乱伦强奸

Master Class

In recent years, I experienced a lost friendship that was so powerfully derailing, in spite of all I know as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, that I had to stop and look at it. I鈥檇 had essays and short stories published. So I started to just pitch the idea of the universality of this phenomenon of women unfriending other women鈥攄espite everything that we know about how important these relationships are. I started talking not only with people in psychiatry and medicine, but also other creative writers. And everybody had a story.

So many of the women whose stories appear in my anthology didn鈥檛 follow through or confront the friend who鈥檇 dumped them. In spite of all these waves of feminism, I honestly don鈥檛 think that we yet possess the skills to feel comfortable with confrontation. Whether confrontation would help or hinder a friendship, I don鈥檛 know. But what is it that we鈥檙e afraid of learning about ourselves? We are so vulnerable in that situation. What if we鈥檙e forced to hear something about ourselves that we can鈥檛 handle?

I conduct women鈥檚 groups. And sometimes we鈥檒l say, 鈥淥k, you鈥檙e mad at something that happened to you. And you鈥檙e in this group and you鈥檙e yelling at us, and you鈥檙e mad at me. Have you talked to the person who upset you?鈥� And they say, 鈥淲ell, no.鈥� And I back up and say, 鈥淟et鈥檚 talk about how you can talk to the person who upset you in the first place, so you don鈥檛 absorb all this negativity and project it out onto everyone else but the person who upset you in the first place.鈥� Not confronting people is a very protective thing that women do for themselves, but it fails.

The more I talk to men in my line of work, the more I understand that they, too, question themselves when they lose a connection. I think many men process these losses differently, however. The husband of a friend of mine wrote this very funny blog post. He wrote, in effect, 鈥淚f you鈥檝e been good friends with Barry and you鈥檙e not friends anymore, and somebody says, 鈥楬ey, whatever happened to Barry?,鈥� you鈥檒l say, 鈥極h, yeah, I haven鈥檛 seen Barry in a while. And how do you think the Knicks are going to do Saturday night?鈥� 鈥� A male friend of mine said, 鈥淚 hated that blog post. Because I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 true. I don鈥檛 think that all men just jump into talking about sports.鈥� But I think they can.

How many songs and poems are written about romance? But as I write in the book, there鈥檚 no Adele song for the breakup of a friendship. If there were a song? Maybe 鈥淟ove is Everything,鈥� by Jane Siberry. It鈥檚 clearly about a romantic relationship, but it distills things down to some very basic truths. 鈥淪o take a lesson from the strangeness you feel / And know you'll never be the same / And find it in your heart to kneel down and say I gave my love, didn't I?鈥� Maybe you have to say, it鈥檚 great that you did care deeply for someone, and that鈥檚 good enough. Because often there isn鈥檛 any resolution. You have to learn how to live with that pain.