Writer recounts being dumped by her best friend, Molly, a few years after university and the aftermath of the relationship that ended. The writer wonders if she was insensitive and compares it to being dumped by a partner.
Dear Lisa, after much painful consideration, I have decided that we shouldn’t see each other any more. After five years, I know this will come as a shock to you but I must ask you to respect my choice and not to contact me...
’ The handwritten letter arrived at my London flat one morning more than 20 years ago. Yet even now, at 51, its words are burned in my brain, along with the cold, sick bewilderment they produced. They read like a classic ‘Dear John’ letter, although they had not been written by a boyfriend, but by Molly, my best friend from university. Or at least, I had thought she was my best friend.
Women’s lives may appear to be dominated by their choice of partners, or by children, if they choose to have them, yet I think relationships with girlfriends can be just as intense, meaningful and enduring – and just as painful when they come to an end. Being dumped by Molly was one of the most difficult experiences of my life and, in turn, it coloured my own decision to break off a long friendship a few years ago.
I am still appalled that Molly felt our relationship had become ‘toxic’ – one of several devastating accusations she made in her letter – so, in turn, drawing a line under my friendship with Katya, another close pal, left me horribly guilty. I met Molly when we were both students at Oxford. An aspiring actress, she was brilliantly funny and very glamorous.
Being dumped by Molly was one of the most difficult experiences of my life, writes Lisa Hilton, and it coloured my own decision to break off a long friendship a few years ago I think relationships with girlfriends can be just as intense, meaningful and enduring as one with a partner – and just as painful when they come to an end At first, I think I had a bit of a crush on her – she seemed so much more sophisticated than me – and I was quite shy around her.
We really got to know one another when Molly played the lead role in a college drama production I was directing, where I learned that despite her rather dazzling, self-assured persona, she could be very thoughtful and gentle. Soon we were inseparable and after university we shared a flat together in Rome, where we had both gone to study Italian. It was a heady, hectic, thrilling time which created wonderful memories.
There was the time we were chased by the police after being caught swimming in a fountain late at night, or the time we blagged our way into a posh hotel bar and escaped by shimmying down a wall from the terrace to the street without paying our bill. But we’d also spend hours sunbathing on the tiny balcony of our tiny apartment, smoking cigarettes and talking endlessly about our future plans.
Back in London, we rented separate flats but still met almost every day. It was Molly who persuaded me to make a serious try at writing, and when I got my first book contract aged 25 I was beyond grateful for her encouragement and support. I still can’t pinpoint the moment when our friendship must have begun to sour for her.
She felt like part of me, and although I never had any sexual feelings for her, I did love her fiercely. The last time I saw her, we had spent what seemed like a normal Saturday afternoon together, poking round the shops, going for coffee.
Then, completely without warning, her letter arrived. Molly wrote that she felt I had changed, that I was no longer the person she had known and that she had begun to feel uncomfortable around me. She didn’t want to see me again and asked me not to get in touch. I was blindsided.
Molly accused me of starting to lead a ‘flashy’ lifestyle, which made me cringe. It was true that, for the first time in my life, I had earned some money, and I had treated myself to a long-coveted Prada handbag and enjoyed going to more expensive restaurants. But I always invited Molly along, and picked up the tab – for me, it had felt like a pleasure to share my modest success with her.
Yet Molly had given up on acting and seemed to be drifting a bit, uncertain of what to do next, so, on reflection, had I been insensitive to flaunt my tentative success? Clearly she saw it as showing off. Like any rejected lover, I spent sleepless nights thinking over what else I might have got wrong.
As I read the letter over and over, searching my memory for moments when I could have upset her, I did sense a few of my own misgivings creep in. Had the ease and affinity I had always felt with her begun to recede lately?
She had made a few sharp comments about my weight – saying I had been much thinner at university – and expressed disapproval of other friends with whom I spent time, sniping that they were shallow. But these were minor niggles on balance. I mourned her loss like a bereavement, tormented by her absence, constantly reminded of her by familiar things or places.
I was single at the time, and while I had plenty of other friends, Molly had been my emotional rock. Without her, I felt scared and bewildered. Indeed, she had vanished from my life completely, and while I occasionally heard news of her from mutual friends, I was too proud to question them in detail about what she was up to. It hurt too much to hear about her life without me in it.
