Divorce hits friendship

Earlier, friendships were for keeps. Not any more. Now, nothing lasts forever, not even a close friendship. Almost every teen today has a sob story of how he or she fell apart from their friends after ‘distance came between’ them, because of which they had to ‘split up and move on.’

Practical-minded boys and girls today believe that it’s best to call it quits before their relationships turn sour. These ‘friendship divorces’, usually mutual, are increasingly common among those who have finished school and entered college, and no longer have time for their school buddies.

When Akruti Rao moved from Delhi to Karnataka for her Mass Communications course, she realised that long-distance friendship wasn’t really working out with her school buddies. “I have changed in many ways, and so have they. But the problem was that they weren’t ready to accept me the way I am now, they wanted me to remain the same. At the same time, I wasn’t allowed to expect them to be the way they used to — which is completely unfair. So when I went back to Delhi for a small break, I met up with them and we had a ‘break-up’ party, if you can call it that,” says Akruti. “I gave them all a small parting gift from my side to keep it amicable,” she adds.
Prashanth Kumar, an engineering student from Anna University, Chennai, had a difference of opinion with his school friends recently. “In school, I didn’t have a girlfriend, so when I started dating someone in college, my school friends didn’t take it very well. We had a huge argument about it, and I stopped talking to them for a couple of weeks. Then I called up one of them who is a little more practical than the rest and suggested that we should all meet for lunch one last time. He planned the entire event, we all met and talked about the good times we’d had. The upside was that we decided to sever ties but not burn our bridges. Though we aren’t friends any more, that lunch helped us end things on a good note,” he says.
Priya Bhat, a BBA student from Mumbai, feels that close relationships can’t always end well and that it’s difficult to have a no-hard-feelings, ‘mutual divorce’. “My friendship with my erstwhile best pal in school ended bitterly and I tried hard to save our friendship. But she dumped me,” she rues.
Aheli Raychaudhuri, an arts student from Kolkata, recalls with some rancor how she recently ‘split’ with a former friend. “We used to be extremely close, but then we started drifting apart. At one point it was so bad that we started calling each other names and I just couldn’t take it any more. So we talked it over and decided to have a divorce of sorts — we no longer are friends, but that doesn’t mean we have to spoil the memories of the good times we spent with each other,” she says in bitter-sweet tones.

source:dc