Friend Dumped
I got friend-dumped this week. Literally told ‘we can’t be friends any more.’ Now if that happened with a romantic partner, I’d be allowed to be truly devastated, to wallow, be sad, go full Bridget Jones. But somehow, we don’t talk about the impact of losing friends in the same terms. Despite the fact, they are often part of our lives, just as deeply and for longer.
Luckily actually, I belong to a broader group of Millenial/Gen Z friends who appreciate the impact and loss of a friend that way, but it’s still important. As is the hurt it causes- particularly I’d say for Queer and neurodivergent folks.
This is not my first rodeo in getting friend-dumped. And maybe that’s a positive in its own way, to have been able to move through life and collect enough people in it to have to shed a few along the way. I think, in hindsight, I’d rather have found and then grown out of friends than stuck with the same group forever, never changing and never growing.
There’s a difference too, between drifting away from friends and being actively dumped by them. I’m a huge believer that some friends are for a reason or season. I have an array of folks who I’d call ‘friends’’ still in the loosest sense that I don’t see, don’t speak with…but would, if we had reason to, happily catch up if we found ourselves in the same place at the same time, or more importantly would help if they needed it. Those kinds of no-longer-friends-in-the-same-way are somehow the best. I have friends like that who still send me cool jobs or opportunities that they saw and thought of me. Or a link to an article or something. We’re not actively friends, we don’t seek each other out, but we’re not-not-friends and that’s nice.
Then there are the friends who you drift away from. Realising slowly they’re no longer in your life. That’s sad, but less so as it feels naturally part of life. None of us should be the person we were when we were 20, so why should the friend from then fit with us now? Of course, the plot twist there is when someone from when you were 19 comes back into your life and now your lives align much better, and you become much better friends. That happened to me the last couple of years, too and it’s delightful.
And then there’s getting friend-dumped. Sometimes, it’s like a relationship ending, and you see it coming and ignore the signs until it becomes inevitable. Sometimes, you have to do the dumping, cut out a toxic person from your life. Sometimes, it takes you by surprise. I’ve had all of them, and none of them are fun.
My personal favourite of all of them was ‘I can’t see you any more because I’m married now’ to link to the above, full Bridget Jones mode…I’m not sure what my single-ness was going to do to contaminate the marriage with a man I’d met all of about three times in five years of knowing this woman, but here we are….Interestingly left to its own devices, I’m sure that friendship would have fizzled out naturally (I mean married people just cannot see single people they are rendered invisible after all). But actually, that woman felt the need to be somehow weirdly cruel with it.
On that note, too, as a single child-free person I’m used to being phased out of people’s lives because of that. And sometimes it’s life just shifting too and that’s sad but fine. But sometimes it’s a weird active removal of the single-child-free people, and that hurts. It’s another reminder I’m not ‘normal’ not straight, not in a romantic relationship, not with children, not ‘normal’.. Because I actively am not seeking babies or marriage, I’m ultimately, in the year of our Lord 2023, still seen as some kind of at best weirdo, at worst, threat by some of these women.
Now not all women have husbands and babies. I’m happy to report that many of my good friends are in heterosexual marriages, and I don’t judge them for it; everyone is free to make that choice. Similarly, many of my friends obviously have children (as I’m not as some previous friends would assume some kind of weird Child-Catcher Roald Dahl character just for not having them). So actually, the early-30s phase of getting friend dumped for not having husbands or children wasn’t about me…it’s about the wrong kind of child-having married friends…the kind stuck in their Bridget Jones era (When we all agree Bridget is sorta canceled now right anyway).
All those feel like circumstantial friend-dumps (or circumstantial assholes in some specific cases). But what of the ones that blindside you, that you didn’t see coming? Or the ones that you did, but they still hurt?
Maybe it is an inherent difference between perpetually coupled people and single people (not all, just in general). As single folks don’t have a constant companion, person, in their lives, it hurts more when they lose someone they thought they could rely on. As an only child too I think I feel this more- I don’t have an in-built support system in my family, so I rely on friends for that. And when one leaves, it’s a huge hole in my life. Another person I can’t call in an emergency, or even a not-quite emergency. Another empty part of life.
