“In every friendship hearts grow and entwine themselves together, so that the two hearts seem to make only one heart with only a common thought. That is why separation is so painful; it is not so much two hearts separating, but one being torn asunder.”- Fulton J. Sheen
When we were kids, I think a friend is that one person we get to love for real outside of our family. It is from this person that we learn how to like and how to be liked. It is from this person that we learn the meaning of “trust”. When we grew up, however, the word love referred more and more to that “special someone”, a girlfriend or a boyfriend we feel we’d give our lives for no matter what.
Maybe this is the reason why “broken hearts” almost always meant breakups with one’s romantic partner. It’s as though our hearts could never be broken by anyone else. It’s as though we couldn’t suffer more whenever we lose a friend.
If you have experienced losing both, however, would you agree? Was it any less painful when you’ve lost your friend?
Digging from my own experience, I can say this: that I have wept more and anguished more over losing a friend than over losing a boyfriend. I have spent more sleepless nights over friendships lost than over romantic relationships that failed. Losing a boyfriend was painful, but losing a friend made me question what human relationships were supposed to be about.
What is a friend?
“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
To find a friend is to find someone like myself, someone who is very similar, yet a bit different somehow. It is to see a soul that is almost like a mirror of my own, a soul who can see things in almost the same way that I see it.
This is one reason why friendships are so vital. Friends help validate our perspective about life and the world we live in. They help us see the meaning we seek. They help us find the truth we’re looking for.
And that is why all the other qualities that other people say about friends depend only on this very foundation. They say that friendship is trust. But how do you trust someone who cannot share the core of who you believe you are? They say that friendship is camaraderie. But how could anyone be a good company to you when they cannot look into your soul?
Friends understand one another’s soul, that’s the full meaning of it. And that’s why it’s so painful to lose them. For what would you do once your soul could no longer be one?
“In this kind of love… ‘Do you love me?’ means ‘Do you see the same truth?’” — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
How do we lose our friends?
If friends share the same soul, how then do we lose a part of our souls? How does it happen? When do friendships really end?
1. The problem of distance
“Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path.” — Scandinavian Mythology
One of the most common reasons for losing friends is physical distance. It’s when we need to go to another school or another town. It’s when we need to live elsewhere so we could follow our dreams.
We may not want it to happen, but whenever we decide to live far from our friends, we’re also putting our friendships at the risk of being torn apart. Maybe it doesn’t happen abruptly. We convince ourselves that we could still see each other now and then. We also tell ourselves that much has changed with the world’s technology, and we can still communicate with each other in a heartbeat wherever we may be.
But distance changes things. It changes our friendships slowly. It weakens it without our awareness until that day when we finally realize how it has claimed some of the most valuable friendships we’ve ever had.
“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, ‘sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.’” — C. S. Lewis
2. The problem of outgrowing one another
“Friends are people who go on conspiratorial shopping sprees together, diving in and out of shops totally beyond their price range, and ending up eating oozing cream cakes with only just enough money to get home.” — Pam Brown
There are times when it’s not the physical distance that separates us from our friends but the distance of our growth as individuals. People change. Along the way, we discover dreams we never thought we had. Sometimes, we have to adapt to our present struggles and we change our priorities.
When your relationship with your friend was formed, you were walking along the same path, and most probably, you were also walking toward the same destination. You may both be carefree and fun-loving, not minding at all what would happen in the future. One day, however, you just realize that one of you has changed. Your friend may have decided to take life more seriously and you miss all the exciting things you did together. You miss the times you could just laugh and play without any worries.
It could also happen that you just wake up one day not knowing what you and your friend could enjoy doing together. You want to go to the movies, but you remember that your friend told you how she never really enjoys watching them anymore. You may want to visit your favorite library, but your friend often excuses herself because she would go trekking or mountain-climbing with her other friends.
Through the years, we may discover different paths. We may develop new hobbies and lose our common interests. We may also find out how we’ve grown into totally different kinds of people.
The friendship struggles because we could no longer stand by each other the way we did before. One day, we may gain the momentum to walk a bit faster, moving on without our friend. It could also be the other way around, and we’re the ones left behind. No matter how painful, we learn to move on and let go.
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” ― Anais Nin
3. The problem of misunderstanding
“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”
— Lucius Annaeus Senec
