Five Easy Steps To Help You Let Her Go
One day, your best loved friend, the girl that your mates always rib you about, your perfect platonic chum, is going to want to leave.
It isn’t going to be easy on either of you - that is the tragedy of having such a solid relationship. The kind that has seen you both through playground bullies, difficult first loves (yours, not hers… she didn’t really start dating boys until university, an abstract experience for you, lived vicariously through long and frequent letters), a failed marriage each (no kids, thank god). In fact, it has potential to be devastating, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are five easy steps to help you let her go.
1 - Get Clarification
Before you can work out how best to deal with the situation, you need to work out why she feels the need to leave. Is it a whim or a need? A solid plan or a spontaneous urge? Is she running away from something, or towards something? Is it something that she’ll even be able to run away from, if she finds a new life, with a better job, and new friends? Can she be talked out of it? Does she, in fact, want to be talked out of it?
Will she still want to stay in contact with you? Will she be able to?All of these are important things to get a handle on, before proceeding, but she needs to be handled delicately. The temptation at this stage is to feel quite distressed, but it won’t help to succumb to it. If you adopt a plaintive tone, or interrogate her, it will just reinforce her resolve to leave, perhaps at odds with her best interests, so it is important to remember that friends are supposed to be supportive. Even when they face painful, thoughtless desertion by the only person that they have ever really cared about.
Take her out for a meal, or a day out somewhere nice, to celebrate her decision. Spread your questions through the occassion, taking care to frame them neutrally. It is only appropriate to remind her once or twice that you need her, and even then, keep it simple. It will be nice for her to know that you will miss her, but don’t make her situation any harder then it already is.
2 - Be Helpful
Remember that this is a tough time for her as well as you. She is leaving the home and routine that she has had for years, as well as the job that she has had since coming back from Uni. She is going to be leaving many people that she loves - not just you - and that won’t be much fun.
And that is before one even considers all of the practical things she has to take care of. She’s going to need to find someone to buy her flat, look after her dog until she gets settled. Sorting out the stuff in her house that she will need to sell on, chuck out, or get sent on when she eventually finds a place to end up could be a full time job for a couple of weeks, without some helping hands.
That’s where you come in. She has sorted you out more then once when you’ve had some kind of lifestyle or financial dysfunction - now it is your turn. You might not be much good at doing the money stuff, but you could find something simple that will save her loads of time and stress, like picking up her coach tickets, or helping her move boxes around - anything that will help. This will be indispensable as her deadline approaches, and she will be very grateful for the support.
You never know, she may find that she is so comfortable having you around the place that she changes her mind! Haha!
3 - Don’t Be A Dick
It probably doesn’t make too much sense to elaborate on this too much, because every individual’s situation is different. Suffice to say, you probably already know what we mean.
Just, you know, respect her wishes. If you think she will enjoy a surprise party, throw her one; if you think a quiet goodbye meal with just the two of you will be to her tastes, do that instead. But don’t just do stuff to try and paint a picture of the perfect friend, or because it makes you feel better. She is going to have enough going on in her head without awkward social situations, and the absolute last thing she is going to need is your passive aggressive weirdness muddying the water on her last few days.
Just be cool, you know? It isn’t fair acting all super perfect and thoughtful now, and you know that when you pull that weird pseudo romantic stuff, it messes with her head, because it never goes anywhere. Now is not the time!
4 - Help Her Go
When all is said and done, despite any weird moments the two of you may have had (like those inevitable times after the odd drunken, fumbling evening when you didn’t feel right about returning her calls, or the time when one of your almost annual arguments about the state of your friendship sent her, in spite, into the arms of that dickhead at the nightclub that she ended up marrying), she is your best friend, and you are hers.
On the day that she is set to go, make sure she doesn’t have to do it all alone. Be on hand with breeziness and easy smiles as she locks her front door for the last time. Carry her rucksack for her, but don’t, for god’s sake, berate her about how heavy it is, or even comment on how light it seems to be. Any reference to the bits of her old life that she is choosing to carry on with her has the potential to be an emotional flashpoint, and she is going to find today exhausting enough as it is.
