Letter: Friendship ends

You know, I write this as a letter, because I feel an essay would not deliver the message I wish to.

To whom it may concern:

What follows is not a rant or some sort of disappointment statement, on the contrary, it is a small testament to the travails I have witnessed, lived or suffered through, and the ultimate resolution on the matter, specifically about a subject that follows.

Dear wife and love of my life. I’m sorry we are having a particularly difficult time-of-understanding and seeing things eye-to-eye as we continue to change both in our 20-plus-years of marriage, and as we continue to age and are met with hormonal changes that play tricks on us once more as they did during our teenage years and in these middle-age years we are in and approaching. 

As always I wanted to start by telling you that I love you, because I do. I do hope my actions can better express the sentiment than these mere words. I address this to you in the particular opening, because I also wanted this to be an open letter to other individuals who may be confused as to the nature of changing relationships (or to others whom, in their everyday happenings, may also need a letter like this for someone in their lives). Let me explain as briefly as my fingers may type it. 

First and foremost, I am no longer wishing or willing to participate in the so-called friendship of your best friend, husband, and their children; I simply want nothing to do with them any longer. Please understand, I do not wish your relationship to be affected by my decision, as much as that can be possible. This is not a statement of permission to or for you, but an affirmation of my feelings in this marital friendship we have with them; with both of us having a 50% say on things; this would be my 50%. After you read this, and I hope you do, feel free to lay-it-on-me.

They are still welcome to come to our home, have barbecues with you outside, and you can certainly still have your sleepovers and wine, spritz, and other spirits with her/them; all I am saying is that as for myself, solely, and individually from you, these are my sentiments on the matter. Feel free to share yours with me at your convenience should you wish to. When they come in the future, I will simply retire to my room where I will partake in activities I enjoy for the duration of their stay, that is my choice and it should not impede yours.

What brought about this decision and why now and not then (whenever then could have been)? Well, it’s not that complicated, at least not from my viewpoint. This couple lives in the past. I mean that quite literally, not in the physical or spiritual sense, but in the thinking, talking, living, and sharing sense of things. 

It is one thing to remenize, or from-time-to-time relieve whatever one believes to have been the glory or good-old-days, but that is not what they do. My remembrance is of them glorifing every second of life that is gone or in the past with little or no ability to look at today or tomorrow with any significance. I do respect them. I also, to a degree, understand that they are proud of their accomplishments, that they are able to look back and say, I did it, or I overcame, or I am resilient. They deserve that. However, that created a small problem for me.

A stranger would say, I remember when, followed by a tale of personal proportions, with ideology, experience, and the occasional white lie. A lie that comes not because they want to lie, but from believing that after accessing a memory over and over it does not change. Such a small worldview, for anyone who believes that to their core. In an experiment a person is told something and the person passes the messages along a chain of people and when it gets to the end of the chain the message has changed from its original content though it only takes a few moments for the message to go from person to person. Some may argue correctly that we cannot make a correlation between a bunch of people remembering something, and one individual remembering the same thing over and over. Those who hold that argument, in part, fail to see that every experience molds us. Every scent, taste, touch, sound, and seen experience helps is grow, learn, and further understand ourselves, others, our environment, and life. While growing through the use of our senses, our thinking behaviors also grow and change. This means that a memory last year, while the same today, may include a more intense sound, or different olfactory reaction to something common in everyday life that overtime will become something more or less, or merge with newly seen uses of color in art or tattoos, or bring in further memories of having touched something all so similar to something from your office. In the end, making the memory no different than in the Chinese Whisper effect or cumulative error metaphor mentioned above.

Sorry, I digress. From the male side of the so-called-friendship, I was never able to amount to a small portion of what his two teenage friends were, the things they did together or while playing their online or network video games, the moments they shared, and the very many memorable moments he/they can recall at a moment’s notice that our present ones can never really equal. I’m not saying that our relationship was in some strange way a sort of race or competition to see whom the better friend is/was. What I imply, is that his quasi-attentive notion of being in the room while something immediate was taking place was merely a recording to be used at a later date. This memory-recording method of sharing with others/us would then be measured by/against previous memories they have, the past memories they live by, and then if it lived up to the expectation of any of them, then he/they would use it in some future conversation as a conversation stopper to mention how they lived through that moment with us and how significant it was… the reality is, it wasn’t! However much of an illusion it is for them to live in that reality, I do wish them continued happiness in their lalaland; I just can't push myself to accompany them there anymore.