As queer people too I think friends are hugely important. If you’re already on the peripheries of ‘normal’ society (oh hi Bridget-Jones era friends), you need that group that support system, those people who understand you. Every time a straight friend has friend-dumped me it’s been a painful reminder that I’m different. Not welcome, not part of that world and never will be. Even with a straight friend, I’m never fully in their club and somehow someday that will come up and I’ll end up alone again.
As an asexaul person I feel this more so perhaps than others. Because there’s a strong chance I will be single forever. And while on a personal level I’m mostly ok with that, the sad truth is being a single person tends to push coupled people away from you. Or at least get you excluded from what they view as their ‘real’ lives. Coupled people tend to view their lives as somehow ‘more important’ than single peoples. Or view single people with suspicion too. Either way you get phased out. You also spend important days alone- birthdays, Christmas, summer events…these all become for coupled people not for you. You’re forgotten in groups if you don’t come as a pair.
What adds to this as an asexual person is the deep suspicion too of not seeking a romantic relationship. Disclaimed that all Ace/Aro people are different, but as a rule, we’re not as actively seeking romantic relationships as much as our allosexual counterparts. I’ve often thought I’d have been more accepted by ‘friends’ in the past if I’d been able to ‘demonstrate’ my ‘trying’ to be in a relationship. Then I could be just the ‘unlucky in love one’ and therefore ‘acceptable’ to society rather than the ‘not wanting it’ freak that everyone is suspicious of and gets left off the invite list.
Being left off the invite list is hard. It’s lonely. And as much as I have great friends, I really do. Sometimes it feels really lonely. I’ve never had a ‘group’ of friends, just a collection of individuals. And if those individuals all at once forget you exist, it’s hard. I don’t like Birthdays because they make me lonely. I got tired of trying to force a gathering of people, feeling like I was forcing people, being hurt, people didn’t come, and feeling nobody cared. I don’t bother to do anything anymore. I really dislike Christmas for similar reasons, it’s a lonely time for people without close family or a partner. And as much as I have friends, they’re there they also aren’t.
As a neurodivergent person, too, being friend-dumped is hugely triggering. Of all the times across school and university and everything else people said you aren’t good enough, we don’t want you, you’re weird. Every time it happens, I’m reminded; that people don’t like you. I’m reminded that you’re broken and that people don’t want to be around you. And that’s hard. At nearly 40 feeling like you’re back in school, the kid nobody likes, the kid everyone is laughing at, talking about…isn’t fun. A group of women made it so I wasn’t welcome in my choir a couple of years back, and that pushed me to the darkest mental health place I’ve been in a long time…in short high school never goes away for some of us.
Of course I do have friends. I have good people around me (whether literally or virtually) but I often feel like I’m never, in the words of Taylor Swift, in anybody’s top five. And as a queer neurodivergent person who has spent their whole life feeling outside, unliked that’s hard sometimes. That’s why too when someone decides that you are no longer worth making any effort for, despite fighting to keep them in your life for almost three years, as happened this week it hurts. Especially if that person has been in your life for a long time.
But that said, I no longer want people in my life who don’t want to be there. I have good reason for not wanting certain people there, and despite the occasional loneliness, I do have an array of good people in my life. I’ve also proven to myself that you can make new friends at any stage of life. And I’m loving that in recent years I’ve made new theatre friends, new ice skating friends, new hockey friends and more. I love that I’m closer to older friends and that others continue to be part of my life. I have friends that listen to my daily rants, daily bullshit. I have friends who actually make plans with me (and follow through). I have friends who support me from afar, constantly cheering my corner even when we live on different continents and may never meet. I have friends who are there for the ‘can I be petty for a second’ messages. Or the ‘I saw a racoon and thought of you’ ones (weirdly this is more than one person). I have friends who let me stay at their house. I have friends who not only say ‘sure’ when I say ‘I need a purple pumpkin’ but also find me the purple pumpkin (and understand the reasons why even if they’re weird).
For every friend that disappears, there’s space for new people in a life. People who do appreciate you, who do ‘put you in their top five’ and maybe it’s worth waiting around for them.