Picture Worth a Thousand Words

 

My-Other-ExI know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But one look at the cover photo of My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends tells me that editors Jessica Smock and Stephanie Sprenger of The HerStories Project are on the right track.

Literally. The photo is of two women walking side by side on railroad tracks. Arms outstretched, their fingers touch—but barely. They have come to a switch, a tricky junction where two parallel tracks diverge. The necessary curvature allowing for an additional direction means the women must move a little farther apart. Each walks precariously on the narrow track edges; one looks as if she is about to lose her balance. Will they be able to negotiate this change in the tracks safely?

Or will they get zapped by the third rail of female friendships—envy, competition, aggression, differentiation, betrayal, conflict, conflict-avoidance, to name just a few? All the not-so-nice realities that beset girls and women. When we inevitably encounter such things with no language to talk about them, our closest friendships often crash and burn in fiery ruptures. Or end not with a bang, but with a whimper that leaves us wondering what happened.

Either way, it’s like a punch in the gut. My friendship break-ups have knocked the wind out of me for years. I obsess, I brood, I go over and over what went wrong. I hate her, I miss her. I can’t move on. And almost every woman I know has experienced her own particular version of such heartbreak.

We bear our grief in shameful silence, though. The hyper-celebration of gal pals just makes you feel worse when your friendship turns pallid or your friend turns on you.

At long last, My Other Ex breaks through the silence and sheds some light on why ruptures are so common.  I can’t wait to delve beyond the picture into the many thousands of words these women write about friendships derailed.

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Have you ever experienced rupture with a female friend? What was it like? Lessons learned?

 

5 thoughts on “Picture Worth a Thousand Words

  1. Still grieving a few relationships that are gone. One in particular that I have no clue what happened. Shock and grief and an unpleasant cocktail. I bought the book and look forward to reading it too although I have to be in the right mood to start it off you know what I mean. Been writing a series of blog posts myself on community: longing for it and creating it. Check it out if you the time.

    • Hi Heidi,
      I know what you mean by needing to be in the right mood. The pain of these lost relationships is so long-lasting. BTW, I’ve been enjoying your posts on community, and left a comment on one a while back–hope you saw it.

  2. Did have a friend drop out of our relationship for no apparent reason many years ago, It was very difficult and I still wonder and miss her! A reason would help to understand what happened.

    • Yes, I think the endings where we have no clue are often the hardest. I think it’s consonant with one of the big problems women have in the first place–not knowing how to talk about difficult things, so just pretending they don’t exist.

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