Some past friendships can’t make it in the present

Some people believe that people don’t change. I respectfully disagree with that fact. As someone who can look back and barely recognize the person he was a decade ago, I know that people can and do change. Perhaps not everyone does, and perhaps some people change only a little. But others of us go through radical changes.

Life gets really interesting, however, when someone who has changed radically comes into contact with someone who doesn’t believe people can change — or at least expects that particular person to remain the same. I experienced such an interesting turn of events first-hand a few years ago with an old friend, whom I shall call Lynn.

Lynn and I knew each other in college. We were close friends during my freshman and sophomore years. She was two years ahead of me and graduated at the end of my second year. The last time that I saw her was at her wedding to another man at the beginning of my junior year.

Lynn and I were quite close. In fact, we were so close and spent so much time alone together that many people thought we would end up dating and even getting married. (As I still identified as straight at this time in my life, it wasn’t an entirely unreasonable speculation on our friends’ part.) However, we maintained that we were just friends, and nothing ever came of it.

After Lynn got married, I never saw her again. I never even heard from her again until seven or eight years later. One night, after a long day at work, I got home only to have my mother hand me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “Your friend Lynn from college called. She’d like you to call her back after 9pm.” I rolled my eyes and took the paper.

Lynn was from my days as a Christian — and Pentecostal Christian at that. I did not have high hopes that the upcoming phone conversation would go well. I was afraid that if the topic of my sexuality or my conversion to Paganism came up, the conversation would sour quickly. So I bgan to dread the upcoming conversation.

Obviously, I was assuming that Lynn hadn’t changed. I assumed she was still a conservative Christians with strong opinions about homosexuality and other faiths and that she would not be able to handle the facts of my life any more maturely than the Lynn I knew seven to eight years ago would have. And in the end, my assumptions were proven true and I was ultimately vindicated. However, the fact remains that I made unfair assumptions. The fact that they proved to be accurate just meant I got lucky.

A little after nine, I took the cordless phone to my room for privacy and dialed the number. Lynn answered and we talked for a few brief minutes. She mentioned that she had kids, but that she and her husband were now divorced. Then after a few brief exchanges, Lynn dropped the first bomb.

“I think I’d like it if you would court me.” I was momentarily floored. (As an aside, for those familiar with the push in some conservative Christian circles to return to “courting” rather than “dating,” Lynn’s choice of words might indicate a little bit about her worldview.) I certainly wasn’t expecting this from someone I was always just a friend to, let alone someone that had been absent from my life for nearly a decade.

I responded quickly, and probably a bit too curtly in retrospect. “That’s not going to happen,” I said with some force.

Naturally, she asked the obvious question, “Why?”

This is not how I wanted to come out to her. In fact that’s not a conversation I wanted to have at all. I was tired. I had to get up early for work as we were in crisis mode and I had to be in earlier than usual. And I knew if I opened this can of worms, I’d be up for a couple of hours, either having a tense conversation or trying to calm down after a short but explosive one. I finally said, “I don’t think I really want to get into that at this time.”

“Well, are you at least still a good Christian influence?” she asked next.

In less than fifteen minutes, the two questions I really wasn’t prepared to answer under the circumstances came up. I decided that at this point, it was time to apologetically end the conversation. So I told her that I was tired and had to get up early for work tomorrow. I promised to call her in a couple days when it was the weekend and I had a clearer head. We said our goodbyes and did manage to exchange emails.”

I never got a chance to make that call. The next day, Lynn sent me an email. She was quite upset with my treatment of her over the phone. She accused me of not caring anymore. She pointed out that back in college, I would’ve known that she desparately needed someone to talk to and would’ve dropped everything to be that someone. And she’s right, I wasn’t that someone anymore. I’ve since learned that my needs are important, too. So I chose not to sacrifice my needs to be her emotional support that particular night. Unfortunately, she had a problem with that.

Her email was deeply troubling. This was for many more reasons than just the fact that she accused me of not being there for her. However, out of respect for Lynn, I won’t go into that. However, I shared the email with a close friend that I felt would be able to understand where Lynn was coming from and offer me advice on how to respond. Discussions with this new friend led me to decide to write a goodbye letter to Lynn.

I never explained to her why we couldn’t court. I never answered her question about whether I was still a good Christian influence. Instead, I simply told her that while it was good to hear from her, I felt it best if we go our separate ways. There was nothing to be gained by trying to renew our friendship, and much to be lost.

I sometimes wonder what happened to Lynn. I wonder if she’s still happy. I wonder if she’s changed. I don’t know, and I doubt I ever will. In many ways, that’s unfortunate. In many other ways, however, it was necessary. I could not remain the person she still wanted me to be, and she could not accept the person I had become.

I’d like to close with a random tangent regarding this experience, however. When I got off the phone and went back downstairs, I mentioned to my mother that Lynn had asked to court me. My mother nodded and said, “I thought she might do something like that. When she called earlier, she asked if you were seeing anyone.”

I’m not normally a violent person. But at that moment, I wanted to strangle my own mother for not giving me any forewarning.