Loss and the Mourning After

The emotions we feel at the loss of a friendship are not unlike those we feel when mourning a death. This is especially true when the circumstances deem no possibility of reconciliation. These situations present a unique emotional dilemma. The identity of the victim is not clear. The one ending the relationship may consider themselves the victim. The one who must accept the end may consider themselves the victim.

Ties are severed and rapport is denied. Often, this results in the denial of closure for one or both parties. In this, perhaps it can be said the ending of a cherished friendship is worse than the death of a loved one. This would explain why the mourning of a lost friendship can last longer than the death of a loved one.

We can understand death, it is the true finality. We may not always be able to understand the reasoning of our friend’s decision to sever us from their lives. Perhaps our actions merited the verdict of a life long sentence. This does not preclude us as the accused from suffering the sentence. We become imprisoned by the memory of it.

We cannot hope the friend will pardon us; they have often tossed away the key and moved on. We can, however, pardon ourselves. If we do not deserve a pardon based upon rehabilitation, we can at least merit an early release on good behavior.

It can be argued that we as the accused, bear the weight of our nature as sociopaths. I purposely use this term sociopath because it is largely rejected by the psychiatric community as being too broad in its descriptive of the human condition. We tend to label others too broadly, as well.

Can one who mourns the loss of a friend over the course of a lifetime be considered maleficent? Or is one who can so easily sever a friendship with little or no regard for the suffering of the other more accurately diagnosed a psychopath?

So often, articles are written from the high road perspective of the one who should end a relationship. We often recommend that a healthy decision would be to sever ties with the accused and move on for the sake of our own sanctity. How wonderful our world would be if there were in fact, so many of you sanctified as opposed to us very few maleficent sociopaths. In that near perfect world would be fewer wars, crimes, and atrocities.

 Reference:

PsychCentral.com – “8 Steps to Closure When a Friendship Ends,” By THERESE J. BORCHARD  Associate Editor

Image Credit: Best_Friends!_(7573267890) Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license Author Paul Lucas UK