How to Lose a Friend

Thirty-three years ago, or thereabouts, I lost a friend. It didn't occur to me at the time that it would happen, but it did, and it has become one of life's great regrets. I didn't really want to admit it for all these years, but I ruined a wonderful relationship with a person who would have made a marvelous life-long friend. How did I do that? It was quite simple.

It all actually started out quite innocently. We were brought together within a group of people who went together to provide a week of camping for the young people in our respective churches. It was great time for having fun, being silly, laughing, sharing experiences that only recently newly wedded couples can talk about, and also sharing intimate times discussing problems and solutions.

From the first time I met her I hoped that this woman would become my friend. It seemed destined to be, and I felt very fortunate that we had been brought together. At first, I didn't wish for anything beyond a close, platonic friendship, and during the next few years we began to meet in one another's homes for "fellowship" and to allow our children to play together and get to know one another better. Our friendship grew. Along with that, the kids did their own things and we adults did ours. Nothing out of the ordinary, mind you, and nothing any of us would have been ashamed to tell our own parents about. However, a seed was beginning to grow that would one day become fruitful and affect us in ways we had yet to imagine.

It wasn't long before our families moved to new locations: They moved to a small rural area in Michigan and we moved to the Gulf Coast of the panhandle of Florida. Though we were a thousand miles apart, the thoughts of the past good times, and the special friendly relationship we had with one another, remained.

Shortly after moving to Florida a job opportunity for my friend's husband opened up and I recommended him for the position. They came to interview and he was offered the position. I was very sad when the opportunity was declined and they returned to Michigan. I was not certain why they declined, but it didn't matter because within the year I was offered another position in the Calumet region of Northwest Indiana to teach music in a new school and work with a college that was to be started the next year.

While I was in this new position, they came to visit us. That's when my feelings began to grow for my friend ... feelings that I could no longer deny. I put them in small box in the back of my mind, in an area where only God and I knew about them, and put a lid on the box. If I wanted to keep my job and continue to have the respect of my peers, I couldn't share my feelings and I could not allow others to know they existed. It was truly a battle of sorts; wanting to express my feelings openly and having to suppress them at the same time.

After two years in my position, and having traveled over large portions of the United States with music groups to drum up interest in the newly formed college, my wife and I resigned our positions with the schools and moved back to the Detroit area. Within three days of our arrival, I was hired to head up another music program, and, as fate would have it, there was also a position opening up with the same church that I thought my friends would be suited to fill.

As we talked it over with them, they seemed excited about it and came to interview for the position. Long story short, they accepted and we invited them to come live with us until they were able to get settled into their own new living arrangements.

We were all excited, but I was especially delighted. Now I would have an excuse to spend several days, maybe even weeks or months, with my friend. It was like we were living together, though not sleeping together. I hadn't really gone that far in my mind ... yet. Then I experienced something that I'll never forget.

One day I received a call at work that my friend, who was home alone, could smell leaking gas in our family room. I was very concerned and headed home to check it out. While there, I felt a tension between us that made me act rather unnaturally and awkwardly. For example, we passed each other in the kitchen area once and almost turned our bodies sideways so we wouldn't touch or bump into one another. We both knew something was going on but we did not act upon it. We never touched, we never really talked, and we certainly never broached what was going on inside and between us. As quickly as I could resolve the issue at home, I got into my car and headed back to work, badly shaken.

Contacts with my friend became more often in the days that were ahead, and we knew things were going on that were leading us down a path toward an inevitable intimate relationship. I wrote poetry and a song to my friend trying to express my feelings. Both were clumsy, rather futile attempts to express what was going on in my heart. It seemed that I was living with the wrong person and locked in to a relationship about which I could do nothing.

A side effect was that my wife and I began to have some of those private problems that seem too insignificant now to mention, but were used at the time to justify actions that would become very significant and which would escalate into something very detrimental.

Having been denied sexual contact with her one night, I patted my wife on the butt and said, "To heck with you. I don't need you anymore." My mind was made up. I was going to seriously pursue a more intimate relationship with my friend. Then it happened.

