Food for Thought.

[noobsauces]

The problem with burning bridges completely, is that once that bridge is gone you can never again cross to the other side.

Sometimes even if you believe with all your heart that what you do is the right thing, you have to eat your humble pie. The alternative is the cold hard reality that you may have to lose on your best friends ever.

Comments

[emilyseal]

You posted, and I realized that I missed an entire part of my mass metaphor examination that I had intended to touch upon.

Is building a new bridge possible? Certainly. But what you're discussing is an entirely new friendship. Back when I was an Army brat, I went through this often. You forge friendships. You build those bridges, you think they're entirely unshakeable. Then you move. Four years later, you end up looking at a complete stranger with an eerily familiar face. You have to entirely rebuild the bridge from scratch--you can't assume it's still standing.

And you often look back regretfully at what there was before, and realize sadly that what you have is a foot path at best across. And my scenario is a situation in which both parties are entirely innocent of fault--the intentions simply aren't there, they're entirely based upon circumstances.

You cannot rebuild the same friendship when the foundation upon which it stood is gone, regardless of the situation. And while it's comforting to think that you can build something stronger altogether, well. . . frankly, I've only had that happen twice in my life, and in both situations the previous friendship had been built entirely on the wrong foundations and in both situations it took unwavering effort from both sides, years worth of time, and a hell of an epiphany from one party or the other.

There's no metaphorical work crew involved in the construction. No cure-all for failing friendships. Just two people. And it takes effort from both sides to make it work at all.