You and I Are Too Old to Hang On to Bad Friends: Bloodletting, Letting Go and Moving On

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

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A post and a ghost touched a nerve

A few days ago I penned a piece about friendship which brought up some strong feelings among Dear Readers, and I got permission to reprint their comments here. Some have allowed me to use their names, some not. Either way, I felt that their heartfelt pain and observations were most worthy of sharing.

Part of this is because each of us, in an increasingly divisive world that has been infected by the bad behaviors of social media, increased isolation also by social media and our genuine fears of being badly hurt, have become a little leery of both vulnerability and intimacy. That, at a time when it’s even more important, when we all need each other even more.

Out of deep regard for the unique and important experiences of Dear Reader and to acknowledge those reactions which are not shared but still felt, this article shares some of the comments that people penned in response to this story:

All bolded comments below are mine for emphasis.

John Hardman

wrote this eloquent response:

Such training can send tender souls into the world forever in search of the “good mommy/daddy,” forever worshiping parental figures in ways they don’t deserve to be worshiped. My hand is way up here... So I put this person on a pedestal, which was unfair to us both."

Thank you for your soulful sharing of the perils of intimacy. As I age, I am learning to develop relationships at a peer level rather than the learned dynamic of the uneven power dynamic of an adult/guru and the child/acolyte. Of course, a lot of psychotherapy and grieving had to happen for this to evolve.

"Its never too late to have a happy childhood..."

Healthy boundary setting, I have found, requires that I know and respect the core of who I am. It is difficult to gracefully set boundaries when you don't know your own internal typography. Yes, I have "sore toes" that are still hyper-sensitive and demand special vigilance but I now know where these potholes are and can steer around them.

I am an aged adult and will make a muck of things if I attempt to place intimates on the "parent pedestal" and regress into personal impotency. At some deep subconscious level I am craving the "I - Thou" sacred dynamic that Martin Buber described. Sadly I find that too few of us elders have the skills of modeling healthy "adulting" for younger generations. We now all live in worlds of augmented "reality" where we become detached from our Core and enmeshed in and entranced with our avatar images. Perhaps the acknowledgment of the death of a relationship is an invitation to renew our personal relationship with our authentic Self so we don't feel the need to project our needs onto others.

Your words gave me a lot to ponder and to grieve. Yes, we need to honor our flawed humanity and to "parent" ourselves so we don't have to constantly recreate the parent-child relationship to feel intimacy and to feel lovable.

Another writer, Sharon, shared this painful but true comment:

I can totally relate. Remorse IS born of empathy. I've struggled with a lifelong friend for some time, who is occasionally barbed in comment and unapologetic when cancelling plans. For a while now I’ve brooded, hurt. My husband says that friendships go through rough patches, but I know this person is not accustomed to introspection, and probably has no idea how upset I am. Yes I should've pulled her up in the past, I would've anyone else, but there's that pedestal... I'm close to drawing a line in the sand, I know I deserve better, but it doesn't stop me feeling terribly sad.

My response to this: I have made the mistake, and for my part this is a mistake, of being upset, hurt, angry, all of it at people who were so inwardly- focused that they had absolutely no clue of the damage they were doing.

While yes, friendships go through rough patches, perhaps the roughest patch, and I have failed miserably at it, is to call out bad behavior when it happens, rather than hope against hope that it will stop or that somehow that person will figure it out.

They won’t. In this, then, is our growth. We choose to risk the connection by calling it out (which I did in my article and the friendship imploded, not on my end but theirs, which was instructive).

Or we risk ruining the connection anyway by being regularly damaged by the behavior. Either way growth is demanded of us.

Friendships invite us to risk and expand. Sometimes when we do we lose the friend. That said, they did their job for us. Now it’s time for us to find a new friend or three or five who invite us to grow even more.

Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash

The Chaos Trials

left this message:

I think, given my work, you know my take on this. Great piece. Sadly, I've been hurt so repeatedly and systematically, that I am rethinking my relationship to humans in general. Beware the "very spiritual." They, in my experience, are the worst offenders. They mask their toxic brokenness behind a cloak of feigned sincerity, earnestness, and incense. Run.

Later, he added this:

"Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill-will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

Interesting, Chaos brings up a difficult point here. I have a friend who is a minister at a local church, which espouses all manner of very spiritual teachings. The stories she shares about the politics and behaviors go against every teaching in the church. That could be said about a great many religions and a great many people, but the point is that too many of us hide our humanity behind the veil of false spirituality.

Years ago the so-called New Age movement of the 1980s was to have ushered in some kind of new way of being, and what it did instead was jump-start a slew of extreme Right Wing evangelicals who were horrified to realize that there was no magical New Beginning that fixed everyone else so that they didn’t have to change.

That’s overly simplistic, but like so many other movements, the New Age movement created its opposite, which is still reverberating forty years later.

There is only the deep and hard work on the self, and as Chaos has written elsewhere, not everyone can be helped. My brother was among them, so this is personal to me.

I got one other relevant comment but am not sure I got permission to attribute, so this will be printed without proper acknowledgement (which I will change if I hear from that person):

I have been thinking a lot about this topic - of why people can have so many opinions about me/attack try to bring me down in different ways. It has happened a lot in my life and I guess correlates with developing (a) boundaries and an opinion.

I really like this sentence “Sometimes people are not worthy of our trust and the high regard in which we hold them. Therein lies the opportunity to hold our own hearts in higher regard, so that we don’t trade off our sacred selves for what others offer us.”

I’ve chosen people that I have tended to idolize, put on a pedestal and adore. I have subjugated myself to them. The very moment I veer from the adulation, call out their shit or bad behavior, suddenly I’m the Evil Witch from the West. How DARE I?

This behavior began in childhood, where deeply problematic and alcoholic parents demand complete commitment from their kids and cannot tolerate any kind of feedback. That was my father. When I called him on his foul mouth, abusive behavior and alcoholism, he kicked me out of the family and wrote me out of the will.

I learned from that profound action that I was never to question or else get rejected completely. It has been a lifetime of making a backbone from feedback, learning to set boundaries, saying no to abusive people and learning how to call out shit when I see it.

The hair on the back of my neck still rises. I expect a backhand. That was my father’s response to anyone’s daring to call out his shit. I’m 71 and the hair still rises if I have the unmitigated gall to call someone out.

That is the price of personal growth.

If that person we call friend, or father for that matter, can’t countenance feedback and the discussion that comes from that callout, they are not worthy of the courage it took us to take that step.

I lost a friend because the first time I finally found a way to call this out it was clumsy as hell. I’m not apologizing for that any more. It took what it took for me to address someone else’s genuinely ugly behavior.

All of us do the best we can with what we have. All of us carry beliefs and behaviors born of our upbringing. And all of us have to find our own awkward, bumbling ways forward.

Sometimes we knock over other people’s toys, and their big fat egos in the process. Sometimes we get to knock down our own big fat egos.

Sometimes the only way we can move on is to ghost, because there is no conversation to be had without serious damage being done.

It’s all growth. It’s all good. It’s all part of becoming.

My heartfelt thanks to Dear Reader for sharing important thoughts, ideas and their vulnerability here. Particular thanks to those of you willing to let me attribute you directly.

I see you and I see your courage.

Let’s play.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Thank you to all who comment. I read every single one of them. Respond where I have something to say. Value the hell out of the time it takes to pen something and to let me know your thoughts. If this one helped you in any way, please consider

If you know of anyone agonizing over friendships and losses, please consider

Either way, heartfelt thanks.