Perhaps that sounds extreme, but I think it’s not uncommon to have such strong feelings for a female friend. It’s just rarely discussed in a culture where so much of women’s emotional experience is directed towards men. Like any rejected lover, I spent sleepless nights thinking over what else I might have got wrong. My new novel, The Model, is set in the 1990s, the time when Molly and I met.
A thriller based in the fashion world, it draws partly on my own experiences as a model, but what really inspired me was the opportunity to write about the power and complexity of female friendships. In her diary, the novelist Virginia Woolf described her friends as lamps: ‘There’s another field I see: by your light. Over there’s a hill. I widen my landscape.
’ Without Molly, my life did feel dimmer, more cramped, and there’s a part of me that has never stopped missing her. I know that she married and had children, and I believe she moved away from London. Of course, I could try to find her online, but that feels both prying and masochistic. I only finally understood what she might have been feeling when I had a similar experience with my friend Katya.
Our friendship began through work, when we met at a PR event in my late 20s, and lasted through marriage, children, divorce, bereavement – 20 years of joys and challenges, successes and loss. Looking back, I was seeking a substitute for Molly, and in Katya I seemed to have found her.
In many ways, our relationship was a nurturing one – when I felt very isolated and unable to cope after the birth of my daughter, Katya drove hundreds of miles to visit me and give me much-needed advice. When her partner tragically died of a sudden illness, I spent whole days on the phone with her, organised trips and outings and read books on grief to try to understand what she was enduring.
Looking back, I see that Katya shared many characteristics with Molly – stylish, successful, always up for an adventure. Molly had accused me of having changed into someone she disliked but, ironically, things became difficult with Katya because she seemed, after two decades, to remain the same. Katya had always loved partying, yet as we entered our late 40s, I felt that the days of lost weekends were behind me.
Not only could my perimenopausal metabolism no longer cope with hangovers, but crazy, drunken nights also just didn’t interest me. Yet Katya tried to insist, moaning that I was boring. I dealt with that by suggesting different ways of spending time together, such as walks or gallery visits rather than cocktails.
By that time, we were both single again, but while I was more or less contentedly focused on my work and my daughter, Katya, who had no children, seemed increasingly dependent on me. Read More LIZ JONES: I didn't believe in ghosts until a medium introduced me to spirits in my home She would ask if she could come to stay, often for weeks at a time, and I began to resent the disruption she caused, interrupting my writing to suggest a lunchtime glass of wine, complaining if I wanted to stay in for an evening because I had a deadline.
Katya was always a forceful personality, but now her opinions seemed abrasive. She often embarrassed me in company by coming out with remarks that other people found offensive, though when I tried to speak to her about it she laughed it off. I began to dread spending time with her, even as I felt ashamed and disloyal.
She made me feel exploited and bullied, yet my growing desire to end our friendship was haunted by the suffering Molly had caused me. Molly had accused me of becoming a different person, now the problem I had with Katya was that she refused to. Still, I didn’t want to hurt Katya the way Molly had hurt me, so I dithered for more than a year.
At first, I took the coward’s way out by avoiding her calls or telling her I was busy when she wanted to meet, but when she texted asking me outright what was wrong, I’m afraid I wrote her an email, explaining why I thought our friendship had run its course. It felt cruel, but it was also a huge relief. She never replied and we are no longer in touch.
Revisiting both these experiences influenced the characters in my novel – best friends whose relationship encompasses loyalty and exhilarating companionship with jealousy and betrayal. Molly’s behaviour still stings, but after ending a friendship over email myself, I now feel a certain respect for her. Her letter made me burn with a sense of injustice, but I have come to accept her right to end our relationship.
There’s no bitterness, just regret that she had got to a point where she no longer wanted to try to mend things. If I bumped into her now, I would wish her only happiness, but I accept that our friendship can never be rekindled. I hope Katya will have reached a similar understanding in the year or two since we last spoke.
Sometimes, friendships belong to a place or a time, and we can slip in and out of them with relative ease. But I think that, for many women, they can also be defining relationships, ones which bring us both joy and despair, and mark us as permanently as any love affair. Names have been changed.
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