We took an afternoon drive together and found a reasonably private spot where we could be alone. Within minutes we had sex in broad daylight, in the front seat of my car. It happened so fast that I'd have to say that we didn't make love; we just had sex. I've learned, now that I look back on my experiences, that I have never been a lover. Things happen too fast with me and I cannot truly satisfy a woman that way. That day, we simply ended our curiosity about what it would be like. I wasn't happy with myself and I'm sure she wasn't happy with herself, me, or my performance either. However, she was very gracious and understanding. During our ensuing relationship I tried to overcome my sexual insecurities by performing more often to make up for my lack of staying power.

I'll skip all of the unimportant stuff, the sexual encounters, the trips from Michigan to Chicago, and the many other traumatic events of the next few years. Suffice it to say we had some of the most romantic, most erotic, most adventuresome, most hilarious, and most frightening encounters you could ever imagine. That is, until we eventually got caught. Then, not too long after that, she and her family moved to another job about 130 miles away. I changed jobs again, too.

For the time being it was over, supposedly. She would not talk to me, though I tried. Then, for some odd reason, it started up again, but again we got caught and this frightened her so badly that she put the brakes on hard this time.

Shortly after that I took a job in Iowa and vowed to make a permanent change in my life and commit wholeheartedly to my wife. For about four to five years I didn't really communicate with my friend, but in 1981 my youngest son mentioned an interest in spending time with the son of my friend. My wife, who now knew all about my affair, thought it would be okay to meet on neutral grounds to pick up their son and bring him back to Iowa for a visit. So, we met at a Six-Flags north of Chicago.

We had a great time and it was almost like old times, but the strain of the past was still there. My feelings were running rampant, however, and when it was time to leave and go back to our respective homes, I walked toward the Six Flags exit. Just before walking out, I turned around and looked back. What I saw was my friend sitting on a wall around a fountain looking in my direction. Her eyes were clouded and smoldering. She was telling me that it was not over.

For the next couple of years I would take quick trips from Iowa to Indiana to spend a few hours with her and then dash back home to my family, my job and my life. It was difficult ... very difficult. One of the strange things that stood out in my mind after some of the visits was the fact that she knew where to go to find private, out of the way parking places and meeting places. It was like she'd already scoped things out and was all prepared for whatever happened. I felt a bit uncomfortable about that but never asked any questions.

Finally, we met one last time in 1990. I was divorced at the time and her husband had taken a trip to Texas. She and I drove separately to a little town in northern Indiana to spend one night together. We met just before noon, went shopping and sightseeing, and I bought her a memento of the occasion to remind her of that day. We talked for almost the entire day and went to bed that night like we were an old married couple. I tried to prolong the lovemaking but she wanted me inside her very quickly, so I obliged. It happened again, as it always had in the past, and I was done almost before it started. Then, of all the unbelievable things, after all the years apart we just cuddled and went to sleep. In the morning we showered, went to breakfast and went our separate ways. I guess that's when it truly ended. Maybe we just didn't admit it yet.

We stayed in touch for 15 years after that but our relationship deteriorated to a point that we really could not get along anymore, and she told me that it was over and she didn't want to hear from me again. She had made some serious changes in her lifestyle and I no longer fit. I knew that if it were indeed finally over, we could no longer be friends because of the lines we had crossed.

At first it was upsetting to me and I tried to accept the ending of our relationship by telling myself, "It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all," but now I realize that what we had could never be categorized as love. It was pure lust and, more than likely, an attempt to compensate for what we had convinced ourselves was missing in our lives. And, just maybe, we wanted to taste that forbidden fruit we had heard so much about. Any way you slice it, if I had never allowed myself to cross that line between loving her and lusting after her, I might still have a friend who would be fun to be around, fun to visit, fun to share life's experiences with, and fun to grow old with in an appropriate fashion. But the reality I must face is this: She has moved on and so must I.

Don't get me wrong, I still think about her and still have a small place in the deep recesses of my heart for her, but the relationship is definitely over. In the beginning I thought it would be okay to have an affair with this friend thinking that it would serve to make us closer than friends. As a matter of fact, however, it did not. Now there's no way that either of us can undo what's been done, supposedly in the name of "love," and the saddest part of this whole story is this: Thirty-three years ago, or thereabouts, I lost a friend. It didn't occur to me at the time that it was happening, but it was, and I will regret it for the rest of my life.

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