Our Warning Signs

A couple of days ago I met up with an old friend. Now this friend is someone that I have known since birth. She grew up my best friend, is my cousin and someone I never fought with. We grew up telling each other family secrets, pinky swearing the darkest of stories and promises to secrecy. This was the girl that would beat out all the other girls and become my maid of honor when I would eventually start to plan my wedding.

However, after eighteen and a half years of no fighting and telling each other everything there was an instance of miscommunication and it all went downhill from there.

Thus started six months of silence.

After the words that she had said to me, and the words she thought had come out of my mouth, our friendship seemed over. It seemed hopeless, and not something that could ever be fixed. Could 18 years of friendship really be damaged within one instance of miscommunication?

Yes.

Could it be destroyed forever?

I don’t believe so…

Will it ever be the same as it was before?

I don’t think so either…

But as we sat down at Panera - she was fifteen minutes late and I thought she was going to stand me up – I really didn’t know what to say to her. What do you say to someone who ignored you for now ten months, never told you why she was silent? When you do finally talk to her, she says some things that seriously hurt you, and two months later, out of no where she texts you saying, “My brother said that we should be friends again…”

I really didn’t know what she wanted me to say, but she broke the ice quickly because the first thing she said to me was, “funny story…” and to no surprise a funny story followed.

We laughed, and we talked. We shared countless stories our year away at school and the experiences that followed. After about two hours into it, we were both telling the stories about our failed relationships. Apparently, she had the same warning signs I did too.

We both had people who were close to us telling us that we deserved better than the guys that we were dating. As we were sharing this with each other, we both agreed that while we were in the relationship, we thought that we were happy. My defense was, “he may bug me sometimes when I’m trying to talk to him and he ignores my calls or texts for hours on end, but when I’m happy I am with him!” 

I even had a therapist let me talk to her one time over a dinner table. I told her our story and I said, “well in his defense…” she looked at me and asked, “Do you feel like you are defending him a lot?” I nodded and she just told me, “That’s a warning sign. Just something to watch out for…” At that point I did pay attention to how many times I had to defend him after that, but shortly after the conversation occurred, our relationship had started to fall apart anyway.

Stephanie nodded and shook her head as I told her what had happened between Tyler and I and all those conversations that Sophia started off with the familiar phrase, “Becca, I see how miserable you are. You deserve better, a man that will lead you and not constantly disappoint you. Someone who will take you to church, and study the word with you.”

I knew as Sophia was saying it that she was right I knew that Tyler was not at all what I wanted in a husband (at least as my spiritual leader and guide). I knew that if he put in the effort, he could be, but he was never willing to put in the effort. My reasoning for staying was because I just knew what would happen if I broke off the relationship, I would be just as hurt as he would, and I didn’t want to go back to that place. Again Stephanie was in agreement as I was telling her all these things that everyone else was telling me about our relationship.

“But you don’t see it because you are so in love! You’re right in the middle of it! Even when you are out of the honey moon stage, you still don’t see it because you love that person so much!” She practically screamed in agreement, and for the first time in months I just looked across the table. We were laughing and talking as if nothing had changed, we were nodding at the fact that we should have listened to other people when they told us our relationship was not good for us.

I told my story of how he broke up with me; this time over FaceTime, but I won the breakup fight. She told hers and how he broke up with her using a note, but she won the breakup fight as well. I looked at my strawberry smoothie on the table, remembering back to eighth grade when she told me to set my standards and set them high. “After the break up though and a couple months after, when I started to heal, I took the time to re-set all my standards for dating…”

She took a bite of her bagel and went into a story about how a guy she was talking to, treated her so well and now every guy has to live up to that expectation of him. So to set it all straight I started to categorize the things we had in common, we both dated non-Christians, we had people tell us that something in the relationship was off, we had warning signs from the guys themselves as well. Neither of us listened to anyone else, even though they were right (and they are always right), we both got broken up with but won that fight and neither of us handled the break up very well, but when it was all said and done we were okay. We healed, moved on and in the end set our standards high for the next guy we date.

It seemed that even though we were not talking for those many months, we were living similar lives during our time apart.

After three hours, we said goodbye to each other and went our separate ways. We knew that everything felt the same, but we didn't know if it would ever be the same thing it was before, and maybe that was okay.  We also silently agreed that whatever happened between us ten months ago, was never to be brought up again.

Saturday then rolled around the corner, as her mothers fiftieth surprise birthday party came around. I was used to the silent treatment at that point, so I didn’t expect much, it felt like things had gone back to what they were before lunch on Wednesday. As Aunt Pam walked in and saw the crowd of people, I hear an “oh my…” she then went around and started hugging a ton of people I had never met. I got up and walked up to my mother, passing Stephanie, and I smile knowing that she had to leave soon so I wasn’t going to bother her much. I stayed silent until she looked at me and said, “hey…”

I smiled as though the last ten months never happened, “hey…” 

*Special Thanks*
-Sophia: For being right the whole time. Concerned the whole time, but never pushing the issue too far.
-Gretchen: For telling me that defending him a lot was something to watch out for.
-Chloe: For being there after the break up
-Luke: For texting Stephanie and fixing our friendship
-Stephanie: For being one of my best friends all these years and inspiring the story. :)
-The Jerks We Dated: For helping us realize we deserved better, and that we needed to set our standards way beyond anything the two of you could ever reach.