What Happens?

My blogger friend wrote What Happens? about how friendships can go sour and she asks the question, what happens?
Being the expert on the topic I couldn’t help but write about it as well. The thing is, change is inevitable and not all relationships can weather the storms of change in terms of geographical distance and lack of communications, and so the two people may just lose touch with each other. So basically, the first answer to what happens? Is that “Change happens.”
But sometimes it’s deeper than that as two best friends who are working together or a married couple living together become estranged because of something that one of them did; an act that causes the other person so much pain it’s like they walk around with a heart in a clutch so tight it’s like those footballs that are made out of plastic bags in Africa (the ones that have to be made tight otherwise it loses the qualities of a ball). So when the hurtful event occurs, be it cheating or lying or having their trust broken, turning away from the person becomes a matter of self-preservation because they can’t have their hearts go through that again. And that’s when a change in the relationship takes place because they say that trust is like a glass that can’t be pieced together into its original form once shattered.
So sometimes it’s a matter of two people growing apart and sometimes it’s a hurtful event that changes the relationship and sometimes it’s just a dose of reality because one realizes that they gave a relationship more value than it is worth. Take for instance a maslaha friend, one who only calls up when they need something. You might consider them a close friend while they are only using you for money or something that you have, so what happens is that you wake up to the fact that the friend is nothing but a maslaha friend and that’s when you might try to stay away, i.e. you give the friendship its true realistic value after being deceived for so long.
But you know everybody in your life is there for a reason, some will break your heart, others will open your mind, and some will do both; it’s all part of coloring your life’s experiences. And what else to say but c’est la vie.

How a broken heart can sometimes feel (Image from Ecostreet.com)