They were/have never been in the moment with us. It’s all remember this, and when that happened, and don’t get me wrong, I don’t resent them for being happy for their memories. How could I? I have few if any recollections of my own, of any past moments… if I could say anything I'd say that I envy their ability to quite vividly retell the events that they aspire to believe took place oh-so-long ago. Yet, that to me, is not enough for a friendship. He doesn’t call me. He doesn’t text me. He doesn’t play with me unless I beg and even then the majority of the time it would be something he wanted to play and not something we wanted to play. While not a foretelling of the future, I just cannot imagine continuing to have a forgone relationship with someone when I am in the present.

As for the female side of things… she's such a big dreamer. That's important in life, to dream, have goals, looks and aspire to grander things. I believe in the philosophy of a Utopia, but her belief is that she's right, because she lived it, felt it, held it, remembers it, and more importantly, because she said so. It is good to affirm your beliefs, you know, to let people know you believe in something, or said differently, it's important to establish boundaries.

I don't fit in any one particular of her boundaries. To loosely quote a conversation, I stole you away from her. It's true! You were friends, I came along, we began a life together that included her, but you were no longer immediately accessible, you were no longer the center of her memories, mainly because when people marry, they usually start a life together where friends usually fall second in a ladder of important things to protect in this new facet of life, because of the promise of marriage… there is no promise of friendship; unless we're talking about a book or movie where the children may spit on their hands and hold them after declaring their forever lasting friendship, but even that's cliche.

Like her husband, they have very pointed opinions centered around memories they believe that because they share them with you somehow this newly-shared memories now have the same importance to you as they have to them. It's ludicrous to think that others will share your view of anything just because your explained it so well, for like the 100th time. Because, everytime something similar is mentioned, here comes the same story again… if I have to hear one more time how they lived through traveling to towns and experiencing how although close to one another the people in each spoke so differently and even had different meanings for same-spoken words, I will explode.

None of that makes them bad people, it makes them unique. I'm just so tired of the same uniqueness. In our last conversation with her, she went on and on about all these marvelous experiences she had gone through that somehow were meant to mean something to me only because they were/are so incredibly important to her. Put simply, I couldn't relate. Why, because my life experience has thought me one thing, her life one different thing to her, and so on for humans. I hate to explain it like this.

It's like someone who's family survived the Holocaust, and they share the story of how they grew up hearing, from their surviving family, the horrendous tales of pain, sorrow, discrimination, resiliency, and etcetera they underwent and how they are finally beginning to rebuild their lives.  In the end, it is as if it is expected of us to share their feelings just because they were so concise and poignant. That's not how it works at all! We can share a moment of sadness and grief sure, but beyond that I can never feel their story like they can, or re-live the pain as they do, I can sadly simply listen.

These expectations have grown to hurt me. I have gone out of my way to attempt the impossible and travel with them through these towns and listen to the people, perhaps imagine the scent of plants along the old roads, or even pretend to hear inserted sounds of roosters from my own memories to bolster my understanding. Yet, everytime I fail to meet them 100% on their side of their living/story, and it is as if they can see right through me. I can't help to feel judged and that somehow I torment them, because I'm supposed to be their friend and on their side, but I'm just too ignorant to comprehend them.

I hope you can understand when I say that I am tired of trying to do something my friends want me to that I simply am unable to. I can no longer sit there and listen to the same story knowing that in the end I will fail to rise to their expectations. I need more positive and ever-changing things in my life that will help me grow, have my own experiences and stop trying to understand theirs just because it is unfairly expected of me.

Please note that in my entire letter, I merely mentioned how my recollection of things is flawed. I refrained from from mentioning (up until this here statement) how my post traumatic stress is affected by these engagements, why my anxiety worsens around them, or how I end up depressed after trying and failing to meet these folks 100% on their side of their accounts when they clearly count on me. I want better for them, and a part of me feel I deserves better than what they provide. I will be forever grateful that they were there when we met. That your girlfriend has been a helping hand and shoulder to cry on, I will never forget. The ways in which we have trusted our families over the years I will cherish. All else I cannot presently recall will be kept in the safe of gratefulness in my heart. I hope you can, not understand perse, but perhaps through my words you can vaguely see a point of view that comes from our love. If not, thanks for reading, I feel the writing helped me feel a bit better in the end.

I love you wife. I hope we can further discuss this if you like, when you're able, ready, and willing. In this life, as in this letter: friendship ends.

Regards,

Me.