There is a term in relationships called the “friendship hole.”
It’s a euphemism for when a partner is kind of-sort-of abandoning you. It’s the phrase that describes when he or she stops calling, texting, or leaving a voicemail.
In a sense, it’s kind of sweet. You’re getting a little breathing room. You’re not being dumped at the close of a sentence. You’re not being dumped into the deepest, darkest pit of despair with no hope of rescue.
I’m not sure why people do this. It makes them feel freer, more empowered. It feels good, in a weird, narcissistic, all-encompassing way.
I’m sure they feel this way because it allows them to release their emotional baggage. It allows them to get rid of the things that they’ve always carried around in their hearts — their baggage.
But the problem with this is that it also allows them to ignore or avoid addressing the things that they know are going on in their relationship. They’re ignoring or avoiding their own issues, but they’re ignoring or avoiding you, the person who is trying to be honest with them.
This can actually be a pretty good thing because it allows you to get away with murder, but it also allows your partner the freedom (or lack thereof) to act out their own version of reality.
They can ignore your baggage because they can deny their own issues, but they can’t ignore the issues that are right in front of them. You’re the second-most important person to them, so they can dictate how they behave and what they think of others.
In a sense, it’s kind of great because it allows them to keep themselves in check, but they’ll eventually realize that this doesn’t really prevent them from acting like an asshole to you. So they’ll act like an asshole to you.
This is where things can get tricky.
On one hand, it allows them to treat you with less cruelty and less resentment because they’re not having to think about how they might make you feel. They’re not having to put themselves in uncomfortable situations to make you feel bad.
On the flip side, it allows them to act out their worst qualities because they can ignore the things that they’re actually doing to hurt you. It’s easier for them to treat you poorly when they don’t have to think about hurting you.
So while it might be a good thing to have the friendship hole opened up, it might not be a good thing if the friend hole isn’t constantly filled.
Because One Bad Time Can Mean the End of the Relationship
It’s easy to get caught up in the concept of “not giving your partner too many things or people to feel sorry for them.”
It’s easy to forgive your partner when one bad episode doesn’t follow a sustained pattern of bad behavior.
It’s easy to forgive them when they’ve got a good moment of bad behavior and you just felt like you shouldn’t say anything because then it would become a “bad” relationship.
It’s easy to forgive when they’re just “trying to be nice.”
But it’s not always easy.
If you’re a person who writes about being a strong independent woman, forgiving your partner might not seem like the greatest idea because it might mean that the relationship is no longer strong and independent.
But trust me, there’s a time and a place for everything, and a relationship is a relationship is a relationship. Sometimes the time and the place are all about the other person and their behavior and what they’re doing, and that is never an excuse for behaving badly.
And if your partner is giving you one bad time, it doesn’t mean that they’re always bad. It means that they’re bad in certain moments, and not in others.
It means that if it ever gets to a point where you’re no longer feeling safe enough to be in this relationship, then you need to stop accepting their bad behavior and demanding that they change.
It might be good to try opening up to each other a little more about how you feel and about the patterns you’re seeing, but you have to feel comfortable opening up to each other about how bad the bad behavior is.
This is especially important if you’ve been in a relationship with a bad partner before. Your bad experiences might not always be direct analogs to what you’re going through now, but if you’ve been in a bad relationship before, it can help to give you a better idea of what to expect.
But just because you’re in a different relationship doesn’t mean this pattern is over. And just because you’re in a different relationship now doesn’t mean this is going to go away.
You’ll have to keep moving forward, by opening up to your partner and figuring out what’s going on..