One Friendship. Two Women. Three Truths.
"What about the friendship you abandoned and the way it affected those left behind?" she asked.
A few days after I published an essay about friendship grief, someone I’ve known for many years left a public comment about what I implied but did not state in When a Friendship Dies Before It Ends.
Sometimes we are left behind. Sometimes we are the one who leaves.
I appreciated the rawness of her comment …now. In the moment, my first reaction was annoyance, and I felt the urge to defend myself, to explain what she was leaving out.
Instead, I sat with her comment and my Bigly Feels. It reminded me of a familiar Jewish trope, the kind we say with laughter in the middle of a boisterous discussion: Two Jews, three opinions. Except with friendship grief, it's one friendship, two women, three versions of the truth, and nothing to laugh about.
The Trinity
Many years ago, I read that relationships are never only two people. There is you, there is me, and there is the relationship itself, a living thing between us, shaped by what we give it, what we withhold from it, and what time does to both. That idea has always stayed with me because it feels tender and true: tend the love, and it deepens; neglect it, and it begins to fade. That trinity fits friendships, too.
There is the friendship as I experienced it, filtered through my history, my insecurities, my hopes, my disappointments, my memories, and the meanings I attached to it.
There is the friendship as you experienced it, filtered through your own history, your priorities, your fears, your assumptions, and your memories.
And then there is the friendship that existed between us. The conversations we remember differently, the misunderstandings neither of us wanted to own, and the intentions that never quite matched the impact. The moments we each overlooked because they did not fit the story we needed in order to keep our sense of self intact.
The Ledgers of “truths with a little t”
“The more often we revisit the same injury, the more natural it becomes to convince ourselves our version is the only one that can possibly be accurate. ”
People are wired for companionship and connection. Mothers put themselves last to put their children first. Friends show up in the middle of the night. Husbands work extra hours to provide for the people they love. We nurture relationships because they matter.
And conflict is inevitable, unavoidable. So are disagreement and disappointment, and those challenges do not automatically mean disloyalty, failure, or a lack of love. Sometimes a conflict is simply a conflict, not a verdict on the whole relationship.
But when childhood was rife with chaos and scant on security, disagreement can feel more dangerous than it is. A missed call can feel like rejection. Distance can feel like abandonment. A hard conversation can feel less like an exchange between two people and more like a threat to the bond itself. We learn to fight to preserve our identity, disappear to protect ourselves, or keep score so we can prove we were never the one at fault.
Those patterns do not stay in childhood. They follow us into adult friendships, where an ordinary rupture can awaken an old fear: If we are not okay, am I still okay?
Healing does not make conflict comfortable, but it can help us stop treating every disappointment like a verdict on our lovability, loyalty, or worth.
We learn that no one owns the whole story of what happened.
The clearest explanation of this came to me during a silent meditation retreat more than 20 years ago. It was winter in the Catskills of New York, at a rustic venue with wholesome food and about 100 attendees. We were there to learn meditation from Rabbi David Cooper, a venerable teacher who has since passed away. I have never forgotten what he taught about truth. It was so simple, and it has stayed with me ever since.
He said there is our human truth, with a little t. There is The Whole Truth, with a capital T, something larger than any one person can fully hold. And The Whole Truth, he said, belongs to God. The wise know the difference.
And yet, even when we know there is a larger truth, we still reach for our own version of events when a friendship is hurting, because pain makes certainty feel safer than humility.
What Happens When Our truths Collide?
By the time a friendship implodes, the list of grievances is usually long. They pile up and feed the Doubt Goblins™ of Keeping Score who begin whispering about the wrongdoings and failures of the other. Unlicensed accountants of our hurts, they convince us to measure the friendship against the evidence gathering in our minds.
She said...
I said...
She forgot...
I remembered...
We add columns to an invisible ledger until one day we’re convinced that our truth - with a little t - is The Truth with the big T. The more often we revisit the same injury, the more natural it becomes to convince ourselves our version is the only one that can possibly be accurate. From there, we play defense in our minds, and sometimes we even recruit others into the fray, especially when we believe the accusations are incomplete, unfair, or untrue.
I've done it, and I gently wager every woman reading this has too. But what if, rather than certainty, we hone the instinct of curiosity? What if the invitation hidden inside friendship loss isn't simply to prove righteousness, but to ask, what part of her story might be true too?
That question doesn't require me to abandon my own experience, excuse the behaviors that built the hurt, erase the boundaries the hurt then built, or rewrite our herstory with its protagonists, antagonists, villains, victims, and supporting characters. It simply asks me to remember that curiosity is not the same thing as certainty.
That is badassery in action.
The Courage of Curiosity
When I was younger, my energy would have gone toward defending my truth, my choices, explaining my intentions, and proving my point. Today, I'm learning to resist that urge, with partial success because, candidly, the Doubt Goblin of Self-Righteousness is a loud and snarly beast. He loves gathering evidence, flinging it like shit across the room, and delivering closing arguments with spittle, like a litigator on crack.
My Badass Sage keeps leaning in anyway, encouraging me to choose compassion and ask better questions instead of building a stronger defense. Curiosity takes courage. (I've a long way to go, admittedly. Intent and impact... that's another essay for another time.)
This much I know. Somewhere inside every friendship ending is another human being carrying a story and a hurt that feels just as real to them as mine feels to me. I don't have to agree with every chapter to acknowledge that it exists.
Still, as another dear friend reminded me recently, time has a way of softening edges and healing wounds. Maybe that's the opportunity hidden inside friendship loss. Despite the way it scorches our hearts, it can also expand our capacity to love and listen and choose with discernment as we grow forward.
Maturity says, I hurt. It's time to walk away.
Maturity also says, I walked away... and it hurt.
And compassion, that thing I'm trying to grow more of, begins the moment we stop insisting our truth with a little t is The Whole Truth with a Capital T.
Epilogue: My Public Response
I responded to her comment by thanking her for reading and for taking the time to share her perspective. I acknowledged that friendship grief and friendship loss were clearly resonating with many readers, then ended with these words:
"We all have different experiences and perspectives about the same circumstances. And time softens the edges of hurt or misunderstanding. I'd be happy to connect if you'd like to share more about your perspective. Feel free to call or text, whatever's more comfortable."
Because maturity also says, I hurt... and I'm still open to reconciliation.
