Not always possible, as this old story illustrates –

I sit as far away from him as possible without ejecting from the passenger side & stare out the window miserable beyond words or reason. As much as I think I want a partner, and as much as I like this particular boyfriend -

1. I now know that it can never work

2. I fear I’m going to get dumped

3. And I’m too numb & caught off-guard to pull the proverbial, “You can’t fire me, I quit.” Da dum da dum…

We were returning from his friends’ wedding. It was my first time in the three months or so that we’d dated that I spent in the company of him and his AA family. I didn’t belong. I felt like an outsider, not simply in the larger group of his friends, but more pathetically and emphatically — an outsider of his life.

But I liked him & I was clingy.

One night soon after the wedding, he called. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t see spending the rest of my life with you, so I won’t be coming over tonight.” A little one two punch, delivered just like that.

Three months from bodice-ripping to the clunkiness of a two people pulling asunder that which was so hastily, perhaps too hastily, arranged — it was over.

He was perfectly honest and I was perfectly wounded. I tried to be a friend. I would call him to test my feelings. And they were pretty consistent. I wished him well, but felt like saying go to hell when he told me he’d fallen in love with an AA woman. They’d been friends for years and it was wonderful and surprising and perfect and they were getting married. Arrrrrghhhhhhh

I have boy friends who were boyfriends. But this guy isn’t one. And that’s okay. Like they say, it is was it is, or isn’t.

Let’s hear some of your stories of friendship after breakup, dear flirtysomething readers.

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