Give her a lift to the coach station. Wait with her till her bus pulls in.
She might cry, more then once. It is perfectly normal during any big, life-changing process. Do not take this as a signal to cast doubt on her conviction, or on the wisdom of leaving. Trust us, in the real world, the fact that she has come this far means that she has made her decision. All you can achieve with this gambit is to place yourself at odds to the future that she has picked out for herself, and this is not a wise time to turn yourself from an ally into an enemy.
5 - The Goodbye
It will have been easy to assume that the days or weeks preceding that coach coming in, and the flurry of activity as she double-checks her pockets and bags for her essential travel items, or rubs her wet eyes and nose dry with the tatty tissue you gave her earlier, were the hard part. They will certainly have seemed difficult enough. But this, now, is the real test of your mettle, and you should make sure to keep plenty of emotional fortitude in reserve for this moment.
It is a common assertion that every journey starts with but a single step, and while that is most often true, of greater certainty is this: Every journey begins with a goodbye. It may not be a literal cheerio between two or more people, but even the lone runaway, jumping quickly onto whichever train happens to be leaving the station soonest, is saying farewell to something, even if it is only their past life, or the authorities close on their tail.
But anyway, it is now the time for your big goodbye. You should stand back a little while she checks herself. She probably doesn’t want, or need, any help as she does this - intellectually, she already knows that she has already made sure that everything is in order, but the process serves as a buffer, an emotional rest-stop between the plan and the act of leaving. Don’t take it personally if at this point she doesn’t meet your eye. It might seem like a snub, but in fact it is the exact opposite - she actually loves you as much as you love her, you denial-retarded idiot, and she is scared that the fact of your face may make her stupid and hasty.
The moment will pass, and if you are a good friend, you will let it.
She will move in for a hug, now, and you should allow it. Remember, though, that this clinch means everything. Make it count, because this is the last time in a long time, if ever again, when you will be able to let her know what she means to you, and there isn’t time to do it with words. Hold her close - if you feel she needs it, whisper positive reinforcement in her ear. DO NOT ALLOW HER PROXIMITY TO OVERWHELM YOU! Now is not the time to chew on her ear (refer to step 3).
Depending on how she feels (emotionally, not physically - not “warm and perfect and like home”) and whether there is precedent in your platonic friendship, she may seek solace in a gentle kiss. If you have been following the steps closely, you may be in a good place to judge how to play this, but bear in mind this: The idea that a good enough kiss can make a sane person throw over all of their plans for the future to be with someone that has been previously capricious and unreliable is a totally romantic invention of the media. At this point, the opposite is more likely true - send her on her way with a furtive, last-ditch embrace, and it is more likely that fear and confusion will prevent her from ever picking up the pen or phone to renew your connection across the miles.
By all means, kiss her, but keep it within the comfort zones of the established relationship. Or if we are being crass, leave her wanting more.
And that’s it - once you part, it’s done. She is on the coach. Resist the urge to burst forward, bang hard on the shaking door with your fist, and as the security guards try to pull you away shout heartfelt words of love through the window at her. Refer to “romantic invention of media” above - chances are, she would miss the pertinent points of your speech as she settled into her seat, and her parting images of you will be of a wretched, squalling imbecile being subdued by men in uniform.
It is time to accept that she is finally leaving. All that is left to you to decide is, how long is it appropriate to stand there, watching her through the glass? Walking away as soon as she is aboard may seem callous, but will standing there waving to the steadily shrinking bus long after she has stuck her earphones in and shut out her retreating history seem a little… desperate? Again, we leave it for you to judge this, based on the nature of your particular relationship. If you are unsure, a happy medium can be struck, by waiting until she is situated, and standing there long enough for a single wave when she looks for it, before smiling and walking away.
When she is finally gone, you have one last choice: You can head straight for the pub and drink as hard as if she were still there, or go home and wait for her to eventually call. But now might be the time to accept that you fucked it up, and you probably won’t get another chance like her.
We hope these steps can smooth the way with your transition between your life with your soulmate, and your life making do without her.
Come back next time for “Five Easy Steps To Accepting Your Life Of Endless Drudgery”.
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