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#Microblog Monday 380: The Friends Who Break Your Heart

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Our culture is terrible with endings. Beginnings — we go above and beyond. Endings — not so much. Like everyone else, I was drawn into the recent Atlantic article about friendships that begins: “Our culture lacks the proper script for ending friendships. We have no rituals to observe, no paperwork to do, no boilerplate dialogue to crib from.”

You can divorce a spouse, but we don’t have a method for uncoupling a friendship. The article tries to give a blueprint (or a reason for a blueprint) to that.

It is worth the very long read because it unpacks this truth: “What makes friendship so fragile is also exactly what makes it so special. You have to continually opt in. That you choose it is what gives it its value.”

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.


3 comments

1 Mali { 02.28.22 at 9:39 pm }

I haven’t read the article yet (though I promise I will), but I guess we don’t deal with endings because they are painful, as all losses are. Friendships are usually valuable, sometimes for a while, sometimes forever. I’m interested to see what the article says. Thanks for always giving me something new to think about, Mel.

2 Sharon { 03.03.22 at 12:36 pm }

Yes. So many friendships just kinda drift away.

3 loribeth { 03.04.22 at 8:50 pm }

I read that article a few weeks ago. Friendships can be hard, and making new friends at midlife is very hard — even more so when you don’t have kids to bond over, I think.

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