Should I stay if…we had a huge conflict?!

Whoa, first off, sorry to hear. Fighting with anyone, let alone close friends, is a big bummer. Secondly, there are so many follow-up questions to ask about said fight. How destructive was the conflict? Do you feel as if you’re seeing this person in a different light because of it? How much has this person hurt you? How much have you hurt them? I KNOW, SO MANY QUESTIONS. This is because being reactive and just cutting off a friendship won’t get you anywhere. Avoiding conflict will make it that much harder to deal the next time a person disappoints you (or you disappoint them). Being cut and dried might mean a lifetime of short-lived friendships. It’s tempting since it seems straightforward, but tackling these hard questions will actually make your life simpler.

If the fight made you feel offended, scared, or revealed a malicious side of your friend that you didn’t know existed before, consider it in the context of your friendship. Does this kind of thing happen all the time, or was it totally out of character? If it was out of character, is there something going on with them that they might need to be prompted to talk about?

If this is part of an ongoing pattern, and you feel exhausted by confronting the same conflicts without being heard, maybe it is time for a friend breakup.  It’s much easier said than done, but, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned just how important it is to surround myself with people who have my back and want the best for me! You deserve friends like that, too.

If you’ve concluded that your friendship with this person is more important than the conflict at hand, here are some tips to take you from resentment to reconciliation:

  • Acknowledge that the fight happened! The tension between you and your friend isn’t going to go away because you’re both ignoring it. Have an open and honest conversation about how/why the fight happened (with lots of “I feel” statements included). If there are irreconcilable differences that you can deal with, you can agree to disagree.
  • Understand that forgiveness takes time. No matter if the apology came from you or them, it takes more than just a “sorry” to truly move on from conflict. Everyone processes things at their own speed. After a fight, I want to talk about it IMMEDIATELY, whereas a lot of my close friends need time to decompress. It’s taken me a long time to learn that I have to give them space to deal with things their way.
  • You both need to want to make it work. Recovering from a conflict requires both parties. It’s an emotionally demanding process, and both of you need to be open to criticism from the other. If you’re spending time and effort trying to reconcile, but your friend seems totally uninterested, reevaluate the situation. Forgiveness takes two, and if your pal isn’t willing to let go of the fight, consider letting the friendship fade. It may be for the better!

No matter how you got into Friendship Limbo (and how much you want to get out!), you have to take your time in deciding a course of action to take. Choosing whether or not to end a friendship is not an easy task, but have faith that no matter what you decide, you’ll be OK. Friends come and go; it’s part of the beautifully sad thing about being alive! But sometimes, we find a friend that no circumstance can shake, a friend that grows with us, a friend that forgive us after fights, and we suddenly believe, like Frances seeing Sophie at the end of Frances Ha, that this friend really is “[our] person in this life.” ♦