The friendship between my best friend and me had been strongly built for a very long time. It seemed like we always told the truth to each other and never said “no” when the other needed help. This friendship kept growing up even when I had a girlfriend. I still tried my best to balance the relationship between my girlfriend and my best friend so that I could make both feel happy.
Things happened when my friend asked me to come to help her with the project on the following day. The problem was that I had already dated my girlfriend to go out for movie. At that time, like a natural reaction without thinking carefully, I made up a stupid lie about having family business to refuse her. My friend was easily convinced and I was sure she would never know the truth.
However, everything turned out to be totally different from what I had imagined. I was caught by my friend while I was hanging out with my girlfriend. That was a really uncomfortable experience to me. Like a child caught doing bad things by his parents, I felt absolutely embarrassed. Even worse, my friend totally ignored me on the next days. It would have been easier for me if she simply complained to me or even shouted at me for cheating her. In that case, I could have had a chance to say sorry. Yet, she kept silent and avoided talking with me even when I tried to call her many times.
The situation prolonged by a couple of weeks. During that time, I suddenly felt so empty. I remembered the good time between us then realized how important this friendship was to me. I couldn’t imagine how sad and lonely I would be if I lost this friendship forever. Those thoughts empowered me to find out the best way to cool down with her. I set my mind on saying sorry to her. Fortunately, my friend and I talked with each other again after a long period of cold war that seemed like longer than a year to me. Maybe after all that time, both of us had found out our friendship was too strong to be easily broken up that she finally accepted my apology.
Friendship is hard to be kept yet easy to be broken. Conflicts will inevitably arise from time to time; however, if we know how to wisely deal with them, our precious friendship will certainly evolve.
This is a photo of my best friend and me. We were going on a field trip. It feels so good when having friends around. May those memories and our friendship last with time :-)
3 comments:
Hello Frank,
I really found your post fascinating as you were in a rather complicated and awkward situation. Based on how you managed to resolve the conflict in the end, I am glad that you and your friend were able to move past this incident and not let it affect your friendship.
Personally, if I was in your situation, I would definitely try any means necessary to get your friend to have an open discussion with you about the incident. In my opinion, having a “cold war” is not an effective mean of solving any conflicts as what it does is puts all the hurt and anger to mute. Having had my fair share of “cold wars”, I do believe it is actually more hurtful to purposely not talk to one another rather than to have an angry confrontation. Why do I say that? I believe that when one is angry, one expends energy to demonstrate that frustration and it shows how much that person actually cares about the other party to be getting so riled up. However, when one has a “cold war”, what it shows is a person’s lack of emotional response to the other party and it seemed to signal that he had just given up on the relationship.
I believe that true friendships will be able to withstand through anything that is put in its way. Based on my personal experience, I had lost a few friends in the past as we had a conflict and resorted to the “cold war” strategy. In the end, no one benefitted and it made social gatherings rather awkward. Hence, I am glad that you had managed to successfully resolve this conflict with your best friend and avoided the unnecessary emotional baggage.
Best Regards,
Khairul Anwar
Hey Frank,
Wow, one year is a long time for a cold war between best friends! But I’m glad that both of you realised the strength of your friendship from this incident. I was truly surprised when you lied to your best friend about going out with your girlfriend. I guess you didn’t want her to feel bad that you are unable to help her because of your commitment to your girlfriend. You must have lied to her with the fear of not wanting to affect your friendship but you were just unfortunate that she discovered the truth! So the moral of the story is that we should never lie! =D
You mentioned that friendship is hard to be kept and easy to be broken. I think it depends on the friend actually. This maybe true if your friend is really sensitive about your friendship and have high expectations from it. Little misunderstandings could blow up to break a friendship if your friend was very particular about such incidents. However, if your friend could try to understand the situation from your point of view and openly communicate with you his/her concerns and feelings, then it’s unlikely that the friendship breaks easily.
I find that open and honest communication is the key step to building and sustaining relationships. Like your situation, you would probably be able to react appropriately if your friend was complaining about this incident to you openly. It gets really awkward and tough for you to resolve the problem if the other party is not willing to discuss about the issue at all! I really appreciate that you share this very interesting personal experience with us! I hope that you will not experience such unpleasant encounters with your friends again!
Regards,
Win Yee
hello frank
your blog is very interesting and i am enjoying to read your blog. In my opinion, I feel that it is fine to go out with your girlfriend instead of helping your best friend to do some project and she should not complain at all as your girlfriend is still more important than your friend, Right? It is the same thing. If she has a boyfriend, i guess that she would place her boyfriend as number one. In that case, you also would not jealous.right?
Actually, i am very curious about one thing. you are saying that your friend asked you for help and you refused. Then you go out with your girlfriend for moive. then she caught you. But how could she catch you and your girlfriend, if she needed to do her project. So in that case, she also never did her project and this means her project is not urgent at all?
Actually, i also do not know. i am just curious about that point. Anyway, i think that the only wrong thing you did is that you lie to her. In fact, you just told her that you need to go out with your girlfriend and everything will be fine. I guess so.
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