up our relationship, there weren’t a lot of people I felt that I could share that with. It wasn’t because we were ashamed — but our experience had been that most people don’t want to hear about anything that breaks traditional marriage or sexual paradigms. I thought that Bethany was different. I thought that I could trust her not to judge me, and not to judge the powerful relationship that I found myself in with Nat. After all, the metaphysical world was a world that she inhabited also, and even if it wasn’t exactly in this same way, I trusted her. She led me to believe I was safe with her.
After more than a year of acting like she was supporting me finding my own way through this unusual experience, Bethany suddenly jumped in with a lot of judgment and shaming. Frankly, it would have been easier to take if she’d been more upfront with it earlier on. I felt blindsided when she’d led me to believe that she understood, and then suddenly revealed that this was not the case at all.
I’d commented about how good things were going with Nat and then asked her advice about something entirely different. She so longed to judge me, that she misconstrued my question and proceeded to offer a bunch of advice about Nat based on her “intuition.” She told me how he was bad for me, how he was duping me, how deluded I was in this relationship. As someone who also uses my intuitive sense to inform my words and actions, I understand how right it can feel, but I also know that all intuition goes through the filter of our biases and preconceived notions. If you are not willing to actively engage that part of yourself and parse it out, what you are getting is not a clean hit. And if I offer something that feels intuitively right to me, but the other person rejects it wholesale, I don’t imagine that I know better than them about their own lives. To do anything else is completely condescending and disempowering.
I felt like this was what Bethany was doing. I felt like she was blinded by her own stuff, and when I brought it to her attention that I hadn’t asked for her input on Nat, she got really angry and defensive. The more I tried to talk to her about it, the angrier she got. In my book, if you can’t take responsibility for yourself in a misunderstanding, the relationship doesn’t really stand a chance. And that’s what happened in this case. Bethany was willing to throw away ten years of close friendship because she would not take any responsibility for herself. And this is why I can’t go back, as much as I miss her.
Her intuitive sense was completely off base. Nat is not bad for me or using me in some way and he and I are happier and have a healthier relationship than ever before. To be involved with him brings me a lot of joy, even if it took us a while to truly find our feet in this thing. James and I just celebrated 27 years of formal commitment. Our life works great for us, and part of that is my close connection to Nat, which James wholeheartedly accepts and approves of. She thought she knew what was best for me, rather than helping me to trust my own instincts and find my own path. She thought that she was protecting me, or saving me from myself in some way, all under cover of her intuitive sense. I don’t need friends like that. I need friends who support me. It’s fine to voice reservations or red flags, but in the end, it’s up to the person to navigate their own life. Those are the only kinds of friends I really want.
Maybe Bethany has grown since then. Maybe she’s missing me too. And if that’s the case, she can reach out to me. Bethany was an opinionated, headstrong woman and I loved and accepted that in her when a lot of others didn’t. If her ego is more important to her than our connection, well, I guess there isn’t that much I can do about that. I forgive her and I still love her, but I’ll be damned if I will pursue letting someone like that back into my life without significant reparations on her end. It hurts, and I miss her….. and I’m OK with that.
© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.